Netflix and TV TOKYO’s live-action adaptation
of Mob Psycho 100 is unwatchable garbage. Literally unwatchable. Like, you actually could not pay me enough
money to sit through the whole series and give it a thorough review. I mean, OBVIOUSLY it was going to be a train
wreck from the second they announced it – live action adaptations ALWAYS suck, and this is
a story so abstract and surreal that it just doesn’t make sense in live action – but
I wasn’t expecting it to be THIS awful. I haven’t seen special effects this bad,
editing this terrible, or facial expressions this forced and over the top since back when
Jim Carrey had a career. You know, before he shifted gears to convincing
parents to let their kids die from preventable diseases. What an asshole. Sorry, where was I? Right. Mob Psycho 100 is a manga from One, the creator
of One Punch Man, that explores the life of Mob, a socially awkward middle schooler with
incredible psychic powers… who really wishes that he could just be normal and popular. Between his part time job as an exorcist and
the actions of some shady evil organizations, he does get into some psychic brawls, but
his ultimate goal is to just grow as a person and get on with his everyday life. It’s a refreshingly original premise. It also happens to be one of my favourite
anime and favourite manga of all time. One’s writing for the series is nothing
short of transcendent, and his art is… charming, if nothing else. And Bones’ adaptation is an innovative,
phenomenally directed work of mixed media magic. So I thought I’d have a lot to say about
netflix’s take on the series regardless of its quality… but I just can’t do it. It’s so incompetently made on every level,
and there are so many better things I could be doing with my time right now. Like refreshing myself on steins;gate so I
can properly enjoy and talk about zero, or watching the old galactic heroes ova, or slamming
my head against a wall repeatedly and praying for death! But I did force myself to sit through one
episode of the series, and even that was enough to give me something substantial to rip into. Because Netflix took one of the best jokes
in any anime or manga ever… and took a big, steaming shit all over it. So what’s the joke? In episode 2 of the anime – chapters three
and four of the manga – we and mob are introduced to the “Telepathy Research Club.” A group of slackers who hang out in a club
room after school eating snacks and… well, that’s about it. One of their members quits because he’s
getting weird looks about the club from classmates, and they’re left scrambling to find someone
new to join because without 5 members, the student council will force them to disband. And they have NO time to do it, because the
student council vice president shows up one femtosecond after their member quits, telling
them a new club wants their room, almost as though he’s just been waiting for an opportunity
to shut them down. Luckily for the telepathy club, Mob’s JUST
been talking about how he feels he’s not doing enough with his youth… and he’s
got psychic powers to boot. As soon as they set this up you have an idea
of how it’s going to go – the telepathy club is going to approach mob out of desperation,
and after thinking about it for a bit, he’s finally going to join at the last minute,
saving their butts. Afterward, they’ll find out about his powers,
and join him as he gets embroiled in increasingly dangerous and kooky psychic shenanigans. He’ll find a place where he belongs, and
their long-dead passion for the supernatural will be reignited. But that’s not how things go down – even
though they make you believe it will right up to the last second. After the club approaches mob, as you’d
expect, he begins considering his options and thinking about joining them. He takes a bit more time to think it over
the anime than in the manga, but at the end the day he ends up the club room, where the
telepathy club is confronted by the student council, and the intimidating tough guys of
the body improvement club that wants to take over the room. Remembering advice from his con-man mentor,
Reigen, Mob digs deep inside himself to figure out what he really wants out of life. After recalling how his psychic powers once
helped him impress his childhood crush tsubomi, and thinking about how she’s drifted away
from him, becoming more interested in the school’s athletes, he reaches a conclusion. He wants to join the club. The body improvement club. Because mob wants to impress tsubomi by getting
swole. God, I love this joke – and not just because
you’ve gotta respect any show that dedicates a whole episode to setting up a single punch
line. It really works on every level. And that’s impressive, because in order
to work, the joke both has to come as a genuine surprise to us in the audience, while still
making perfect sense based on the progression of the story and what we know about the characters. So what makes it come together? This joke is an ingenious subversion of a
bog-standard anime trope we’ve seen play out a thousand times before – the evil student
council wants to tear apart a close-knit club of friends for no other reason than the rules
demand it! Only, if you look at it objectively, there’s
a lot of good reasons the club SHOULD be disbanded. The members are really just exploiting a loophole
to take away space that other clubs could make better use of, all so that they can hang
out after school and spend their 20 dollar a month club budget on junk food. No wonder the council’s so eager to give
them the boot. They’re the VILLAINS in this story, trying
to take advantage of the school AND mob for personal gain. But we don’t see that immediately, because
we’re so familiar with this trope that we just expect them to be in the right – plus
tokugawa comes off as an asshole. We’re also introduced to them from their
perspective, and of course from that point of view they’re gonna be framed as correct. They also have juuuuust enough personality
that we can picture them as a decent supporting cast of friends for mob. Spending an entire episode – or two chapters
– focusing on this storyline makes the club seem like they have some sort of greater plot
significance, instead of just being, effectively, gag fodder. We expect this story to have big ramifications
on the plot moving forward. And it does… but only because mob signs
up with the bodybuilders, and they end up being his friends and helping him better himself
instead. Speaking of the body improvement club, they’re
explicitly framed as dangerous, intimidating thugs, surrounded by an aura of menace and
jojo villain sound effects (in the manga) from the moment they walk in the room. We also meet them pretty late in the story
– so it’s unlikely that we’ll make the connection with mob’s previously-expressed
desire to be more popular and second-guess the punchline. But when the punch line does come, all of
that information clicks in an instant, and we laugh all the harder because, yeah, it
makes PERFECT sense for Mob to join the body improvement club. He’s already got psychic powers, so why
would a telepathy research club be of any use to him? Especially one that doesn’t actually do
anything and deserves to be shut down. The only reason to have him join is, frankly,
lazy writing. This moment turns our expectations on their
head, presenting a fresh perspective on a story arc that’s been done TO DEATH, broadening
our understanding of mob as a character, and leaving us wondering where the story could
go from there. And it also makes us laugh our asses off,
which is arguably equally important. It’s a carefully-constructed bit of narrative
machinery that impresses me every time I look at it. And the Netflix drama tears out basically
every moving part that makes it function. For starters, in the drama, we only ever see
the club as a side character. Yes, character. singular. The president, Kurata Tome, is the ONLY member
of the club in this version, and we don’t even see the vice president threaten to shut
her down – that threat only comes up toward the end of the scene. As far as we know, she’s just some weirdo
who tackles mob because she’s weird. Also… this is the take you guys are gonna
use? Yeah I totally believe she’s overpowering
him. Right off the bat, we have zero context for
why it might matter that the club will be shut down. There’s no friendship to tear up– and
on top of that, no big group of supporting characters to potentially join the cast. If mob joined the club it would just be the
two of them which would be a weird dynamic. This also happens 15 minutes into the episode,
and the gag’s done a few minutes after that, meaning tome doesn’t really seem significant
the way that she does when she gets a whole episode of her own. In other words, we have zero narrative reason
to root for the telepathy club, and zero reason to believe it will be a significant part of
the plot. They haven’t even bothered to set up the
tired old trope that this joke is meant to subvert
But that’s not the only problem by a long shot! When Tome first meets Mob, she’s immediately
drawn to him, saying that he received her “psychic signals,” and when she gets him
to the club room, we see it filled with all sorts of fancy sci-fi bullshit. Like she’s… actually studying the paranormal. Which undercuts the whole point of her character
– in the manga she’s got a passing interest in the supernatural, but it’s really just
an excuse to waste time. We’re not supposed to take her seriously. We’re also supposed to be intimidated by
the body improvement club when we first meet them and… yeah, that doesn’t happen. Like, the music is heavy, and they make really
mean faces, but the camera presents them in a mostly neutral perspective – not as the
intimidating giants they are in the anime and manga – and they’re with Mob’s brother
Ritsu… for some reason… who we already know is a good guy who cares about his brother. So by association, they’re probably decent
people as well. And, oh yeah, RIGHT BEFORE the telepathy club
scene, the show introduces the body improvement club by EXPLICITLY framing them as the answer
to mob’s question of how to change himself. They’re presented with triumphant, upbeat
music that’s meant to leave mob – and us – in awe of their energy and fitness…
two minutes before we’re supposed to see them as potential villains. Yeah, that’s some grade-f Fucking AWFUL
filmmaking – and even worse joke delivery. Not only does the show’s sloppy editing
mean it takes FOREVER to go from the setup of “I’m joining the club” to the punchline
of “the body improvement club” – where the manga and anime make it quick and snappy
– THEY TELL US THE GODDAMN PUNCHLINE THREE MINUTES BEFORE IT HAPPENS. It’s kind of impressive how hard they missed
the point here. This is a degree of script-level incompetence
that we don’t often see, even in live action anime adaptations, and from everything I’ve
seen of the show… shit, from the TRAILER, it seems like just
the tip of the iceberg. In a vaccum, some of these decisions… kinda make sense. Like cutting the other club members who don’t
have an impact on the plot, and reducing the time the club’s introduction takes in order
to make the story move faster… but only if you totally ignore what mob psycho 100
is about as a whole, and what purpose these elements serve by being written the way they
are. It seems like the writers of this drama haven’t
got the faintest understanding of any of that. The whole point of the fucking story is that
psychic powers aren’t a big deal – that it’s more important to be a well-rounded
person no matter what you can do – yet from it’s goddamn opening monologue this show
is playing up espers like they’re the defining feature of its world. The most important thing in existence. It certainly seems like they couldn’t have
missed the point harder if they tried. This could very well be a worse anime adaptation
than anything else I’ve covered on this channel. But I can’t say for sure, because I’m
never, ever going to watch the rest of it. I’m never going to know how bad it gets. I just know that they butchered one of my
favourite gags ever, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s enough for me to permanently write
this one off. I’m Geoff Thew, Professional Shitbag, Signing
Out from my Mother’s Basement.
