Recap episodes have a pretty bad reputation around them. Usually, it makes sense why they do. Most studios have recap episodes to take a week break to catch back up to the animation schedule again. They use previously aired episodes, stitching together different scenes, to make some product to hold on to the viewers in any way possible.
I’m sure it’s not like the staff want to do a recap episode. In Shirobako, the director, Kinoshita, is traumatized by his previous show that had to go to recap episodes evivitably because of scheduling issues. Most shows, in fact, do not have a recap episode unless it’s a special circumstance where a continuation of a series is starting and it’s been a few years since the last season (of which still ends up being boring and reused scenes). It’s shows like Arifureta that evidently had scheduling problems that needed recap episodes 4 episodes into the show.
I’m sure most of us can agree when I say recap episodes are boring. And when we see episode OO.5 appear on the screen, we are reluctant to click on that link.
That feeling when you excitedly start a movie of your favorite show to find out it was recap is incredibly disheartening.
Mob Psycho, however, was different. It managed to create a recap episode that wasn’t just a boring, quickly stitched up, 20 minute episode. Somehow, they managed to create a recap episode that was unbelievably entertaining.
Mob Psycho’s recap episode, or Mob Psycho 100 REIGEN The Miraculous Unknown Psychic, retells all of the stories from season one of Mob Psycho. But with a twist.
Reigen “the Miraculous Unknown Psychic” is the narrator.
To be more specific, one day, Reigen sees a bestseller book on TV that made a lot of money. Being the money hungry man that he is, Reigen decides to record his adventure with Mob in his book to create his own bestseller book. With Mob as his scribe, he retells the story of Reigen the Miraculous Unknown Psychic.
As you can probably guess from this, with Reigen being the scammer that he is, fabricates all the events in season one to make himself the main character.
This leads to some hilariously comedical scenes for those who watched the first season of the show. As suddenly, moments from the show without Reigen are changed to have him appear in almost every scene either doing the action or just watching from the side.
For example, rather than Mob defeating the sprites from the early episodes, Reigen is the one who exercises them with his special move: Banishing Salt Punch.
Hilariously, rather than the normal count up to 100% from the show is changed to the counting of fabrication level.
The best parts from the episode is when these actual parts from the show showed up a little. For example, parts when Suzuki was fighting near the end of the season or the end of the episode, were replaced with Reigen. The catch here was that his clothes remained as Suzuki’s with his head being the only one replaced with a very empty expression from Reigen. Another example of this was when after Reigen finished defeating his enemies, a third arm appeared from his back, finishing off the enemies. Little things like these made the whole concept of the episode so ridiculous yet hilarious.
While a lot of the scenes are reused from season one, the staff took the effort to draw in Reigen in all of these different scenes which was pretty impressive. In fact, the show also features a lot of new animation which centers around Mob writing the book or Reigen’s stage fight poses.
This hilarious concept was only possible because of the crazy character of Reigen. But watching a show use their plot points and personalities so creativity like this was such a nice way to transition the viewers from season one to season two.
Convoluted Situation 