just another head in the crowds

this scene took me by surprise because it’s not in the manga. reigen never receives a second email from his mom. this is all bones, shedding a little more light on reigen’s upbringing and his relationship with his parents, and i can’t get over how needed this was for reigen’s character.

from what we know of reigen’s mom, she seems kind of overbearing and her concerns center mainly around reigen’s career choices and his future. that’s not to say she’s uncaring about reigen’s emotions or his wellbeing, but from the 2 times we’ve heard from her, she comes off a bit…cold. the overly-polite way she phrases things is very detached, as if she’s talking to an acquaintance, a coworker, a client. not her own son.

and from that one little glimmer of insight she gave us about reigen’s father, it can be assumed that he was never very open with reigen. cared about him, of course, but wasn’t one to outwardly express it. 

overall, my theory is that reigen’s family was the type to never say “i love you” out loud, never allow themselves to show genuine emotions, never cry in front of others. i firmly believe this is why reigen himself bottles up his emotions, why putting on a facade comes so naturally to him. sure, working at a call center certainly helped shape his public persona into the loud, eccentric caricature it is, but i think his home life was the main contributor.

his reaction to this formal, criticizing email from his mother is one of resignation. this behavior from his parents is nothing new. always criticizing, always so concerned. they want him to settle down. they want him to get a reputable job, a “real” job. they want to hold a family meeting, something reigen has probably been through many times before. he’s not doing anything right. he’s disappointing his parents, as usual. 

and when he was following his parents’ will? when he was a young salaryman doing everything he was supposed to? he was miserable. he was depressed. he had a meltdown in the form of abruptly quitting his stable job and renting out an office without even having a plan.

it’s all of this context that makes this scene all the more powerful:

look at his fucking face. how long has he been waiting to hear this? not from a client, not from his bar “friends”, not from somebody insincere, someone trying to get something out of him. but from someone who genuinely cares about him, someone he admires and looks up to? this arc isn’t just about how reigen became lonely, depressed, and borderline self-loathing since mob ditched him, it’s something he’s been feeling for long, long time. 

It’s a bit redundant, but I wanted to write it down because I appreciate it. 

Reigen could say anything at this moment. Dozens of cameras are pointed his way. Thousands of people watching him. 59k tweets, right? Everyone’s talking about him. He has an audience. His business is on the precipice of collapsing. Everyone knows. Or at least they think they know. Reigen needs to say something to keep his business afloat.

He’s losing the audience. Or he already lost them before he started the press conference. We know Reigen, we expect–want–him to use his 100 speech level wily ways to slither out of his miserable situation. Hell, even Ritsu and Teru were like, “Oooh, what does he have planned??? This mastermind??? This genius??”

And he’s got nothing. His mind is totally blank, he can’t think, and at this point, he’s just fed up. So instead of dedicating his press conference to his business, to his reputation, he dedicates it to the only person he cares about hurting in this scenario.

To Mob. Because he messed up. And this might be the last time he gets the chance to say something to him. Because maybe Mob knows. And once Mob knows, he’ll never talk to Reigen again. They haven’t spoken. Maybe Mob hates him. Maybe Mob is really angry at him. But after this? After all of his lies? Once Mob realizes how much Reigen used him, it’s over. There is no possibility for their relationship to ever be repaired.

So he tries, one last time, to convey to Mob that he gets it. Maybe he doesn’t get Mob anymore–he’s an esper, has struggles outside Reigen’s range; remember the end of the manga?–but he gets it. “You’ve grown so much” is such a weighted statement. It has more than one meaning. It means that Mob has matured. And because Mob has grown up, Reigen has no right to tell him what friends he should have. He has no right to keep Mob in a box. Mob knows how to deal with people more. He’s more head-strong, more experienced than he once was 3 years ago. Maybe Reigen kept viewing Mob as this 10 year old kid, the same kid who relied on him so desperately 3 years ago. And maybe this is Reigen finally understanding that he’s no longer the skittish little esper child, and instead realizes that he’s the boy who clawed his way out of Mogami’s clutches and had the strength to learn from it rather than buckle.

“Back then, I couldn’t help but admire this kid that walked into my life. I wanted to grasp something for myself, too. I wanted to become someone special.”

Reigen and smol Mob ~