Future
~Career Plans~
Japanese Title:
将来 〜進路希望〜
Shōrai ~Shinro Kibō~
Original Air Date:
12 October 2022
We join our hero in the Body Improvement Club room, dismayed at his inability to fill out his career plans survey. His friends—even the slackers in the Telepathy Club—all have plans for their futures, but Mob has no idea what he wants to do with his life. Reigen presumes his path is a settled one with Spirits and Such, but the teenager flatly declares otherwise. For him, this is just a part-time gig.
Serizawa, nervous, is still finding his feet as Mob's kōhai. Reigen is not doing a good job at helping him feel less awkward before their client arrives... or afterwards. This man wants an exorcism of a harmless-looking clay doll: he claims bad luck has followed him ever since he bought it. Reigen, of course, can sense nothing. As he begins offering his, um, expert opinion, Mob interrupts and urges him to stop touching it, as it's full of grudge and bad juju. They send the client out while Serizawa exorcises it.
Cut to Mob, picking at his dinner. His mother notices his lack of appetite and asks what's wrong: it's that career survey haunting him. His father reminds him of all the time he has to decide: why not just give a default answer for now? Ritsu suggests he go into something he'd already be good at... like stage magic, perhaps? Even Dimple chimes in with similar advice to his dad's, but Mob wants an honest answer for his teacher. The boy continues to ask around for ideas, but gathering more perspectives doesn't ease his lack of clarity. Mob even asks Ichi Mezato, intent still on probing him for details about the giant broccoli at the heart of Seasoning City. He'll never tell.
Reigen, Serizawa and Mob meet their next client at his home, a comforting coffin of trash-bags, stacks upon stacks of stuff, and roaches. The man says he has long been possessed by an evil spirit who has robbed him of everything good in his life; other psychics have so far been unable to help him. Looking around, it's clear that most of this man's problems are of his own making. Reigen cannot deal with the cigarette smoke, the roaches or the filth. He excuses himself as discreetly as he can, bidding the other two hear the client out until he returns.
The man drones on, his despondency generating a foul cloud around him that wafts outside, high overhead, taking on something like sentience. It swamps the minds of passersby and reduces them to grey apathy while Reigen buys cleaning supplies and roach baits in a nearby convenience store, oblivious. The phony psychic notes their collapsed bodies on the pavement, then looks up to see this cloud of literal animus darkening the sky, seeping up from the place he just left... and does the math.
What the hell were Mob and Serizawa doing not exorcising this obviously evil spirit? Mob is not sure how to identify what he's seeing. Serizawa, on the other hand, knows exactly what this is: this fellow's ill mindset taken spirit form, grown large enough to infect the minds of anyone in a several-block radius... Apparently, it yields to exorcism like any other wayward ghost? Mob and Serizawa's combined blast of psychic energy blows a hole in the roof, exorcising him and cleaning his home of squalor. Now in much higher spirits, the client gives his thanks. The new roof vent? No problem.
That last client's situation resonates a little too much with both Serizawa and young Kageyama, who eventually hands in his survey with the equivalent of 'undecided' for his chosen course of study. Mob informs his mentor that his future decidedly won't be with Spirits and Such. Though Reigen can't hide his disappointment, he reassures the teenager that he will eventually find things he wants to do... and that seeking them in work is not his only option. At hearing this, Mob—vibrating with joy and gratitude—practically leaps from his seat, thanks Reigen and takes his leave just as Serizawa approaches with tea. The boy's still on the clock...
Tropes appearing in this episode include:
- Adaptation Expansion: In the manganote , the depressed man simply shows up at Spirits and Such instead and leaves satisfied after his 'exorcism' (read: counseling session and massage). Studio Bones' adaptation fleshes out said client and presents him as a foil for Mob and Serizawa. The man's melancholy becomes a full-fledged evil spirit, and the exorcism cleans his house.
- An Aesop: Mob and Serizawa both seek to answer the question of what to do with their lives. The client who blames external causes for his pain represents one possible path forward; Reigen, who has resolved to keep looking but has found something he wants to do for now, offers another.
- Badass Normal: Reigen is actually able to resist the ikiryō
note generated by his client's depression. It drapes anyone within earshot in a sort of narcoleptic lassitude. Reigen seems more annoyed by it than anything else. - Brick Joke: In the second season, Reigen is shown to have given up smokingnote after Mob entered his life. His second client in this episode, a sad sack of a man convinced his lifelong misfortune is an evil spirit's fault, is an inveterate chainsmoker. While the cockroach-infested squalor in the client's home is already shredding Reigen's last nerves, the constant temptation of the man's cigarettes—shown by the camera lingering over used packs, collected butts in jars, and his languid drags on each cancer stick—is additional torture.
- Brutal Honesty:
- In keeping with Mob's increased comfort and openness with those around him, he's even less willing to mince words than in the previous season. The teenager not unkindly shoots down Reigen's assumption that he will continue to work at Spirits and Such. He even asks some frank questions of his mentor about his motives in starting the company. Reigen sweats a little in answering.
- Mob's apologetic but resolute words to his shishō at the end of the episode:Mob: ...But if I get too comfortable here, I think my age will be the only thing that changes. I'm sorry, Reigen-shishō, I can't promise you that I'll be working here in the future.
- Call-Back: A picture in the depressed man's home hits the floor post-exorcism in much the same way as the whiteboard in the abandoned office building from this series' very first episode.
- Emotional Powers: It's possible Spirits and Such's second client in this episode has developed psychic abilities without knowing it, as his melancholy and tendency to blame everyone else for his suffering become a real spirit capable of terrorizing hapless bystanders.
- Just Following Orders:
- Serizawa and Mob are still sitting with their client, hearing him out as directed long after the man has passed the point of coherence... and his ikiryō has begun to gather in size and menace the people outside.
- Downplayed: It's implied that neither knew quite what to do with the man's depression and resentment; it doesn't seem to register for Mob as a spirit to exorcise, and he remains unaware of its sheer size and the threat it poses until Reigen drags them outside to look at it. Serizawa seems transfixed by the sight—he knows exactly what he's seeing. After they part from the client, it seems that the two psychics' empathy rendered them unable to act.
- Serizawa reveals he saw the true nature of the first client's doll right away, but was still too uncomfortable to voice his opinions unless asked directly. He'll need some time.
- Serizawa and Mob are still sitting with their client, hearing him out as directed long after the man has passed the point of coherence... and his ikiryō has begun to gather in size and menace the people outside.
- Lemony Narrator: Reigen uses three grains of rice to glue together a client's formerly cursed doll after Serizawa exorcises it; the narrator describes this as yet another of Reigen's 'special techniques' and comments on how the cheap fix expands Serizawa's horizons.
- Meaningful Echo: During Reigen and Mob's chat over the credits sequence, Reigen comes clean with the boy about why he founded Spirits and Such. He also assures Mob that he will be able to find what he wants to do at some point. In a direct Call-Back to Reigen's advice for him as a troubled eleven-year-old (which we see mirrored on-screen) Mob trembles in joy and understanding.
- Mind Rape: The ikiryō's effect on passersby: it overrides their desires and compels them to give up on life wherever they're standing. Just like real depression...
- Mr. Fanservice: Mob's open gakuran jacket, displaying some ridiculous musculature for a fourteen-year-old, in Mezato's imagining of his fight with Suzuki.
- Running Gag: Serizawa is indeed a very powerful esper, but he can't seem to exorcise spirits without breaking things, as is evident here with one client's doll and windows in buildings near another client's residence. Though the latter may be because Mob was lending his considerable strength as well.
- Trash of the Titans: In addition to piles of trash bags everywhere, sinks overflowing with dishes and more trash... Reigen's second client has a hoarding problem. Reigen tactfully describes the hoard as a 'mountain of garbage'. He retorts that that 'mountain' is his belongings and a barrier that helps him sleep soundly.
- Visual Pun: The ikiryō itself. The depressed client's resentment and abdication of responsibility for his own problems would actually push everyone and everything good away from him in real life. He is sitting on so much of this sentiment that it becomes visible and infects the minds of random passersby...
