In case anyone wondered my opinion on AI art
Okay wait so something just struck me
Can you imagine, like in Mob Psycho 100, Reigen’s safety just becomes like. A top level priority for the government.
Like Reigen is, or is at least partially, the reason all these Uber powerful psychics are living normal ass lives. Maybe even if it’s just tangentially. Either way, Mob would absolutely lose it if Reigen got hurt. And god forbid if something worse we’re to happen to him, those responsible would have to deal with several extremely powerful extremely pissed off psychics. They might not even care about Reigen specifically. But Reigen being hurt hurts Mob. And you can’t hurt Mob. Hurting mob is a crime against humanity
So like. What if at one point Joseph From The Government just sees this guy who has Zero Percent Psychic Power and One Hundred Percent Direct Relation To Powerful Psychics just throwing his ass into danger for Something and Mob/Teruki/Serizawa/(insert other psychics because I’m forgetting people) just losing all their braincells going after him and he’s like oh my god. Someone put this man in a tucking hamster ball he cannot be allowed to be hurt for any reason ever Japan would not survive this
one thing i feel like (disappointingly) wasn't elaborated on enough in mp100 is reigen's own loneliness.
sure, we got that whole episode with the separation arc, but that never really resolves reigen's loneliness. that doesn't change the fact that even down to the end, he has only one adult friend and the rest of them are a gaggle of teenagers that like to hang out around him. and sure, that's not inherently a bad thing necessarily, it's probably the most friends he's had his entire life and that's why he cries when they get him a birthday cake.
but i feel like he's the kind of guy who does actually want adult friends to talk about adult things with. someone at the same stages of life that he's at, or even older.
reigen is so used to helping other people and giving other people advice that i feel like HE needs someone to be there for him, to give HIM advice. someone to scratch HIS back for once.
but another thing is that i feel like part of him thinks he doesn't deserve it, because of all the lying he does.
there is not a doubt in my mind that reigen has so much guilt stockpiled inside himself about all the lying, and (in my own personal headcannon) part of the reason he can so easily jump into danger at times is because he quietly hopes that maybe if he punishes himself enough with enough injury, or even with death, that'll somehow make up for it.
obviously that's not how it works, and reigen is a good person because regardless of the lying, he is still on some level helping people with their very normal problems by giving them very normal solutions, and is just attributing everything to spirits and exorcisms. not to mention everything he has done for mob (despite initially using him for his buisiness). he's a lot more of a grey person than he thinks he is.
i think he really needs some good adult friends, but he just can't really get ahold of any because deep down, as much as he gets on mob for being socially awkward, i think he's just as socially awkward, deep down.
i mean, the guy had to google how to ask someone out to help mob figure out how to talk to tsubomi. i don't think he's as great with people in a social context as he thinks he is. in a business context, sure, he knows exactly what to say because he has all the scripts and all the excuses in the world, but in a personal, social context, i think he can be quite clueless.
he doesn't really know how to talk to people or where to find friends as an adult, so his only friends are any coworkers he potentially has, and half the time he didn't even want to be friends with his coworkers (hence no mention of friends in his previous office job). it's different at spirits and such though, because he has mob, and later, serizawa.
i think for a long time, he considers mob "enough" of a friend, even though he still understands his role as the adult in the relationship and thus can't *actually* discuss adult things with him or treat him like an adult friend, as it would probably be inappropriate. he considers mob a friend even though he's more his student, because mob is one of the only people he sees on a regular basis until serizawa starts working there, and that's when things get a little different.
he realizes that he doesn't have to treat serizawa the same way that he treats mob, because serizawa is an adult, even if he's an extremely, openly awkward one who doesn't know how to socialize very well. but that's okay, because reigen can work with that, he's also very awkward deep down, even if he won't admit it. not to mention that mob, reigen's other friend, is also socially awkward, and reigen successfully navigates conversations with him all the time.
i think once reigen realizes that he doesn't have to hold back as much as he normally does around mob, he finally understands that his best friends can't all just be a million still developing teenagers who aren't on his level with life, and it gives him a kind of emotional release to finally have an adult friend.
serizawa also feels the same way, having only had exactly one friend in the past like fifteen years, and it was his previous boss, who was evil, and told him to attack and kill people. now he has a boss that is his friend, and has him helping people, and frankly i think it gives him much more peace of mind.
anyway i think they're besties.
Mob Psycho 100 is so good... I love it with my whole being. So here is a random audio that I thought was funny and fitted the characters, and then spend way too much time animating. It was fun though.
For the last time. A bear is a FAT hairy man. FAT. FAT. Say it with me because it's not a bad word. Bears are fat men. Stop showing me dehydrated and muscular hairy white men. That is not a bear. That is some generic white guy I don't want to look at. Give me real bears or give me death.
Me, an author, side eyeing my WIP: you're not going to do anything weird, are you? We've discussed this. There's a plan. We're going to stick to the plan, aren't we?
The WIP: *presents subplot, presents additional conflicts, presents character development, laughs in my fucking face*
i just KNOW reigen wasnt getting hated on on tmoblr. no. no way this man was being shat on by tumblrinas. they were calculating the circumfrence of his ass and writing RPF about him and the other psychic guy in the tv show. there was discourse over wether it was ethical to stan him and people has "reigen supporter" in their DNIs. i just know the discourse was crazy man
now that aromantic awareness week is over it’s time for aromantic unawareness week BRING OUT REIGEN ARATAKA
you’re in her DMs but she has incorporated some of my headcanons into hers and now she forgets they’re not even part of the source material. we are not the same
REAL
One of my favorite minor details about Reigen in Mob Psycho is how he always protects his head when it is about to hit something
Where did you get that reaction from you funky little man
I feel like a great example of The Duality Of Reigen is how he manages to take out an entire squad of Claw goons with charisma and Sakurai's cursed cologne, but the manga reveals that the reason he knows how the cologne works is that one day he got bored, sprayed it directly into his own face, and lost a client when they arrived for their appointment to find him passed the fuck out on the office floor.
Went to check the omake and I misremembered slightly; he didn’t spray the cursed cologne in his face just because he was bored, he did it because he wanted to use it as an air freshener.