Your Otaku Friend in Japan

MANGA.TOKYO > Anime Reviews > Winter 2019 > Mob Psycho 100 II Episode 5 Review: Discord ~Choices~

Mob Psycho 100 II Episode 5 Review: Discord ~Choices~

by christina

1 week ago

Article
Comment

Enlarge Image

I genuinely feel great to be reviewing this show. It is unbelievably good. This episode was probably the best one yet. Ready?

Plot

Mogami has trapped Mob in a world of despair. In that world, he does not have any family or friends and nobody to fight for. He is violently bullied in school by his teachers and classmates alike. Asagiri, the girl he is to save, is his most horrible nightmare and is constantly harassing him along with her peers. In this nightmarish world, Mogari is trying to convince Mob that the world is a rotten place filled in ultimate despair; a place where he should be using his powers against others for his own good. As Mob is about to break into a violent outburst, Dimple dives in and reminds him of all the good things he has in his real life. Mob gets his shit together, and, naturally, wins. Matsuo captures the evil spirit as a bonus and leaves.

Episode Highlights

Where do I begin talking about this episode? First of all, it gets dark in the first few seconds. What’s with the butterfly being eaten by the ants and all the bugs running around? Ugh. There is a nightmarish uncanny feeling about this whole setup. Things don’t feel real even though they feel very real to Mob; there seems to be a layer of reality behind which we are looking at the events that happen. Were we to try to deconstruct this episode, we could go pretty deep, but for the sake of this short episode review, we have to keep it simple. This season is about change, and this episode is about choice. Mogari made the conscious choice to perform evil to fulfill his own wishes, and to fight against what he had established to be an unfair, unjust world. His evil manifested itself in the death of his mother, who became an evil spirit. His change led to his misery. Mob was made to see the world through Mogari’s eyes – as a completely hopeless place where no good could exist. However, this world is fatally flawed, as there is no balance between good and evil. In the real world, Mob finds consolation in the love he receives from those around him, and from the motivation to protect those innocently suffering. Through love, Mob achieves change, and through love he finds power. And through his own love, he changes the people around him, like Asagiri. Beautiful. Needless to say that I cried at Asagiri’s apology. It resonated so much. There is actually a lot more I could say about this episode but I would rather leave it at that. Its message speaks for itself.

The end.

If there’s a mantra we could use more of in the world as we know it is that we need to give room for people to change and inspire that change ourselves. This is the only way to make sense of a world that is otherwise filled with profound despair and darkness.

How did you find this Mob Psycho 100 episode? Let us know in the comment section! And don’t forget to check the rest of the Winter 2019 anime reviews on MANGA.TOKYO!