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Comment by ergot_vacation | Hacker News Reader

Never trust a "journalist," or anyone who uses the phrase "very online" to review anime in a meaningful way. I stayed away from Mob Psycho for ages because of nutty articles like this reading meaning and intention into it to a degree that would have made Freud blush. It's all just projection. To some people, everything has to be about preaching ideology, spreading their collection of neat, tidy just-so stories about how the world works. They can't just let the work speak for itself.

Glad to see this though, because it reminds me I should get around to finally trying Lain. Oh, and I highly recommend Mob Psycho as well.

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You stayed away from Mob Psycho because “journalists” liked it and drew meaning from it? What a sad life that must be.

What I find interesting about anime reviews, as opposed to video game ones IMO, is more often than not the review is about what the writer got out of it as opposed to trying to set expectations for the audience on what they will get out of it. I guess in a lot of ways that’s because anime reviews often happen after the fact or are spurred on by genuine excitement. It seems very rare that someone publishing the review is doing so because the media was dropped in their lap and they were told to review the first three episodes for the release.

I like that, and it works pretty well for video essays.

Mob Psycho was, IMO, pretty blatant in its moral lesson. Are you saying it didn't have one, or the reviewers blazed their own trails in defiance of the show's message?

Are we talking about the anime or the manga? It's been a long while but I don't remember the anime being preachy or blatant, what was the lesson?

I've only seen the anime, but the lesson I got from it was: "Society requires many people who are good at different things to work together, and your value should come from how much you improve the world."

The villains decided fighting with psychic power was the best thing, therefore they were the best humans. Mob thought helping people and living your life was best, so he idolized his master and the bodybuilding club.

Well, literally portrayed a villain as a baby when he was on his speech about how normal people should bow to the talented ones.

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