The Promised Neverland Review Episode 5: 301045

After last week’s roller coaster of an episode, we’re back in line for it to start all over again. We have betrayals, sneaking around, and lots of discussion. With just ten days left for the escape plan, the chance at freedom seems to slip away. But, each episode provides us with a brief yet satisfying glimpse of hope. So let’s go see what we’ve got ourselves into this time.

Plot

Ray initially tries to play off Norman’s accusations, but he quickly realizes he’s well and truly caught. The two talk about how long Ray has been spying for Mother, what she’s told him and whose side he is truly on. With Ray more or less on their side, the second half to the episode is dedicated to the quintet considering a hidden room near Mother’s bedroom. While ultimately deciding not to explore it, one hotheaded member risks it all.

Episode Highlights

The Confrontation: Perhaps I am showing my anime viewing age a bit, but the scene between Norman and Ray reminded me a lot of any Kira/ L scenes from Death Note, complete with the manic laughter and twisted facial expressions.

The Promise: It’s clear Ray hasn’t let go of his insistence that the rest of the kids need to be left behind. I’m still on the fence about Ray. Last week I said that he was only in it for himself, but I wonder if he truly does want to escape with Emma and Norman. They are, after all, his only friends in the world. Or perhaps he knows survival outside the walls alone would be far too great a challenge for him and they are necessary in that respect.

Emma Finds Out: The scene where Ray tells Emma he’s the traitor was so funny, it provided some much-needed relief to a very tense episode. Well, funny until Emma looked like she could absolutely destroy Ray if necessary

Give Don a Break!: I’m sure a lot of viewers were annoyed with Don’s gung-ho attitude towards breaking into Mother’s room, but take a moment to see things from his perspective. He and Gilda have been kept out of most escape discussions, and he thinks that Conny needs saving ASAP – he probably feels useless and just wants to help out, so when there’s a chance to get some new information of course he goes for it!

Themes & Trivia

Mariya Ise: Ray’s voice may sound familiar and that’s why the voice actress, Mariya Ise, has been in some big productions over the years including HunterxHunter as Killua, various Precure series as Cure Lemonade, and Pokemon XY as Eureka.

Comments

I found this episode had a few issues with logic. Firstly, when Norman asks Ray why he agreed to be Mother’s spy, Mother gave Ray two ‘privileges’. One was gifts and the second was that Ray would be shipped out as late as possible. I just couldn’t understand why anyone would take that deal. Especially in the last episode when Ray mentioned living to adulthood but now it’s just till eleven, it seemed a bit odd. While we do know that Ray took the deal for other reasons than those two, I feel like Mother should know such a deal wouldn’t guarantee Ray’s loyalty, especially as he drew closer to eleven and the need to be loyal to stay alive lessened. In another scene, after the confrontation with Norman, Ray goes back to Mother and mentions he has been spying for her for six years. Ray is currently eleven, I’m struggling to imagine a five-year-old Ray piecing together the truth behind the Orphanage and also successfully spying on the kids and tricking Mother at the same time.

A final issue was when Norman, Ray, and Emma are discussing Ray’s spying. Ray guarantees that he can destroy the ear trackers to which Emma asks him whether he had experimented on other trackers. By breaking another child’s tracker, the child would have then been moved up the shipment schedule. This again, didn’t make a lot of sense. If Ray experimented on an older child, I’m sure Mother would have investigated more deeply into how their tracker got broken, to which I’m sure the kid would have said ‘Ray did something weird to my ear!’. If it was a younger child, I’m sure Mother would have assumed an older child was experimenting on the trackers. However, Emma stopped Ray before he could answer, so I guess we’ll never really know if that was how it went down.

Knock, Knock, Who’s There?

Finishing this episode up, I think it would be naïve to completely trust Ray. Despite his reasons, he does seem like he’s still hiding an ace up his sleeve, waiting to see how everything plays out before he uses it. On the other side of concerning is Don and Gilda. I know they’re trying their best to help out, but gosh, that was a real rookie mistake to make. Let’s just hope we’ll see Emma or Norman’s adorable face behind that door next week.

During the wait for next week’s episode, make sure to check out the MANGA.TOKYO team’s other episodic reviews for Winter 2019! You can find the full list over here.