an attempt at drawing a moment from Act 5. didn't turn out exactly how i would've liked, but i've been looking at it too long so i'm just gonna throw it out there >_<
the way mob implies he is the most stagnant, unchangeable person at the drop of a hat makes me so sad, he just goes "if even I can change" and hurts me
So. It's been said before that Mob has this compulsive thing where he looks at his hand when he's thinking about his powers. But I've wanted for a While now to compile exactly when and how much he does this, so!! Here's exactly a post for that ^^
Starting with the very 1st episode of Season 1, here he looks at his hand while Reigen's spiel about him not using his powers to use against others plays in his head. At this point in the story, we don't really understand the full gravity of these words, and what they mean to Mob - really, they sound more like the obvious usual advice that a psychic mentor would give. But from Mob's percentage rising (tho most people won't know what the percentage means at this point in the story), as well as him generally sitting on this advice, we can tell that a nerve has been struck.
Then comes season 1 episode 3. This is technically the same exact shot, but I still decided to include it both because it's still technically a different instance, and also, because of the new information we learn in this episode, we can look at this shot with a different context. Namely, that we now know what Mob's percentage means, and that his powers are connected to his emotions, which is why he stifles both in fear of hurting people as Reigen warned him of. It turns from impersonal advice to a Very personal and real concern. Though the biggest reason for why he fears his powers is still unknown at this point... (though we are made aware of the other reason - fear of social ostracization).
Ough... here comes season 1 episode 5. The shot of him looking at his hand, the one that makes it abundantly clear exactly what he is imagining and thinking back to when he does this. He's remembering the literal blood on his hands... fuck me.
Then are these shots from the same episode. The hands are covered by a towel, so this one is less obvious, but by his sight line and the conversation that he just had with Ritsu - about the incident, and what he did to him - it's obvious that's where his eyes are set. And now compared to episode 3, we know exactly why he hates and fears his powers so much. Why he thinks these hands are dangerous...
Season 1 episode 10, another repeat shot - this time from the psychically induced flashback he suffers at the hands of Muto. I still think the 100% rejection scene is so underrated - imagine being forced to relive the most traumatic event of your life, especially considering he usually avoids thinking about it.. god, the way he just screams and sobs is so upsetting.. though I do wonder what exactly Muto saw when Mob reversed the illusion on him.
This one's from season 1 episode 11, and it's a lot more innocuous than the rest - he's just checking that his psychic powers indeed don't work in this cursed room. But it's still him looking at his hand and thinking about his powers, so I decided to include it. (though I will say, there is a fanfic opportunity somewhere in here about combining the fact that, apparently, there exist curses that can surpress psychic powers, and Mob's desire to do just that... maybe one day I will get to it)
Now we jump to season 2! Episode 3. God, this is still one of the most intriguing scenes of this show to me... here, along with the fear of potentially having to hurt his clients, Mob is thinking a lot of things - among them, for the first time considering not only that he can hurt innocent people with these hands, but also innocent spirits. And the fact that he had been exorcising spirits, essentially killing these beings that are as close to him as living humans are, for years... I just love this episode. And as one commenter on Youtube pointed out, in season 2 episode 1, he made a promise to himself to consider his feelings more - and his feelings are innately tied to his powers. Thus, opening his eyes to his feelings also made him open his mind to the ethics of how he is using his powers, and whether following Reigen along on all these jobs without thought is truly what he should be doing. This is a big part of why I fully support him deciding to not work for Reigen post-finale - he needs to figure out how he feels about his powers without using them as tools to get profit (well. Not so much profit for him, and there's certainly value he gained from this job besides that - such as being able to at least use and express his powers somewhat, along with the relationship he gained with Reigen - but point still stands. It's healthy for him to be able to think these things through without that). Plus, I personally like to imagine he grows more sympathetic to spirits as he grows up and isn't anymore too keen on him destroying them being his job. But ramble aside...
Here comes mogami arc! Season 2 episode 5. As the subtitles say, in contrast to all other times he's been agonising over being too powerful, here, he's regretful over not being strong enough (plus, I like how Mogami has basically redefined what strength means for Mob in this fabricated world. Where in the real one, strength for Mob means sticking it to your morals and being able to resolve things peacefully, here it's... kinda the opposite..). Also, what's interesting here is that he still looks to his hand here, despite having all his memories of his powers and the incident erased from his mind. I guess it's just that deep-seated...
Same episode. This one is kind of debatable, but he certainly looks like he's rising his hand to look at it. Thus, I'm including it. Plus, it has thematic relevance to the incident. As he is saying here, in this world, he truly hasn't done anything malicious or dangerous that could warrant people treating him as the enemy, yet here they are. I could imagine, that, somewhere in the back of his mind, he is feeling like he's forgetting something...
Season 2 episode 10. Here he just woke up and immediately whooped ass with his powers. Also more innocuous, he's just confused, but still looking at his hand, so. Here it remains.
Season 2 episode 12 - this one's also kind of a oddball, since for once, he's not really thinking about his powers, but rather Serizawa's, and what they reveal about the man's feelings- but I thought it was close enough at him looking at his hand. Besides, I think it's sweet that this is one of the first times he uses his powers to empathise, to connect with someone (we see him do so again while trying to take in Toichiro's powers, as well as in the Alien arc, notably), so I'm including it for its thematic relevance.
Now onto season 3 episode 1! There's a really good post explaining this one (as well as the ghost family scene instance) here, but to summarise, here, Mob is thinking back to his powers and instances of him hurting people - making mistakes - and how he never learns. Never changes. Not enough... just like with the 100% sadness scene, it's just so sad that he thinks this one instance of his powers getting the best of him has ruined him for life. That he can't afford to make mistakes... buddy, you're 14 years old. A child. Making mistakes is part of growing up, part of being human :( But I'm guesing he doesn't always see himself as fully human does he ...
And then. Season 3 episode 10. Ough... This is just all his worst fears becoming reality. He's hurt Hanazawa, again. He's hurting his loved ones, again. He's monstrous and dangerous, again... All these years of repression have just led him back to square one and below - to bloodied hands once more. But this was inevitable. He couldn't have continued looking at those hands and fearing them.. he needed to face himself. Look that trauma in the eyes. And say: that's not all I am. I did that, those hands are mine, I am capable of hurting, but it's not all I am. I am capable of changing.... and he does!! Reverting once doesn't erase all the good he has achieved and all the growth he has experienced. But fact remains, that before you heal the wound you heal the wound, you need to clean it first. And it will hurt... but he gets there. He gets there.
So to finish on a lighter note! The ending of season 3!! This one makes me so happy, because, as opposed to all these other scenes where he's looking to his hand with turmoil and anguish in his heart, here, it's the opposite! He's smiling!! He's confident!! He's becoming surer of himself every day!!! He no longer sees his powers as a curse!!!! It's a promise, that eventually, he manages to deal with all the trauma and achieve a happy ending. It's just his hand, and his hands can hold instead of harm. It's just so sweet. I love him and his character development so, so much.... <3
In conclusion: he looks at his hand a total of 14 times - 12, if we exclude repeat shots. And I just think it's fascinating, how we can follow his development throughout these instances. So I hope that this was interesting for you to read as well, and that you all have good days out there <3 Toodles :)
So I've been thinking about color symbolism in mp100. And I've assembled a roughly chronological analysis of the moments that red is particularly symbolically interesting, in my eyes, anyway!
(buckle up, this gets long. also, warning for blood and a little bit of gore. I talk a lot about the Mogami arc in here.)
What got me interested in the color red in particular was the fact that Mob's eyes occasionally change color from black to red. The first time we see that happen, it's in episode three of season one, where Mob snaps and unleashes his repressed rage against Dimple. (Interestingly, his aura is also unusually pink-heavy in this scene—usually it's more blue than pink, but along with the deep dull red of the background, everything in this environment is turning red.)
So, okay, we've got your standard red = rage thing. It's also interesting to note that Mob is usually a monochrome character—his gakuran (uniform) is black and white, his hair black, skin pale, eyes black and white—and when he gets simplified into anything more cartoony, he goes monochrome instantly. The only colorful thing about him is his powers, which are blue and pink. But here, when he shows his rage, he gets red eyes. Color is associated with emotion in general in mp100; in this same episode, when the narrator explains how Mob has locked away his psychic powers with his emotions, the emotions are shown in color, Mob himself in black and white.
But I digress. Back to red specifically!
Coming right on the heels of the LOL cult arc comes the Teru introduction arc, where we learn exactly why Mob locked away his powers for good. He accidentally hurt his little brother—gave him a head wound, in fact, that bled copiously. Mob's memory of the event is fragmented, and it's all in washed-out blue, except for the horrible stark red of the blood splattered onto Mob's face and from Ritsu.
It's blood red. Mob's eyes turn blood red when he stops repressing his powers. Is it a reference to the importance of that red color to Mob personally? A kind of visual reminder that he can commit evil, can hurt others badly? In the Dimple arc, his eyes turn red when he becomes willing to exorcise Dimple—effectively killing him. Mob himself says "I'm terrible" when he reaches out to exorcise Dimple. Clearly the red ties back to that capability within Mob to hurt others, consciously or not. But!! It's more complicated than just "evil/willingness to hurt people". For one thing, the chronological first appearance of red in Mob's life is Ritsu's blood, which was an accident. When Mob's eyes turn red later, those are all instances where he has made a choice. And that choice is not always to hurt people—later, his eyes turn red in a moment of 100% courage. Red does not map perfectly to "evil" or even "rage".
We're almost to the Mogami arc, which is where this meta REALLY gets interesting, but first: season two episode three, which is easy to overlook but sets up a core question which the rest of season two answers. In this episode, Reigen gets a client who asks him to curse someone, and ends up cursed himself. The question which Mob ends up asking himself at the end of the episode is: if he, Shigeo Kageyama, ever wanted to curse someone, use his powers for evil, or eliminate people rather than spirits... would anyone try to stop him?
And!! look at the curse that ends up on Reigen's back in this episode!! It sets up the idea of curses (malicious actions taken against another person with intent to harm) as connected with the color red!
The next time red becomes particularly narratively significant, it's in season two: the Mogami arc (episodes four and five). Mogami's defining color is the exact blood red of Mob's eyes. In Mogami's aura, the red is mottled with black (see below, Asagiri Minori with Mogami's aura radiating off her.) His aura is nearly the exact color of the gore we later see him bathed in when Mob tries to exorcise his spirit and fails to achieve it. (side note, Mogami is controlling the entire world in that scene—this is a battle of imagination, and Mogami absolutely made that scene gory and horrible on purpose to upset Mob. his stated goal is to provoke negative emotions in Mob to make Mob realize that negative emotions provide more psychic power than positive ones, and to make Mob embrace vengeance and suffering as a way of life.)
Interestingly, Mogami occasionally has red eyes too, just like Mob, but they're red in a black background, unlike Mob's red in a white background. (Slight tangent: Mogami's pupils get insanely smaller when they go red, whereas Mob's pupils actually usually get larger when they go red. I think that's because when Mob embraces his emotions, it's a widening out from his usual refusal to acknowledge his own emotions and willpower. When Mob's eyes go red, it's because he's seeing something he usually doesn't allow himself to see. Whereas for Mogami, both times that his eyes go red in episode five are narrowing moments when he begins to maliciously focus in on Mob specifically. The one below on the left is when he realizes Mob is trying to possess Minori's body to remove Mogami from the inside; the second is when Mob grabs Mogami with his aura while inside the mental space. Both moments are ones where Mogami begins to see Mob as a potential... second Mogami. A potential sympathizer—someone with a lot of power, which, in Mogami's worldview, comes from negative emotions. So Mob is like Mogami—someone who has suffered! When Mogami's eyes go red, it's because he has selected Mob as someone he could groom to be like Mogami himself. See below for Mogami's horrible little red eyes.)
Once Mob gets locked into Mogami's artificial world, red continues to be symbolically important. It's the one saturated color allowed in a world of depressing grays, greens, and browns. A red glow indicates Mogami's presence speaking to Mob in his messy room. And red is the color of blood, of course, which appears again and again in Mogami's world. I won't belabor the point that it's associated with trauma, and specifically the trauma of Ritsu's head wound caused by Mob. Mogami doesn't know about that, but we the viewers do. The point of red in this world is the intentional, inexcusable causing of harm; Mogami tries to convince Mob that the only way to deal with trauma is to embrace it and become the trauma causer rather than the victim, bringing justice (red) to a bleak world (Dull Trash Brown/Green, the color of depression and meaninglessness in this show). See below.
After (subjective) months of bullying, Mob gets a head wound and is subsumed in a despairing red haze, but fortunately, Dimple breaks him out of it, adding a much-needed pop of green color to the bleak-and-red world, a reminder that other emotions than bleakness and rage exist. and THEN it REALLY gets interesting!!!
I've already talked (here and in this post) about the next instance of the symbolism of red in MP100: 100% courage!!! Despite being nearly consumed by despair (represented in Mogami's black and red) trying to fight Mogami's horde of spirits and break out of this mental world, Mob remembers that he's here for a purpose: to save someone. Again, his eyes turn red when he makes a critical choice (in this case, to keep fighting). Only this time, his choice isn't to hurt anyone. So given the fact that red has been set up through the entire Mogami arc (and the whole series) as the color of pain, trauma and intent to harm, why have Mob's eyes turn red and have it be beautiful??
I think the key is that Shigeo initiated this change in himself in order to save someone. The Mogami arc, to me, is the key to the entire series: it's at this exact moment, when Mob makes the switch from "the world is so cruel... can I really do anything worthwhile" to "I'm here for a reason and my powers are here to let me help people". He's using his ability to harm, but in his service of other people and in the rejection of the bleak outlook Mogami offered. And it's being used in service of goodness that makes his power to harm, represented by the color red, beautiful. He clings to the idea that people can change, that bullies need not always be bullies, and he does not have to take revenge. His powers appear as vibrantly blue and pink as ever, and he expels all of Mogami's spirits from Minori's mind.
The show doesn't leave it at that, though. Mogami Arc is almost exactly halfway through Mob Psycho 100 for a reason: Mob has to grapple with his decision to accept the color red. He has to come to terms with his own ability to fight back, come to a nuanced understanding of his own decision-making process (when to fight, when to have mercy.)
Mogami shows up a second time in season two, episode eleven. He threatens to kill Minegishi (a man who was just trying to kill Mob), and Mob pleads for Minegishi's life. And the lighting in this scene is really interesting! Mob is in a blue shadow, the sun blocked out by Mogami's red miasma, until Mob states that he can't guarantee that anyone will choose to change, but he wants to give them a chance anyway, because you have to trust people to get anywhere. When Mob says that, Mogami fades away, letting the sunlight in.
Also, this isn't about the color red, but I have to note that it is not an accident that Minori (who bullied Mob in Mogami's world, and who Mob chose to save), and Minegishi, both have this same light lavender hair color. They are parallels—both bullies, both having shown no sign that their apologies will be sincere and that they will change. And Mob chooses to give both of them another chance... although this second time, he takes it to heart that Mogami (Mogami-san, he calls him), told him that he has to be hard on people sometimes. Few people would know that Mob is capable of hurting others given the right circumstances more than Mogami does. And Mob respects Mogami, I think. He gives him the honorific -san, which is more than he does for Suzuki. I theorize that Mogami and Mob recognize each other as fellow sufferers from psychic powers. Fellow red-eyed (potential) monsters.
Shortly thereafter, Mob goes to fight Touichirou Suzuki. Suzuki is a red-coded character too. And although his red is more orange, less like Mob's blood red than Mogami's red is, he does resonate with Mob similarly. He brings out the worst in Mob: power-drunk ecstasy. Again, characters associated with red are associated with Mob's worst side, and they're typically the ones capable of bringing out his red side, not only because they force him into corners where he has no choice but to fight them with force but because they get him in a way that no one who doesn't share Mob's level of power really can.
The thing that snaps Mob out of this haze is, fascinatingly, another person associated with red in Mob Psycho 100: Ritsu. Mob sees Ritsu on the ground, has a flashback to that traumatic memory with Ritsu bleeding, and stops laughing. He becomes mindful of his own choices again.
Mob's eyes remain black as he tries to reason with Touichirou. But when Mob gives up, acknowledging his own weakness, his inability to show Suzuki another path, his eyes turn red once again.
It's a horrible moment, the moment when Mob chooses to try to kill Suzuki instead of reasoning with him. Right after he makes this statement, he does something he's never done before: uses his psychic powers to directly alter someone's body. He has hit people with his powers before, but that was like a slap. What he does to Suzuki is something he learned from Mogami, who used his powers to twist Minori's finger joints until they cracked. Mob does the same thing to Suzuki, using his powers to twist Suzuki's body until his bones break. It's an exact parallel to what Mogami did. It's a tough call, figuring out what to think about this moment, but we're given clues to this moment both earlier and later. Mob cannot change everyone's mind, as Mogami said; Suzuki refused to listen and posed an active danger to Mob's little brother and friends, and Mob had no one to turn to for help here, so he chose to kill Suzuki.
Given Mob's pacifist outlook up to now, this was a huge change. He'd exorcised ghosts before, but he never killed a human being. But this was not the soul-destroying acceptance of revenge that turns the whole world red, like what almost happened in Mogami arc when Mob was about to accept Mogami's way of life. This was a one-time, no-win situation that Mob could not get out of. And because he'd been prepared for this by Mogami, and because he made the choice to use his powers instead of running away, his eyes turned red in determination. Again, it's about making a choice to use your power, not about the goodness of the choice. And you'll note that the red of his eyes here is flat and blank, like Mogami's eyes. Again with the subtlety. Red in mob psycho 100 has the common thematic thread of pain and power, but its meaning flexes based on context.
The significance of red has one more major comeback in MP100, and, fittingly, it's at the end of the series, where Mob's powers go out of control. Other people have spoken at length about the final arc of MP100, and it speaks for itself. But I have to briefly touch on this to bring this analysis to a conclusion—
Shigeo Kageyama's powers, walking a path of destruction through Seasoning City, is red, red, red. Red and black.
The red is a menacing color here. Although Mob's powers still come across in his bright, sparkling blue and pink, his body is surrounded in an intense blood red that gets stronger to the point of filling the background (in the style of Mogami's world). The red could be read as a symbol of evil, of malicious intent, like it was in Mogami's world. Except... Mob's eyes are the unconscious white of ???%, which represents Mob's fight or flight instinct and all of the things he represses because they are unsightly. Things he doesn't actually want to do consciously. Mob is doing this by accident, although as a natural consequence of what he has done to himself. Ritsu puts it well when he's talking to himself about how Mob locked away his emotions and powers:
This other side of Mob represents everything Mob fears about himself (power, rage, destructiveness conscious and unconscious.) But fearing Mob's other half does no good. For better or for worse, it is part of Mob.
In this instance, I think the significance of the color red lies in its association with fear. People are scared of things that can hurt them. Mob, specifically, is afraid of the power that he has seen hurt people, from himself hurting Ritsu to Mogami and Minori hurting Mob to Touichirou Suzuki hurting everyone.
The red, here, is a warning sign. It says get away from me before I hurt you. It's what Mob tries to prevent people from seeing. And it does represent malicious intent, but it also represents self-hate. It's everything Mob has fought over the course of the series, only it's also Mob himself.
But. But. Red is the color, consistently, of accepting and using your power. It's blood, sure, but it's also justice. It's rage, but it's also courage. It's determination. It's used in moments of wholeness of purpose—power and willpower agreed on a course of action. And in the end, Mob has to accept that his power is part of him, and it doesn't have to scare him. It doesn't have to be red suppressed within him (meaning blood, meaning Mogami, Suzuki); it can lie dormant when not needed but not repressed within him.
I don't have a good ending to this analysis. Just watch the series. It speaks for itself.
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