English Dub Review: Mob Psycho 100 “The Spirits and Such Consultation Office’s First Company Outing ~A Healing Trip that Warms the Heart~”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Reigen, Mob, Ritsu, Teru, and Serizawa are tasked with investigating a strange phenomenon happening around a hot spring. Apparently guests are finding themselves in a strange world while taking the train over there and blame the owners, leading to low reviews and worsening reputation. Of course, Reigen is only really concerned about getting a paid for trip to a resort…that is, until he and Serizawa get trapped in this strange world when they fall asleep on the train. It doesn’t take long for Serizawa to get out and realize that they can come and go by waking up and falling asleep, but Reigen…takes a little longer to figure that out.

With Mob, Ritsu, and Teru’s help, they all enter the strange world and find out there’s some sort of blockage that has been trapping sleeping visitors here, but their psychic abilities remove it and dispel the phenomenon. Dimple also does some investigating and uncovers that the cause of all this is actually because the owners of resort gained psychic powers completely without realizing it through praying to their personal god, but then they got a cold which led to the spiritual blockage. As thanks for his initiative and help, Reigen makes Serizawa an official employee of his agency.

OUR TAKE

It’s barely been a couple months since the dub of Mob Psycho’s second season concluded, so it’s hard to say if that’s enough time to miss it. Still, we’re back with a short little adventure that takes place shortly after those events to check in with how the main cast is doing. It’s a fun side story for those who might still be craving a bit more Mob Psycho and don’t want to wait until we get a proper season and it’s got a lot of the things that people love about the show: sleek animation, great comedy, relatable characters, etc. But a bit of a downside is that it’s also inherently low stakes and not big on meaningful character development.

Then again, I guess it’s not really supposed to be something super important, but then it should be able to do something creative with its premise that the main show normally couldn’t, but I’m sorry to say it doesn’t. It does do something a bit different by showing how Serizawa is fitting into the main group since reforming his ways and gives us some more of the familiar by showing more fun Reigen hijinks caused his own pride and stubbornness. Remove Serizawa and it definitely feels like an episode that probably could have been thrown into the second season with no problem, but then again, it doesn’t exactly have to be revolutionary AND that’s already a pretty high bar for this show.

Though what I’m actually more surprised about is the inclusion of Chris Niosi as Reigen again. It’s been some months since he was called out for abusing many friends and partners (which he admitted to) as well as being removed from a recent Fire Emblem game for violating an NDA, so you’d think he wouldn’t be back for this, but there he is. Now don’t get me wrong, he’s an excellent voice actor and a great fit for Reigen, but that didn’t like something to come back from. Maybe this was recorded before? Maybe they just couldn’t find a substitute in time? Maybe his reported attempts to correct himself were noticed by Funimation and they decided to keep him on? I guess we’ll find out for sure if he’s still around for Season 3.

All in all, this OVA is a fun and harmless little addition to cap off a stellar sophomore run. A third season to cover the remaining volumes of the Mob Psycho manga has yet to be announced, but I have no doubt that we’ll be returning to these characters again sooner or later.