English Dub Review: Mob Psycho 100 “REIGEN: The Miraculous Unknown Psychic”

It’s about time the REAL hero got his moment to shine!

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS?)

After seeing another local psychic peddling a book release, Reigen enlists Mob to write their own about his adventures as a powerful psychic! Or rather, Mob’s adventures in Season 1 that occasionally involved Reigen but with a bit of…creative license to them. Among these stretches in the truth include minor things like Reigen only holding back against the first few spirits from the series, as well complete rewrites like basically putting him as the winner of every single fight against the Claw organization.

Mob is, of course, more than willing to help his mentor out with this version of events, but eventually, the draft makes its way to Mob’s friends and brother, who make the story more like what actually happened. In the end, Reigen barely gets a footnote in his own book. But luckily, good things are on the horizon as the television in the bar he’s in announces the greenlighting of MOB PSYCHO SEASON 2!…which you’ve probably been watching for at least a few weeks now if you’re reading this.

OUR TAKE

Hey, have you seen Mob Psycho 100? You haven’t? Well, what the heck are you waiting on me to tell you! Go watch all the 12 episodes now! I’ll wait.

Seriously, I’m not typing another word until you watch it.

…

Okay, you’re back? Yeah, it’s pretty good, isn’t it? Well, this OVA is basically a recap of that but with Reigen giving his take on everything. Considering that first season came out two and a half years before the second, I can understand them wanting to refresh everyone’s memories, but then again, why not just rebroadcast it or something? Ordinarily I’d be kinda pissed about just repurposing all this footage for a truncated retelling as I sometimes see other shows like Sword Art Online do, but in this case I can tell they put the same type of creative energy into it.

If you’ve watched the show (which I sure hope you have by now), Reigen’s more or less a con artist who bends the truth to his whim all the time for an extra buck, so having a framing device about him trying to sell a book works perfectly in character for him while giving us a good reason to remember the best parts of last season. But despite his bravado and deception, he’s also someone with strong convictions who cares deeply about Mob as his pupil. A lot of that comes through in the sections of the recap that focus on what he’s taught Mob over the years, especially that he’s still an ordinary person no matter how strong his powers are, which is a core theme of the series as a whole.

I mean, if you’re going to do a recap episode in the first place, I guess using it as a basically a commercial for the next season but with a funny and creative take on it is probably the best possible way you could do that. I’m pretty sure anyone would pick new content over rehashing old content any day, but these kinds of things are byproducts of the chinks in the armor of the anime industry. As aggravating as they can be at times, all you can do is hope they do something different with it.

And, if it’s a commercial for this show, in particular, it’s at least plugging something that is genuinely good like Mob Psycho 100, a show that anyone worth their anime fan salt should be checking out!