@sabret00the:
Such a bad chapter despite being an epic chapter. So Reigen says to run away and yet stays to fight. How incredibly obnoxious. I dislike him almost as much as I dislike Thierry Henry.
Well
a) He didn't feel that Mob should be fighting, since he's just a kid, and it's a little too emotionally intense for him.
b) He never actually intended to fight anyway. The drop kick was just to immediately defend mob, and the punch was just supposed to be something impressive to grab their attention. Everything after that was basically brushing stuff away.
β- Update From New Post Merge ---
How can you possibly get things this ass-backwards.
"1/ Only people with the education and strength to stand by their convictions matter. Reigen is like a devout Muslim coming to England and declaring that everyone should adhere to the customs and traditions of his religion. It's fair to have your own, it's not right to try and force others to live your life."
In this analogy Reigen is the instigator, which he absolutely is not. Claw is trying to force their values on him and everyone else, and are attacking him. He's FUCKING DEFENDING HIMSELF. In both the physical and the verbal sense. He's not beating Claw down and making them believe him. They attack him, he stops them, and then he tells them why he won't conform to their beliefs, and why the rest of the world won't either.
And note, he didn't start preaching to them when they were throwing psychic powers and claw ideology around- which is when he believed they were entirely unapproachable from a realistic, logical, or persuasive approach. At that point he only wanted to run. Only when he started to realize that:
a) They weren't a threat to him (at first because he thought they were frauds, then because he discovered he had Mob's power);
b) He had the one thing they would listen to, which is power;
β¦did he start having a discussion with him. And again, this is as an alternative to what Mob would have done, which is violently annihilate them all. Reigen instead demonstrated how they couldn't use violence on him and then talked them down. The latter is actually a much more mature way of handling the situation.
"His plan was to run, instead he decided he was going to stick around and get preachy, if not for the fact that by the power of DEX (because suddenly you can give people your powers to wear like a hat in the rain),
You see, wrong order. His plan was to preach try to defuse the situation while Mob ran, then he saw it was pointless and they both tried to run, THEN he got DEX, and then he started TO GET PREACHED TO by a bunch of supposed psychics while they attacked him. He, while observably being in zero danger, was free to respond logically.
Btw- Dimple has been shown to give powers to his original host and direct power through Ritsu, and Mob's powers have been shown to change in nature according to his emotions: anger=violence, regret=undoing actions, so it's entirely possible that Mob could do something similar under the right emotional circumstances (gratitude=sharing power). I wouldn't call it Deus Ex Machina, which I assume DEX means.
"he would've gotten everyone there killed. He's accidentally holding his own to make a point because his head is too far up his own arse."
Actually he read the situation. He got in there with his usual skills, persuasion. He attempted to grab their attention and persuade them, it didn't work, so he focused entirely on running. Then he realized they weren't a threat, and chose to use this in combination with his speech to resolve the situation responsibly.
It IS bullshitting, but that doesn't mean he's being stupid about it. So I would argue the opposite: unlike everyone else, he isn't focused on how much power he SHOULD have and what Claw SHOULD be able to do, he sees the reality of a given moment and acts appropriately. He's arguably the only one who isn't stuck up his own ass, when we're coming at this from a sense of what actually needs to be done. Which is obviously ironic, because in the sense of simply knowing what's going on, he is stuck up his own ass. That's the joke. Because he doesn't know exactly what's going on, and he only cares about results, he actually has the perspective to say some of the simpler truths.
I don't know how he's "presiding over something he knows nothing about". He should be more qualified to discuss whether society needs psychic overlords since he's actually a (relatively) functioning member of it, as opposed to some terrorists with superpowers dressing up, hiding in a secret base, and having shonen battles.
You think Reigen is a bad guy, which I assume is how you could interpret so many events in this way. Some other people may think Reigen is a good guy. Both are drastic over simplifications.
He is exploiting a kid, and using his powers while paying him below minimum wage. But he also is guiding him along the right path, even if that happens to be largely to Reigen's own benefit. He lies to his customers and tells them he has mystical powers, but he tends to actually end up getting them what they need realistically anyway. He knows that a middle schooler shouldn't have to fight a criminal organization by himself, or have to decide who lives and who dies, because that's emotionally scarring. Whether he does that out of consideration for Mob or for fear of the explosion that he might get caught up in if Mob is stressed, he still did the right thing- and it also happens to be the reason they came out on top- by tapping into Mob's potential vicariously.
He only preaches when he thinks it's convenient for him (i.e. when he knows he won't get killed) and wants to save his own hide or that of others. You can't really say for sure that he has strong moral fiber, or the real strength to back it up, he's primarily just being manipulative. But he's not being stupid, despite being unaware. And he also is right.
Those people aren't going to get what they want through brute force, first and foremost. They're the villains, it's pretty damn obvious you shouldn't agree with them.
Mob should also let adults handle situations like this. Frankly, in a functioning society middle schoolers probably shouldn't have to wield the sort of power and responsibility where they might have to decide to kill people. So Reigen handles it for him. From Reigen's perspective, the "power and responsibility" he takes would simply mean him taking control of the situation in Mob's stead, but since Mobs emotional stress and his powers are connected- ceding responsibility, stress, and emotional burdens to Reigen correlates to ceding his powers to him as well. Reigen can handle stress and responsibility that came with the situation he put himself in- he's an adult. And so, using the same power Mob has without having to emotionally explode, Reigen handled it ideally. He was being realistic, and it worked.
It's also kind of funny. He uses the power he has, effectively, and can handle extremely stressful situations, which seem to generate psychic power, with composure. Theoretically he would be an extremely skilled psychic, even though he's actually a fraud. It's another cool irony to his character.
Does Reigen actually care about Mob? Well "realistic" is essentially the word I keep associating with him, but he's also essentially an avatar of how ONE wants to portray a realistic "functioning society". Sometimes it's skeevy and selfish, but it's also in society's best interest to look out for and foster the healthy mental growth of individuals. Mob is most useful to Reigen when he isn't stressed, when he's considerate and cooperative and doesn't have a huge ego, and that also is how Mob can best become a functioning human being. You can sort of understand why people like Claw would hate society, and therefore why they would specifically hate people like Reigen, which I think was the point of their interactions. But you can also see how there is good in Reigen and what he stands for, even if we can' quite work out whether his intentions are always good.
In short- a lot of what I'm writing is Reigen meta, which I enjoy writing and I appreciate you inspiring me to do so. But some of this shit is also just obvious if you read. How the fuck is Reigen pushing his ideals on people when he's defending himself and they're preaching at him? How the fuck is him specifically saying "this is a situation adults should handle" and telling Mob to run hypocritical? And then you accuse him of being oblivious, which is true in some senses, (even if you're completely missing the point) but also deliciously ironic.
And "you need strength to back up your words" which- I don't even fucking know dude. You realize that in this very manga, Reigen equates that mindset with that of a manga villain which he equates with that of CHILDREN? WORDS MEAN WHAT WORDS MEAN. IF YOU NEED SOMETHING CONCRETE TO BACK THEM UP CONSTANTLY INSTEAD OF USING YOUR OWN LOGIC THEN I WEEP FOR YOUR MENTAL CAPACITY.
Finally, I essentially already covered this- but this quote is a lot more succinct and it makes me laugh.
"that could maybe make sense if you switched Reigen with Claw. Reigen is the establishment, or "England" in that metaphor and the Claw are the "Muslims coming over expecting people to change". How could he reach that conclusion? Reigen is saying the exact opposite of what that idiot is saying. Why even bring up the Muslims? Does he think relating to current events makes him look intellectual? I am just flabbergasted as well as a little sickened"