Transmission 1
~Winter Break~
Japanese Title:
通信中１ 〜冬休み〜
Tsuushin-chuu Ichi ~Fuyu-yasumi~
Original Air Date:
16 November 2022
Tome Kurata is freaking out: graduation is right around the corner and she's running out of time. Cut to her trying desperately to convey the urgency she feels to the Telepathy Club. She and Kijibayashi are third-year students. They'll all part ways soon and have nothing tangible to show for their time together... a revelation lost on her clubmates as she gives up and leaves, bleary-eyed. Why not just dissolve the club right now?
Ritsu knocks on Mob's door. He has visitors downstairs: the remnants of the Telepathy Club, hopeful that Mob can be of service to Kurata's plan somehow. Mob reiterates that he isn't a telepath, but Ritsu knows twins who are—the Shiratori brothers. The esper boys devise a plan to scatter telepathic static over a wide radius in hopes of attracting someone else who can hear it.
It works. Takenaka (remember him?) suddenly slides open the clubroom's door, pretending to be on a break from Tennis Club practice; unable to feign normalcy any longer, he finally begs them to stop making that infernal noise. Yes, he's a freaking telepath, but this curse has only brought hell upon him and he just wants rid of it. The surly child has no interest in either potentially adding to his existing psychosocial trauma or helping the other boys out until Mob offers him some empathy, urging him to reconsider. He agrees, if only to stop them generating more of. that. SOUND.
Reigen finishes up with another satisfied customer and invites Serizawa out for drinks. The older psychic declines; he already has year's-end-party plans with night-school friends. Reigen's phone rings and drops a new plan for his New Year's Eve right into his lap: Mob and company need a responsible adult to drive them to a nearby mountain famous for UFO sightings. Of course he says yes.
Kijibayashi and the Telepathy Club slackers try once more to get Kurata to come along. There is no more 'club', and she has juku note over winter break; they'll have to go without her. After this, she leaves all their communications on 'read'.
New Year's Eve has finally arrived, and it's already off to an inauspicious start: Kurata blows off juku to show up early, and the girl is beginning to regret her decision. Where is the telepath the boys promised her? She cannot believe Takenaka, of all people, is joining them too when he shows up, breathless and very late...
Tropes appearing in this episode include:
- Art Shift: Reigen's head morphs into a representation of the chevron-shaped mark Japan places on the licenses of new drivers, signaling his lack of experience driving.
- Belated Love Epiphany: A non-romantic example. The Telepathy Club boys don't realize how much Kurata's company means to them—or how important the club's stated goal truly was to her—until she dissolves it. She then stonewalls them to focus on studying for her high school entrance exams; they refuse to give up on contacting her.
- Brick Joke: Takenaka, the student who leaves the Telepathy Club down one member too low to keep its official status in the show's first season... is a telepath. Kurata spends the entire year searching for real telepaths and never knew her club's sorely departed member was one himself.
- The Empath: Downplayed and subverted.
- Downplayed: Mob, for whom telepathy was the only power he didn't win in the Superpower Lottery, correctly intuits that Takenaka joined the Telepathy Club initially because he was looking for others like him. He then relates mixed feelings about his own ESP. Both Mob's empathy and a chance to put his much-loathed power to good use for once change Takenaka's mind.
- Subverted: Ritsu asks Takenaka whether he could read Mob's mind. The telepath responds by asking Ritsu if he's insecure about not being able to fully relate to his older brother, asserting that he doesn't need telepathy to read Ritsu's feelings: his eyes give them away.
- Hell Is That Noise: The Shiratori signal for Takenaka. He sweats at the sound; it looks excruciating for him.
- Internal Reveal: Double subverted. Takenaka is forced to out his status as a telepath by the Shiratori brothers' Mob-amplified telepathic radar early on in this episode. Everyone in the Telepathy Club now knows their former member can read minds... except for its president, Tome. When Takenaka tells her outright, the already upset Tome concludes that he's lying.
- A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Keen awareness of the sharp discrepancy between people's public and private selves and inability to hear himself think over the sounds of others' constant mental activity: just some of the many ways Takenaka's telepathy has blessed him with suckitude.
- Poor Communication Kills:
- Mob misses multiple phone calls from Inukawa because he was enjoying letting his mind wander and didn't notice his cell was ringing. He apologizes.
- Tome stops answering her phone in part to focus on her studies, but also to cope with the pain of realizing her investment in the Telepathy Club—and her friendship with the boys—apparently wasn't mutual.
- Power Limiter: Takenaka wears earplugs to help him tune out the constant background noise other people's thoughts make.
- Psychic Radar: While the Shiratori twins' telepathy only allows for intelligible communication with each other, they can combine their energies to transmit wordless noise that only other telepaths can hear. Mob amplifies this static with his own energy to improvise a signal so far-reaching and strong that it even gives non-espers goosebumps.
- Refusal of the Call: Subverted. Takenaka, ears plugged, already has one foot out the door after having found other kids with psychic powers, but Mob implores him to reconsider and help the Telepathy Club boys out.
- Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Both Takenaka's loneliness and an understanding of people's inner lives, on a stomach-turning level, that telepathy has forced on him have shaped him into an abrasive, prickly teenager.
- Stepford Snarker:
- At first, Takenaka is dismissive of the other boys and their Psychic Radar experiment; he insults them with snark until he simply cannot tolerate the incredible mental noise they're generating and is thus forced to out himself as a telepath. The boy's harshness—and his initial refusal to help them—is armor against letting anyone get too close, as people's knowledge that he can read their minds has ruined many a friendship for him.
- Tome hides her anger and sadness over the boys' delayed commitment to her club's goal behind defiant snark and a lame excuse for stonewalling them:Kurata: What, am I not allowed to go now?
Inukawa: [obviously flustered] No, just... Why didn't you answer your phone?
Kurata: Oh? My phone was broken and I didn't notice. - Downplayed a little later, as her snark gives way to seething hostility over what she feels is a cruel trick: Takenaka's very presence on this trip and his insistence that he's a telepath.
- Visible Sigh: Kurata's sigh at fully realizing just how uninvested her clubmates truly were buries an entire table in clouds.
