Mob Psycho Season 2 - A Worthy Follow Up to the First Season

It will be hard to avoid spoiling too much of season one of Mob Psycho if you haven't watched that yet, but for purposes of this review I will be doing my best to say as little as I can about events of season one for anyone checking out this review just to see if it's a show worth getting into. Some things will be spoiled, but I will keep it to a minimum.

Mob Psycho follows the story of a young boy with incredible psychic powers, powers far beyond what even other psychics possess. It's a power ruled by emotions, so he has spent much of his life keeping those emotions muted so his powers don't go out of control. A big thing that made season one so interesting is seeing what happens when Mob would explode. Whenever his emotions hit their breaking point, as noted by the occasional indicator on screen marking the % he was at, whenever he crossed that 100% mark his reaction would vary based on what emotions were weighing down on him at the time. The best one being the finale where he is overwhelmed by an entirely new emotion, which I won't spoil here.

Season two continues this trend as we see even more of Mobs emotions begin to break through. The more that happens, the more personality you start to see from Mob in his daily life as well. These explosions don't just impact the fights but seem to carry over into Mob as a character. While he's the same person he always was, there is a distinct and natural growth to the character. You see a lot of what it means to Mob to have these incredible powers, the importance of the relationships he builds around him, and as time goes on you see him start to come to terms with the powers he was given. The core of Mob's story was always the fear of his powers, and this season really moves that forward as he's finally forced to have to accept the responsibility that comes with what he is capable of. It's a really fascinating story arc behind him.

The fights look even better in season two as well, at least overall. The finale of the first season may still be my favorite fight, but honestly, that's more for the circumstances behind the fight rather than the fight itself. The overall quality has jumped up this season, and there are a lot of great fights to witness. And not just the visuals, every fight that Mob gets into serves to move him forward as a character, which is great for reasons I'll get into in a moment.

I do want to talk about one of the shows weaker points first, and that is a chunk of the side cast. There are a good number of great characters here such as Mobs Brother, his master, Dimple, the main antagonist of the season, and a few others. But there are a lot of rather lackluster characters that really should have more development by this point. You have the Telepathy Club, who have been around since the beginning of the show and do take up a fair bit of screen time, barely have any actual character. The majority of the shows villains are also rather boring and lack luster on their own. You have Mob's childhood crush Takane, who works as a motivating factor for why Mob does a lot of what he does, but she has barely any presence at all anywhere in the show.

While the show does a fantastic job utilizing many of its characters in a way to push Mob along, there are times they start to feel a bit hollow and forced when they don't really have all that much character of their own. It's definitely a situation in which the good outweighs the bad, especially with so many characters that do feel like they were given a good amount of details to make them feel more realistic, specifically the seasons' villain and his master Reigen managing to both moves along Mobs character and be great characters on their own.

I don't know how common of a view this is, but I do feel the need to step up to Mob Psychos defense here, but there are people that seem to look to Mob the same way as they did Saitama from One Punch Man, a hero with a power that far eclipses everything around him. While there are similarities, they are missing out on a couple of key components I feel that make the characters almost nothing alike. The first being Saitama was, in part, a joke. While I won't limit the appeal of One Punch Man to that, there is certainly a lot to love about the story and characters, there is no denying he is in part a parody of the genre.

And while he is powerful compared to the rest of the world, the core of Mobs Character is coming to terms with who he is, understanding his powers and responsibilities, and coming to terms with all the emotions he feels. It works very well as a coming of age story of sorts, as well as a conflict of his own ideals clashing with the reality that surrounds him. No matter the situation, Mob doesn't want anyone to get hurt by his abilities. Saitama is essentially a god among men who has to cope with the boredom of having nothing to look forward too anymore. The stories and characters aren't really that similar.

Also, while there isn't often stakes in the fights Mob is involved with in terms of deciding whether or not Mob is actually strong enough to win, he is, I don't think looking at the conflicts as Mob versus the enemy is really the way to view this show. It's always Mob fighting with himself and his own feelings and ideals. While I don't like how boring most of the villains of the show end up being, it does kind of help that they don't matter too much. So long as you have a reasonable showcase of what Mob is going through with the villain, you have a fight you care about regardless of if the outcome is already clear.

That out of the way, there continues a bit of an issue with the show that carried over from the first season, and that is outside of the battles the animation feels a bit stale. It does seem to flow a bit nicer, but the effort was clearly put into the action scenes, enough so that I find it hard to get invested in the visuals when there isn't action going on.

Mob Psycho Season Two and the series as a whole is absolutely fantastic. It has its problems here and there, but the positives more than makeup for it. What's great about all of this is while there is more to the story in the Manga, and I can see the story could be continued, the season really did feel like it could end here and still be satisfying. Mob has had his great personal conflict that was the culmination of what we have seen happen over these two seasons, and it even managed to have a seriously epic final fight. There would be a couple of minor plot threads left unfulfilled, but it's honestly nothing it's invested any real time in so far, so you won't be left with any big hangups at the end of it. Give the show a watch, and I don't think you'll walk away from this disappointed.