#obviously a convoluted line of dialogue that today makes me say 'so true' would not elicit the same reaction

[frecht]

i hate how many memories i don't have how many i can't access. i should be able to recall every single thing that has ever happened to me everything i have ever thought

[eyedelater]

it makes sense, considering past events, that ???% would emerge upon a sudden traumatic knockout... but what's new and alarming is that ???% now has a voice in the narrative. 

???% uses boku pronouns to refer to itself. i'm going with "it" as the third person pronoun for ???% because i don't know what to think yet and that seems pretty neutral.

i don't know whether to treat ???% as a new character or what... i mean, it's obviously not NEW, but when a silent one speaks up after being present but hidden for 100 chapters, the voice itself, if nothing else, is certainly new. ???% was never something with a voice before, was it?

(i'm not saying it has a physical voice, since the text we see in this chapter seems to represent thoughts rather than speech, but you know what i mean. we're hearing from its perspective)

and a character(?) having a voice(?) raises new questions that haven't necessarily been relevant/askable until now. like, how much does ???% know, understand, want? it seems to definitely understand that today's the big day with tsubomi-chan, but why did it start destroying shit as soon as it took control? and in light of the destruction, why did it then continue doing what mob was about to do? does ???% itself also like tsubomi, or is it acting for mob’s sake? does it know that she probably won't like a boy who surfs up to her on a wave of buckled concrete? does it even want mob to get on well with tsubomi in the first place? if so, why? what does ???% get out of doing things that are good or bad for mob? i mean, we've seen in the past that when it does things that are bad for mob (e.g. knocking ritsu unconscious), mob fears and suppresses it as much as possible, pretending it doesn't exist. that can't be what ???% wants, right? so doing things that are bad for mob isn't "profitable" for ???%, but doing things that are good for mob (e.g. winning the fateful battle against mogami) isn’t necessarily good for ???% either. so then, what does it want for mob? what does it want from mob? what does it think of mob?

is it separate from mob? i’d say so. distinct but inseparable? the other side of mob's coin... but most people, even espers, don't have an other side to their coin... the inhabitant of mob’s vessel, with a greater capacity than any other known vessel... is it stuffed in there with his soul or what?

(maybe tsubomi will be like "(DOKI DOKI) (SWOON~) i always wanted to date a Bad Boy...!" when ???% walks bleeding tattered mob up to her and silently offers her the dropped bouquet like "(???% face)")

maybe ???% wants what mob wants but just... pursues his goals at MAX INTENSITY with NO REGARDS FOR CONSEQUENCES. pure chaotic self-interest. bullies roughing up you and your little brother? EASY WAY TO STOP THEM: KNOCK EVERYONE OUT. JUST EVERYONE. choked out by an egomaniac? EASY WAY TO TEACH HIM A LESSON: HUMBLE HIM... AND HIS ENTIRE SCHOOL BUILDING. IN THE SKY. JUST FLING EM UP THERE. 

but i think this development in the story does discount a few of the main hypotheses as to ???%'s nature. the fact that it refers to itself in the first person (and that it says it can be needed at times) seems to indicate an autonomy and self-awareness we hadn't seen before; thus, the idea that ???% is some aspect of mob's personality seems to have been nullified. like, i'd say this shows that it is certainly a separate consciousness from the shigeo we know and love. right now, kageyama shigeo is out cold, and if you come knocking, someone else will answer the door. it's not just mob failing to resist doing as he pleases because his percentage meter went haywire. mob is only in control up to 100%. similarly, i think we can discount my heretofore favored hypothesis, the idea that ???% is not so much an autonomous entity, but rather a defense mechanism that takes over mob's body in order to provide a crude, imprecise force of self-preservation. we can now see that it IS probably an autonomous entity with its own thoughts and identity, not just a phenomenon or reaction.

but why did ???% quake up the pavement??? this mystifies me. maybe it really does just do everything at max intensity? i guess we'll have to wait and see.

i think a well-supported hypothesis for the true nature of ???% would now be something like, “???% is a spiritual entity, unknown in origin, which is (and has always been) permanently bound to mob’s spirit, but which is not itself a part of mob’s consciousness/personality.” that’s far from the only option, of course, but i’d say it’s among the most likely explanations... we’ll have to wait, see, wait, and see.

another thing to address would be the creepy transition mob's body undergoes on pages 2 and 3... what is that shit? we just don't know

props to ONE-sensei for starting to wrap up these two longstanding storylines ("mob likes tsubomi" and "what is ???%") SIMULTANEOUSLY

--

some translation notes:

can you guess why i posted this chapter early?????????? (HINT: IT'S BECAUSE THERE'S NO TEXT ON 7 OF THE 13 PAGES)

when the kid says "hellooo..." and "hey, are you-" in the raws he's actually saying "onii-san" as a way to address mob, i.e. calling out to him like "hey mister" but i couldn't decide on a good way to translate that "onii-san" ("mister" is more appropriate as a translation for "oji-san," not "onii-san," and "big bro" or "bro" sounds weird in english, we just don't have a good translation for onii-san in english unless it's in the context of actual brothers) and i felt it would sound weird if i left it as "onii-san" so i took the easy way out and translated the "onii-san"s instead as what an english-speaker would cautiously call out to someone in this situation (i.e. hellooo... etc)

in retrospect, i'm kicking myself for putting "important moment" instead of "special occasion" in ???%'s third line. the phrase just wouldn't come to me until too late and it sounds so much better

KOAP

you must be feeling a little dusty after falling on the pavement there, mob-kun. why don't you go freshen up, wash your face with some KOAP

lather up some cleansing, sudsy KOAP

the "i'll make sure nothing gets in my way" line on the last page... ok, the japanese line was "jama suru mono ha, zenbu dokashite..." which Literally translates to "things that get in my way, all of them moving aside" or something along those lines. well, the "dokashite" verb is like "remove" or "move (out of the way)" but basically, it's quite clear that the sentiment of the statement is that he will not be stopped by any obstacles. so i had a long internal battle about how literally to translate the line. and i eventually decided that "everything that gets in my way will be moved aside..." just didn't sound badass enough. (like, the badass feeling sorta gets across in the raws, but it's hard to translate the literal line in a way that retains the badassness, you know?) so i tweaked the line slightly into its current form. now, to be clear, this is far from the first or most notable line i've tweaked slightly without even telling y’all. it's just... this line is still frustrating me a little... but i hope it came across as appropriately badass.

for the omake, the "if you make eye contact and say it plainly" part... fuck ok maybe i just stuck that "plainly" in there because it sounded good. doesn't it sound good? but the more literal translation is like, "if, making eye contact, you do a dialogue/discussion/conversation/interaction..." with that last word being "対話." and with those four definitions of 対話 provided to me, i couldn't decide whether it connoted speech in particular, or if it could also be applied to nonverbal interactions. because the context seemed to be, like, "if you make eye contact etc, your message will get across." and making eye contact is, in itself, an interaction! no words necessary! but i translated it as "say it (plainly)" because i figured if it's the eye contact part of the interaction that matters in getting your message across, it doesn't matter if you're speaking or not. (sorry if this doesn't make any sense at all, i'm just trying to straighten out some things with my convoluted thought process for picking the right words)