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Review: モブサイコ100 1

モブサイコ100 1 モブサイコ100 1 by ONE
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Series Review
What a legendary series. I’m so happy with this. This is the manga of The Best Anime Ever Created and I’m happy to say it lives up to the hype. It’s maybe not quite as enjoyable as the anime--since it’s lacking the beautiful animation and colours, and some of the gags are funnier in the anime with the incorporation of movement, angles, and better comedic timing--but it’s still definitely up there.

Mob Psycho 100 is about a middle school aged deadpan psychic named Shigeo (aka Mob) and his self-proclaimed psychic mentor Reigen Arataka (who is actually a con artist). With this setup and the author ONE’s amazing storytelling skills, a lot of hijinks ensue and it’s an absolutely marvelous ride that only gets more wild, entertaining, complex, hilarious, and moving as it goes on. ONE is fantastic at unobtrusively subverting tropes and reader expectations, resulting in an experience unmatched by any other series out there today.

After reading the first volume of ONE’s other manga One Punch Man and leaving bitterly disappointed, I was quite apprehensive heading into Mob Psycho 100. Now I’m wondering if all of the problems I had with that manga were due to the adaptor/artist Yusuke Murata and not ONE, because I had none of those same problems here. I also couldn’t find out through online sleuthing which of those series he wrote first to see if that reveals anything, because this manga was an absolute treat.

Warning: The art looks pretty shitty, and you should know this so that you don't get surprised by that when reading this. I personally appreciate the shitty-ness because to me it adds to the humor and underground authenticity of the manga. It reminds me how ONE was a man with a dream and great ideas who didn't let his lack of art skill hold him back from telling the stories he wanted to tell, and who instead went forward and practiced his skills and gained great success while doing so. Nothing short of absolutely inspirational.


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Click to read my other Mob Psycho 100 Reviews:
Volumes: 1*, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

*Current review


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