Shigeo Kageyama

About Shigeo Kageyama

Shigeo Kageyama, called Mob, is a second-year middle schooler with godlike psychic power and almost no social presence. He bottles up his emotions because when his feelings reach 100%, his power erupts beyond his control. Working part-time for the fraudulent psychic Reigen, Mob slowly decides what he wants for himself: to get fit, be honest about his feelings, and confess to his crush Tsubomi.

Appearance

Mob is an unremarkable-looking boy of fourteen with a black bowl cut, plain features and a blank, distant expression that makes him blend into any crowd, exactly what his nickname means. He wears the standard Salt Middle School uniform, slightly hunched, and off duty he is usually in simple casual clothes. When his emotions surge, his appearance changes dramatically: his hair lifts and spikes with psychic energy, his eyes glow, and at 100% the air around him distorts with colour. In his rare ???% state, his whole silhouette becomes a dark, crackling outline that no longer looks human at all.

Personality

Mob is gentle, earnest and socially clumsy, with a flat affect that hides how much he actually feels. He hates his own capacity for violence, refuses to use his powers on people, and measures his worth by everything except the one thing he is best at, he wants to be fit, likeable and honest rather than feared. His kindness is stubborn rather than soft: he offers enemies mercy repeatedly, takes responsibility for damage he causes, and keeps showing up for people who mock him. His great weakness is avoidance, of his feelings, of conflict, and of the part of himself he has locked away.

Background & Story

Shigeo was born an esper of extraordinary power, and as a small child he learned to fear it, an early incident in which his power slipped around his little brother Ritsu taught him that his emotions were dangerous. Since then he has bottled his feelings down to a flat calm, while a percentage counter in his heart ticks upward with every suppressed frustration. At eleven he came to Reigen's office asking for help controlling his powers and stayed on as a part-time exorcist. At Salt Middle School he is nobody, bad at sports, average at study, in love from afar with his childhood friend Tsubomi, and he decides to change himself the ordinary way: joining the Body Improvement Club to get fit, and slowly learning that his feelings, including the frightening ones, are part of who he is.

Powers & Abilities

• Psychic Outburst, 100%: When an emotion Mob has suppressed reaches 100%, his power erupts far beyond his normal limits in that emotion's shape, 100% Rage, 100% Sadness, 100% Joy and more.

  

• Telekinesis: Mob's everyday power: he moves, lifts, crushes and throws objects and people with his mind, from bending spoons to levelling buildings at full output.
• Exorcism and Spirit Sense: Mob can see, touch and exorcise spirits that are invisible to ordinary people, which is the whole basis of his part-time job.
• Psychic Barriers and Energy Transfer: He shields himself and others with psychic barriers, and can pour his energy into other espers, or drain an opponent's power away entirely.

  

• ???%: When Mob is knocked unconscious under extreme emotion, something else wakes up: an uncontrolled state of pure destructive power that even he fears.

Key Relationships

• Arataka Reigen: His boss and mentor, a fraud whose one real teaching, that powers do not make a person special, becomes the spine of Mob's life.
• Ritsu Kageyama: His younger brother, who seems to have everything Mob lacks; Mob's protectiveness of Ritsu is the trigger for some of his most violent outbursts.
• Tsubomi Takane: His childhood friend and longtime crush, the one person he wants to impress as himself rather than as an esper.
• Dimple: The evil spirit who moved in hoping to steal his power and ended up, very reluctantly, one of his closest allies.
• Teruki Hanazawa: The rival esper who started as his mirror, power used for status, and became one of his truest friends.

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