Mob Psycho 100 III

Episode 8

You've heard of close encounters of the third kind; now get ready for close encounters of the K-ON! kind. I am dumbstruck by this episode. It's a towering achievement—a monument to Mob Psycho 100's warmth, consideration, and implike impulse to roll with a dumb gag towards jaw-dropping ends. It takes the anime's effervescent personality, turns the dial to 11, and throws in an extra dash of Pop Team Epic-style shitposting and Space Dandy-esque alien whimsicality on top for extra, explosive flavor. Depending on who you ask, this could be Mob's grandest statement or stupidest sidebar. It's probably a bit of both too, but that's why I love it so much.

Truth be told, I had known since the beginning of the season to look out for this eighth episode. I'd heard rumblings of such amid sakuga Twitter, which were then confirmed when Hakuyu Go was announced as the director, storyboarder, and animation director for this week. Go, you may recall, previously handled the climactic fifth episode of the second season—a psychedelic and emotional zenith the anime has never been able to surpass. Until now.

Immediately, I appreciate how starkly different this episode is from Go's previous one, both in terms of tone and content. When those rumblings first began, I had expected a recapitulation of the action and psychological drama from Mob's battle with Mogami. However, what we get instead is much quieter and down to earth (until, of course, it leaves Earth entirely). Go applies his talents and the talents of the animators to the small-scale interpersonal dramas of the Telepathy Club, infusing them with palpable weight and gravitas. His layouts, for instance, are subtly impeccable, especially in the first part. The mountain forest is disorientingly dense with vegetation, and the wayward emotions of the club can be felt through their disjointed arrangements amidst the dirt and trees. It's only when Mob, always the best at being genuine, reaches out to Tome that the group stops working against itself and marches in line towards the peak. Under the clarifying light of the sunset and stars, they escape the chaos and find a small but significant morsel of shared purpose.

These are themes Mob keeps coming back to. Relying on your friends instead of shouldering every burden by yourself. Doing things the hard way instead of the cheap way. Being honest with the people you trust. Valuing connections and memories. And finding purpose even when surrounded by the veil of fraud. While not new to the series, the concatenation of these ideas is depicted humbly and beautifully here through the adaptation's unparalleled expressiveness. They might not grab you as forcefully as a huge action setpiece, but the body language and face work poured into each character are tremendous feats of animation. It's art of the highest caliber. I could feel myself get choked up by the cumulative sense of nostalgia and ephemerality—that is, until the aliens descended.

I still haven't read the manga, so nothing could have prepared me for the truth about extraterrestrial life: that they're all bald anime girls. What a treat it is to see those big sparkly shoujo eyes in the context of Mob's simplistic character designs. What a dumb and delightful twist. The joke, naturally, is that despite Tome's complaints about the Telepathy Club lazing around instead of searching for aliens, the aliens themselves do nothing but hang out and eat snacks. Even this irony, however, gets lost in how unapologetically weird and nice this small bit of interspecies exchange is. Reigen, our lone adult representative, is blinded by the youthful exuberance that knows no language nor culture—only the simple pleasures of tasty treats and fun games. Of sharing time and memories together. There's no more precious resource in the whole universe.

Okay, maybe the scene of shirtless Reigen is more precious to a certain sect of the audience, whom I salute. May the brief visage of his stunningly pale abdomen slake your thirst.

Then, just as we're comfortable wrapping up on a wholesome note, Go pulls the rug out from under our feet and treats us to three minutes of unfettered psychedelic alien imagination. While I had already thought the episode was perfect prior to that point, the epilogue takes a dumb gag about Inukawa getting abducted and flexes with it, squeezing out as much sakuga power as possible, seemingly just for the hell of it. I love it! This unpredictability is also a component of the Mob Psycho 100 anime's strength. More to the point, I love the capability of these artists to not just run, but sprint with an idea, however strange or slight, towards such an emotionally stirring finish line. To take Inukawa's journey and infuse it with so much beauty and animated wit, stuff all that into so short a timeframe, and come out the other side with an unforgettable tangent that reinforces yet another one of the series' basic tenets about humanity. That's passion. That's why I still watch anime.

Rating:

Mob Psycho 100 III is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Steve is a regular freelance contributor to ANN and also the guy who called Arataka Reigen an internet sex symbol that one time. Feel free to roast him on Twitter about this. Otherwise, catch him chatting about trash and treasure alike on This Week in Anime.