Zurite @zuritee - Tumblr Blog

So I’m of the opinion that as time passes Reigen becomes more and more online, because the Everything becomes more online post-2012 when the series is set. And like YES he’s noisy on Twitter but Reigen’s style of online-ness is much more about niche rabbit holes that are his interest and venture of the month.

And, I think, he’s the kind of guy to make every username some number-and-character combination that contains “Arataka Reigen” because that’s him. That’s his brand. You can go to his business page if you want.

And most of the time, people going back and forth with him on the woodworking subreddit, or the sommelier forums, or the (whatever Reigen’s interest of the month is) discord don’t pay all too much mind to this. But for those who’ve been on the internet for 15 years, they know the reference. This guy’s username is a reference to that old psychic fraud fail man meme guy who got photoshopped into sooooo many things when he was the lolcow of 2012. Some people are even like “lol love the username. salt splash amiright.”

Until like, 14 replies deep in a heated hydroponics debate, AratakaReigen_x87 posts a picture of himself in front of his garden set up that he’s defending to the death and WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE’S ACTUALLY THE MEME GUY.

herenvibing

a minor headcanon that I will die defending is that reigen initially assumed that mob’s supposed “psychic powers” were just how he rationalized his autism to himself. like here’s an obviously autistic kid, one reigen clocks immediately because he’s, well, reigen, and he’s talking about extra sensory perception and having powers he can’t control, powers that are scary. obviously, he assumes, this is something the kid picked up from his parents, a way for him to rationalize his alienation from other children— that no, you’re not “different”, you’re special (not even going into the parents who think their autistic children are like, aliens) and the other kids can see that you’re special and so they treat you like you’re weird and creepy and they don’t invite you to play and they whisper behind your back but it’s fine, because one day they’ll see how special you really are. and adult autistic reigen arataka, who was also probably-definitely bullied as a child, decides to nip that thought in the bud and gives the whole spiel, that no, “psychic powers” (autism) don’t make you special, and yes, they do make you different, and that’s fine because everyone’s different, and at the end of the day you have agency and you get to decide the kind of person you’ll be, so choose to be a kind one, and he sees this kid hanging off his every word as he tells him the kind of stuff he wishes someone had told him when he was so little and alone, and he mentally pats himself on the back and hypes himself up for another cigarette.

and then the kid makes a teacup float in front of him and he’s like oh. damn. can you kill ghosts

ramshacklefey

Kind of hilarious to me how poorly the title "Mob Psycho 100" localized to English-speaking areas. To someone whose first language is English, it scans as:

Mob (Yakuza, Mafia)

Psycho (violent person with "crazy" behaviors)

Thus: a particularly violent member of organized crime.

But in Japanese it scans as:

Mob (background characters in crowd scenes in manga or anime)

Psycho (short for psychic)

Thus: a psychic who looks/acts like someone you'd never pick out of a crowd scene in a comic.

phantomrose96

14-year-old in a normal shonen: “I need to fight for my FRIENDS!!! And to save everyone—no, save the WORLD—from total annihilation!!” *insane fight sequence*

14-year-old in Mob Psycho: “I fear if I keep living my life like this, coming to my part-time job every day and doing the same things, then life will be comfortable and easy for me, but that comfort may mean I will stagnate, and that as the years pass, the only thing that changes is my age.” *insane fight sequence*

milletude

avspol

milletude

Coming out to nii-san

phantomrose96

"This 14-year-old is the most powerful person in the WORLD but really... he just wants to be a normal middle schooler...!" is absolutely not new to anime but USUALLY it's all a power-fantasy. It's humble-bragging. It's an awkward marriage of relatability and bus-window-day-dreaming. "Oh MAN, I just SAVED the WORLD 😱😏🌍💥but I still have a MATH TEST tomorrow 📏✖️AND I have a CRUSH 😊 (who doesn't know I'm the coolest badass in the world because that's a secret!! 😜)"

Which is all to say once again that no one is doing it like Mob Psycho 100. Because Mob is unambiguously the most powerful entity in the world and he goes "Okay but that's not very interesting. Being powerful isn't a personality. I'm gonna try to improve myself in ways that matter."

The evil spirit on his shoulder spends all series going "PLEASE IM BEGGING YOU TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!" and Mob says, "No thank you. Do you want to help me with my math homework?" and the second most powerful person in the world comes up to say, "We are a supreme species of super-human better than everyone else!" and Mob says, "You sound stunted as a person. Maybe try working a customer service job?" and a classmate will go, "Why not use your powers to be popular?" and Mob says, "Psychic powers don't make you popular. Do you want to see me lift this 10kg dumbbell? I've been working on that."

hedgiihog

i hate living in seasoning city

prokopetz

I've regularly done stuff that warrants adjectives like "daft" and "senseless", but some day I hope to rise as high as "harebrained" – or even, in my most fanciful flights of ambition, "preposterous".