Summary
Mob is a young boy with unfathomable psychic abilities that allow him to bend space and time at his will. Despite this, he only uses it when necessary and mostly lives an average high school life.Mob Psychocenters around Mob, also known as Higeo Kageyama, who navigates his adolescencewhile balancing his complex emotions and psychic abilities. Mob usually has an unexpressive demeanor, has issues understanding some social situations, and comes off as aloof or spaced out. But as he experiences different emotions across situations, his meter rises, and his emotional state intensifies. Mob’s meter is over 100, which signifies his ability to withstand emotional stressors. After getting to 100 percent, he reaches his limit and overflows with psychic energy that reflects his emotional state.
Different emotions make Mob react in several ways, and intense negative emotions like sadness, anger, and frustration are much more difficult to control the higher his meter is. The buildup of Mob’s emotions directly affects his powers and manifests outbursts depending on the type of problems he faces. Mob’s emotions represent adolescents' complex, dynamic, and eventful lives and how an unseemingly emotional young man tackles the battles of a tender age.Mob Psychobalances stunning visuals with engaging and relatable themes of self-discovery, acceptance, and growth as Mob navigates the everyday troubles of teens.
What does Mob’s 100% Represent?
Mob And His Repressed Emotions
Shigeyo Kageyama is a high school boy who is anything but ordinary. His demeanor and general design directly contrast his unnatural and unrivaled psychic abilities. Underneath his ordinary appearance and predominantly unemotional face,Mob is a kind, hard-working, and especially regular boywho feels emotions like everyone else his age. Mob learned at a young age that his emotional states are tied to his abilities. When left unchecked, he reaches higher intensities of his emotional states and gains additional powers. When Mob gets past his limit of 100%, he reaches his ??? state, where he lacks control of his powers and acts without control and concern for others, depending on his mental state.
Mob’s constant need to suppress his emotional states often backfires, eventually leading to outbursts of the emotions he tries to keep in check. The story relates heavily to actual human psychology, where avoiding and bottling up emotions, no matter how intense, often ends badly. The story illustrates the complexity of repressed emotions by making Mob look generally unemotional, but his emotional meter increases as he interacts with the world around him.This approach to storytelling thatMob Psychotakesgives insight into how humans don’t necessarily manifest emotions similarly and that there is more than meets the eye with people.
100% Sadness
Mob’s Great Sadness
Mob’s 100% sadness state signifies his immense sadness or regret and is often triggered when someone he cares about is hurt. The first instance seen of this state is Season One, Episode 5,Ochimusha ~Psychic Powers and Me~. During this episode, a psychic named Teruki forcefully engages in combat with Mob against his wishes. Teruki eventually gets Mob into his ??% state and causes Mob to fight with him, but Mob easily defeats him. Mob reached his 100% Sadness state upon realizing he had lost control again, just like in the past.
During this state, Mob seemingly repairs the damage to his school from his fight with Teruki effortlessly, further exhibiting the difference in power between the two. This episode shows Mob’s kindness and his unwillingness to fight fire with fire as Teruki ignored his wish to stop a senseless battle that caused meaningless damage to his school’s property. Mob’s personality makes him see the best in others and accept the good with the bad, and his sadness during this episode is from his failure to stick to his pacifist ideals and lose control, even for a little bit. This episodesignifies just how critical Mob is of his behavior, his patience for others who wrong him, and how sadness is an important catalyst for Mob’s emotional development.
100% Rage
Mob’s Raw, Unbridled Rage
Mob’s 100% Rage state signifies his anger and rage and can be triggered by disrespect to him and by threatening or hurting people he cares for or even innocent people. This state is also considered one of his strongest due to the limitless destructive power he possesses during this state. During the LoL cult arc, Mob finally reaches this state when he encounters the psychic Dimples, who taunt him and force him to laugh against his will. The constant attempt to breach Shigeo’s autonomy caused him to rise in anger and irritation until he reached the 100% Anger stateand seamlessly beat Dimples into submission.
This state shows Mob’s emotional capacity for anger as he often appears unfazed by most occurrences. Because of Mob’s constant indifferent demeanor, he often seems to lack emotion and attracts people who wish to cause him harm. This 100% rage state differs from the??? Stage as it signifies genuine anger and not a lack of control. It is a critical stage for him because it signifies that someone calm and slow to anger still has a limit to their patience. The 100% anger state portrays themes of the limit to patience and signifies that Mob has things that he cannot even stand for.
100% Courage
Mob’s Capacity For Control
Mob reaches this state when he pushes past his fears and has to step up and protect others from harm. This state is first seen in the Keiji Mogami arc, where Mob attempts to remove the spirit of a powerful Esper Keichi Mogami from a young girl he possessed. During this arc, Keichi traps Mob inside a mindscape for six months without his powers to change his worldview. After some assistance from Dimples, Shigeo reaches his 100% Courage state and breaks out of the mindscape.
This state is arguably his strongest state, as he has complete control over his psychic output at a very high intensity. The extent of this power is showcased in the World Domination arc, where Mob fights Toichiro Sukuzi, the leader of Claw and one of the strongest Espers inMob Psycho. The 100% Courage state signifies greater control and a balance of emotions, as Mob reaches this state when defending his ideals or facing the strongest beings he has ever met.
Above The 100% Emotional Limit
The ??? State
The constant occurrence inMob Psycho’s seasons during its anime run is the idea that Mob’s psyche was like a ticking bomb. Constant stressors in his daily life cause him to build up emotions that dramatically increase a meter with a definite limit of 100%. Upon reaching this state, Mob transforms into a caricature of himself, with white or red eyes and a strangely morphed body. During the episode Ochimusha ~Psychic Powers and Me~, Mob recalls a traumatic event where he lost control of his abilities and went on a rampage upon reaching his ???%, hurting some bullies and,according to his perception, his younger brother Ritsu. This event was important because it gave insight into why Mob takes a peaceful and pacifist approach to his life.
The ???% state represents a state beyond consciousness and symbolizes the primal and unbridled emotions that Mob constantly represses. Humans have a limit to the stress they can take before they lose control, and the ???% state represents what happens when they go beyond what they can handle. Outside of the psychological implications of this state, Mob reaches a state with much greater capabilities than his already powerful base form, indiscriminatelycausing damage all around him and granting him greater psychic output.
The Balance Between Suppression And Control
The Constant Tension In Mob’s Psyche
Mob Psychoexcellently depicts a constant battle of Mob’s psyche as he attempts to balance his need to express himself with a need to keep his emotions in check because of his power. As Mob journeys through the turbulent stage of adolescence, he faces issues with love, confidence, acceptance, and control, with an even greater responsibility for emotional management. Mob’s kindness and emotional maturity come inherently and from a fear of his abilities hurting others. His kindness and self-control often make him an easy target for those who want to hurt him due to his unassuming nature.
Mob Psychoshows that Mob is not a pushover and has genuine feelings like everyone else but processes things differently due to his personality, self-image, and immense power he must keep in check. Although he is arguably the most powerful Esper in the world, he accepts that there are more important areas in life besides that.
