The Promised Neverland Season 2, Episode 6: Unsure Sentiments

Welcome back to this week’s breakdown for The Promised Neverland! After the recap last week, Episode 6 is mostly manga scenes adapted this time, from Chapters 119-121, the latter half of 122-124, and 126. I’m still separating technical spoilers for anime-only fans, which are marked clearly. However, for those that still want a deeper dive into those scenes, I would encourage you to read them at your own risk. Now with that said, let’s move on to the episode!

We picked up where we left off from Episode 5, with Norman introducing himself to Emma and Ray in the demon town with his new group. Emma is in disbelief at this, but elated at his appearance, with Norman taken aback by the loss of her left ear when he notices it. Ray is also overjoyed by this reveal, but he gives Norman a slap on the face instead. Norman asks if Ray was able to “saw something cool” since they last met, to which he agrees before bringing both Norman and Emma in for a tearful hug.

Back at the temple, the rest of the Grace Field escapees also get their surprise reunion with Norman. Norman himself is surprised that less than half of the kids from back in the House are around, to which Emma and Ray explain their future plans. When asked by Gilda where he was the whole time, he tells them of a new farm named Lambda 2714, and the drugs and experiments he and his group were subjected to before breaking out there with the help of the now deceased Minerva supporter Smee.

Shortly after that, he then talks about his findings based from the data he got from Lambda. According to him, the demons’ bodies are greatly affected by what they eat, and that eating humans specifically is what’s consistently maintaining their intellect and not turn into the wild demons we see in the forest. With all that established, he also mentions having developed a poison which would hasten and cement the degeneration process, producing enough to cause havoc to the nearby town they were in earlier. In a call back to what Emma said early on in season one, his goal now is to establish a safe paradise for all of the cattle children, by completely wiping out the demons with his poison. The kids seem all up for this, but Emma seems more apprehensive than them, with Ray noticing it in the background.

Later that night, while on watch duty in the tower area, Ray questions Emma’s true feelings about Norman’s plan. With some prodding from him, Emma finally admits that even if the plan would keep the kids safe from danger of being shipped out or hunt, she doesn’t want the demons to be killed either. Even so, without any knowledge of any other option available, she doesn’t know what action to take to avoid that path. With no one else to really turn to, she asks Ray if he can think of a solution to this conundrum. His answer? He doesn’t know either.

Why did he start asking Emma questions, though? He knows Emma well enough to see that making her stew in her feelings will make her eventually explode like a powder keg at the worst possible time, and in the worst possible way for everyone involved. Even if he is more okay with the extinction solution, he still suggests to her that Emma talk things out with Norman before he helps her reconfirm how she really thinks of his plan. They also discuss about Mujika and Sonju, on how they are unusual among demons for still remaining humanoid despite not eating humans, and how their existence may send holes in Norman’s plan. As their conversation ends when the sun rises, Ray assures Emma that whatever plan she chooses in the end, he would always be there to support her.

Later in the daytime, with the map Norman gave them yesterday, Emma and Ray go to his hideout in the forest to talk things out with him. Instead of him, they finds the other members of his group also coming to the entrance. They make the two kids feel at home in their hideout, and introduce themselves as Vincent, Barbara, and Cislo. As they go on praising Norman for the many things he did after saving them from Lambda, they also gradually reveal their vengeful and hateful view of the demons, which unsettles both Emma and Ray. Norman and Zazie return from their own expedition, but have a private talk with Vincent and Cislo outside, as Emma and Ray try to decompress from what they just witnessed from the group, especially in regards with their hate. As soon as Norman comes back inside, they then voice out their concerns over his plan, starting with Mujika and Sonju’s existence. From there, Norman responds with…

Honestly, I enjoyed this more than the previous episode, but primarily because most of the material from this episode is from the manga, just recontextualized. I’m probably at the point where I’m just happy when scenes are adapted well enough now. I’m still a bit worried where this season is going by the time it ends, but I do have a possible theory on what it might be, which I’ll talk about in more detail in the manga spoiler section. The way Norman reveals his plan in the anime is more small-scale compared to the manga, but at the same time, he also displays a higher degree of ruthlessness than his manga counterpart, but it conflicts with how young he still looks here. I’m also hoping that certain things that would have been known had they followed the manga canon would be revealed by the next episode because, as Ray stated in the show, anime!Emma doesn’t have enough ground for a solution that would counter Norman’s own, outside of Mujika’s existence. I’m really looking forward to the anime-only fans finding out what exactly Mujika’s title of the “Evil-Blooded Girl” means, but at the same time, I’m absolutely dreading the possible repeat of watching some of them outright defend Norman’s genocide plan, too.

Other Notes

  • The OP is now updated to include Norman and his Lambda buddies


  • Norman’s line asking Ray if he “saw something cool” after he slapped him relates to something I touched upon in more detail with the grace article I wrote a while back.
  • I remember back around the time this part was released, there were some differences in the official and fan translations in how Ray’s “I’m glad [I’m] alive!” line was supposed to go in English, since the way it was said in Japanese was more ambiguous in who exactly Ray was referring to that he was glad is alive. Considering the context of the scene, it leans more towards Ray himself than to Norman.
  • Emma’s reactions to Ray hugging her are shown a bit differently with the two mediums. She’s more surprised and confused by the sudden hug Ray brought her in with Norman, while the anime has her more receptive in a sense and also emotional from the entirety of the reunion.

  • I just think Cislo looks funny when he’s in his demon costume
  • Because of certain reasons, Christie wasn’t present with the kids when Norman was explaining his plan to them in the manga, so him saying this line to Emma in the anime had me going like “Chris, nooo, his plan involves genocide!”
  • Smee did show himself during Krone’s flashback with the pen in Episode 8 of the first season
  • This small scene with Gilda comforting Alicia after a nightmare was very sweet
  • Okay, so I loved the whole scene with Emma and Ray’s conversation in the manga, but the way the anime used the imagery of night slowly turning to day with the sunrise near the end of it was just *chef’s kiss*
  • Emma in the manga did clarify that Norman wasn’t a bedwetter after this part, but with how different the anime has become now, there’s a good chance that this might actually be canon for anime!Norman
  • Regardless of whether or not you think Emma should join in Barbara’s hatred for the demons, the fact remains that almost any sane person would be, at the very least, uncomfortable when someone starts raving on about killing a whole race/species in revenge.
  • At some point, I feel like I would need to start a separate article on the moral/ethical conflict that Emma vs Norman have regarding the demons later on
  • This is probably more background info than an actual spoiler, but since his anime profile mentions it on the website, Zazie is actually five years old.

[Manga Spoiler Zone]

My current theory for what the anime is doing for its timeline is that they’re probably switching up the order of major events in order to possibly escalate the stakes of the story in a way that’s better for the medium. Right now, the anime is somewhere around late January 2047, while the manga’s timeline would have had the reunion with Norman in October later that year. Norman’s appearance and plan also seems to be scaled down in a way to match up with the timeline. Compared to how tall and grown he looked in the manga, anime!Norman is practically baby-faced, but my guess is that the drugs from Lambda haven’t fully kicked in for him yet. Another thing that I’ve observed since the anime’s timeskip is that despite his air of authority, there was no mention at all of Norman using the title of William Minerva, even with his buddies from Lambda still calling him “Boss.” The best case scenario I see for the anime going is that if the Seven Walls does get mentioned soon enough, with would probably go hand-in-hand with the introduction of the Goldy Pond arc, or whatever equivalent the anime will go with. There seems to be enough time to at least do some of these things before the Tifari happens, in the chance that anime!Norman decides to escalate his plans to what it originally was in the manga.

Other Notes

  • I really hope we get to see just how horrific it was inside of Lambda in the anime, if only to show to show where exactly Barbara and the others are coming from.
  • What I couldn’t say in the anime-only section with the scene with Ray and Emma was that the sunrise dawning over the night feels like an allusion to the Seven Walls, specifically to the concept of the “Day and Night.” Emma and Ray have also been confirmed to have their designs/color scheme reference the day/sun and night/darkness, according to Shirai and Demizu in both the artbook and fanbook.
  • In light of how the ending of the manga went for Emma, this piece of advice Ray gives to her is kinda painful to watch now
  • Shirai answered this question in the fanbook, and they said that neither Mujika or any other demon that drank her blood would degenerate from Norman’s poison.
  • This is a lie and we all know it
  • The Lambda group mentions how Norman “saved” the cattle children from the mass production farms, but considering the method he used on most of them and what we now know happened to the rest post-canon, this just leaves a sick feeling in my stomach.
  • The hideout Norman’s group is in looks similar enough in structure to the outside of the house Ayshe and her dad lived in, and matches the vague location that the manga provided. I think that if Ayshe is present in the anime, she may have already been “rescued” to the shelter that Smee built for the kids now.


Let us know what you thought of the episode in the comments section.

The Promised Neverland is streaming on Funimation & Hulu in the US, and AnimeLab in Australia.

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