Not 100% On This One

 

 

Sigh...The quarantine continues to roll on, affecting every facet of our lives.  Not the least of which is my manga blog.

 

I'll admit: I did pick up this manga once before, but put it down after two or three pages because of how dumb some of the humor was and how absolutely horrific the art was.

 

I'm talking about Mob Psycho 100.

 

Now, the story itself is more or less okay: Shigeo "Mob" Kageyama is a rather unremarkable man.  He has little facial expression or personality and is the kind of person who just blends into the crowd, hence the nickname.

 

He is also a super-powerful psychic, something that fraudulent "psychic" Reigen Arataka is not, which is why the latter must employ the former to do all the actual work for him while he works on the flim-flamming and credit-taking side of things.

 

That right there was one of the big reasons why I put it down back when I first discovered it in the bookstores possibly over a year ago.  Hearing Reigen's unfunny, slapdash explanations for why he always gets his predictions wrong and how he can still be of "help" came off as more annoying than anything, like a lying child trying to make up a story on the fly as to who "really" broke the vase.

I didn't really find any of the humor in Mob Psycho 100 funny, per se, and none of the characters felt relatable or like anyone I should sympathize with.  I mean, sure: I am a compulsive liar with a flat and unexpressive face, but that doesn't mean I see any of myself in Reigen or in Mob.

 

No serious threats are established in Volume One, but, from what I've read online, it seems to be shaping up into an action-comedy manga, likely with more focus put on the comedy than the action.

 

And the art looks like it could have been drawn in crayon.

 

Mob winds up defeating an ugly mind-controlling ghost with visions of godhood in this one (one of whose followers you can see with Mob in the above screenshot), and it looks like "Lord Dimple" will be sticking around for a while as the series' ugly-cute mascot.

 

Needless to say, the story is intriguing enough at this point to be the sole reason to continue, casually glossing over the unfunny humor and bad art.

 

But I will still continue with reading this manga if I can, whenever the bookstores open back up, if only to see where it's going and whether or not it's worth sticking with.