If I'm going to be honest, I saw this very page for Mob Psycho 100 before it aired, and while the synopsis was interesting to me I didn't much care for the animation style that the cover picture showed. Even in the first episode, I wasn't quite sure how I felt about it. As the show went on, I found that the only reason I felt this way was that the animation was "different"... and even if it would never grow on me, I have to respect it when an anime sticks truly to its own style. These days, animation quality is better than it ever has been, but styles seem to blend together in a "cookie-cutter" way that tends to make a lot of modern anime look "alike". Mob Psycho 100 does not look like anything else. Now that I've found an overly complicated way of telling you that it is "unique", I'd like to add that it DID grow on me... a lot. By the end of this season, I LOVED the animation. The intro itself is one of my all-time favorites for this reason.
And the music... Wow, when it starts to hit the fan in this series, the music gets seriously awesome. Unlike many other shows, I can specifically recall certain soundtrack pieces to mind in a very positive way. The music seriously adds a lot to this show, and this is something that is always really enjoyable to witness in a good anime. What else can I say, the music is pretty epic here.
Now, for a comedic anime, the plot is actually somewhat "serious". The majority of the humor comes from the characters rather than the situations they find themselves in. Sometimes, the situations can actually get kind of dark and serious, and this was something I found myself enjoying quite a bit. The story revolves heavily around the complex conflict within Mob, and the outside forces of the later story serve more to provoke this specific theme than anything in this first season. I will say that every element the plot brought up from the first episode to the last episode remained very interesting to me... but the real story here is the characters and their relationships. And I really loved the characters in this anime. As I said earlier, they provide most of the comedy in this show (and some of it had me seriously cracking up), but they also remain deep enough as characters that you can feel for them; you also learn to recognize each of their individual strengths and weaknesses, not in terms of power but in terms of personality, and this is something that always strongly appeals to me in watching a story in any medium.
At this point, you may notice that I haven't really said anything negative about this anime yet. There is a reason for this... I'm really hard-pressed to think of anything. When I try to critique something, I feel it is important to explain both what people may like and DISLIKE about it... but I'm actually having a hard time with doing this right now. I think the decisive factors to make someone dislike this anime would come down to something stylistic, in that the show's tone and even visual style just might not appeal to everyone. And of course, everyone is different and of course there are people out there who don't like this anime for their own personally valid reasons. This is my review though, and I guess I'm here to tell you that there isn't anything I disliked about this anime. Honestly, it came very close to being a full 10/10 for me... and I think the only thing holding it back from that is the simple fact that I'd like to see it go a bit further. Apparently there is enough material for another season, though, and if we get one and the show continues to ramp up the way it has been, it really could achieve that perfect rating from me. I really loved and enjoyed this show thoroughly, and not only would I love another season but I am seriously motivated to try out the source material.
Try this anime if you like the concept of ESP or general sci-fi/supernatural anime, and expect a funny comedy with a lot of actual emotion and serious tones to go along with it. Also a good watch for people who like characters they can get attached to... not to mention some good action with some very stylistic fights. I highly recommend this one; it's a standard 12 episode season, and it's worth your time to give it a 3 episode trial to see if you end up liking it as much as I did.
