Review of Mob Psycho 100 II
Like you, I was waiting for the unknown entity seen in the "????!!!%" state in Season 1 to somehow be expatiated upon and it wasn't. This season was incredibly unsatisfying and lost it's reputation of breaking tropes and instead made the decision to follow every single Shounen trope. No ground breaking themes or events in this season, sadly. Every single villain in Mob Psycho's universe starts out with certain convictions and beliefs. Maybe this is a disadvantage the Shounen format has, but I feel the writers really took the worst of the format's issues and exacerbated it beyond belief. Every time a villain shows up, youknow for a fact that they are going to end up having a change of heart, or start having immense respect for Mob, specially when Mod reks them. Somehow losing makes the villain realize that he had been wrong about every single thing, and a little schoolboy (whose struggles are incredibly generic with loneliness and social awkwardness being the main themes) knows what the real way is to live in this world and enjoy it. The writers fail to understand that everything that bad happens in the world, isn't always going to be related to psychic powers. And not all issues can be explained away by saying, "You don't have the right attitude". Mob is never faced with an opponent that cannot be defeated with powers, or faces issues that actually make him rethink this beliefs or question them.
This anime's basic statement is beat your enemies to a pulp and suddenly their ideologies and convictions will be forgotten, and they will follow your beliefs and respect you. For a show that focuses so much on inner strength and moral platitudes, the moral of the story is always that if you defeat your enemy, they will yield to you. It's like a guy pestering a girl at a party, begging her to sleep with him. Following this anime, I bet if I use physical strength against the girl I'd be able to conquer her in mind, body and spirit. Because being beaten up made her realize that I was very empathetic or had a similar life or something. It is incredibly creepy how Mob treats his villain, instantly realizing their hopes dreams and ambitions and continuing to ignore the villain's convictions in favor of his own path, which requires that he controls his emotions in order to be a better person. The world somehow tends to literally revolve around Mob and what his most recent emotion is. Situations manifest that only serve as a teaching moment for Mob and to realize that great truth about life that you can find on a fortune cookie.
The villains have zero backbone. Even the horrible show that is My Hero Academia has respectable villains that actually touch upon the nature of evil. And how mere defeat and lectures from a school boy aren't enough to sway anyone's heart.
I swear to God if these people talked about their feelings anymore I'd feel I was watching a chick flick. Being a nice person does not have anything to do with how Mob behaves. He sets a very bad example to follow. Even though he is OP, he is hardly ever able to nip any problem in the bud. There are zero consequences to anything that happens in the story and everything works out perfectly in the end. Having empathy is a necessary part of living a full life, but not to the extent that Mob says it does. Sometimes things need to be resolved with extreme prejudice, not because we hate the sinner, but because we want to protect someone or something.
My interest in the second season was piqued by the inner "thing" that resided in Mob. The entity that was from another world. That moment was hair-raising and was amazing. I believe the most viewed videos on youtube have to do with that part of the 1st season. I was really looking forward to that this season and it is basically forgotten. I don't understand why there is a huge disconnect between the studio and the people.
I would understand if the second season was more slice of life and didn't focus too much on fights, but that isn't the case at all. There are dragonballz type fights and action galore but none of them scratch your itch. For once we had an anime that broke the tropes and showed people who were so certain and full of themselves being brought down into the ground by an awkward school kid. There was something very cathartic about that, but that never happens in this season. They literally have to remove Mob from the scene in the beginning of the final arc so that the plot can progress, therefore Mob only ever has to deal with the biggest of the villains, who is also dealt with in a very anti-climactic way.
Addition of so many espers to the show has also dampened the world-building. With every single esper that is added, the world of Mob-Pyscho becomes more removed from the fantasy we live in, therefore we end up caring a little less about the world and the consequences of living in a world with psychic powers.
People are sick and tired of anime MC's getting the ever-loving crap beaten out of them for 15 minutes out of 26 minutes and then having the fight resolved in a couple minutes with everything working out. Just how many times do we have to see Mob getting pummeled into the ground? It's sort of sadistic in the sense, it made me feel that the creators of the show hated Mob in some weird way.
I'm just very disappointed and I am happy that this season is over and I wouldn't have to see this again in my life.