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I am honestly BAFFLED, with this production, and also the rating it got. That said, I honestly don't want to ruin the experience for anyone who enjoyed it, so keep reading only if you don't mind my honest opinion. But really, I don't want to make you feel bad about liking a show, everyone is entitled to their opinion. So...

Almost everything is a problem for me with this series, not just this season, because most of the things that made me dislike it was existent in the first season as well. And it's so weird, because Bungo Stray Dogs used to be my favourite anime ... for a long time, and I still adore it to this day, and while the two concepts are incredibly similar, it only goes to show how much of a difference it can make when an adaptation is good and is made with passion and commitment, and when it's not.

First of all, throughout the entire series, the pacing is so off, so weird, sometimes it's hard to follow the series of situations, and it feels like some scenes were cut out of the final product to save time, thus leaving episodes that have important parts missing. Totally uninjoyable and confusing. But even after that, it still feels like the show is full of fillers and scenes that make no sense and are totally unrelated to the plot, and just a waste of time, when that precious time could be used to elaborate the story.

The motivations and thoughts of the characters are unclear, not rarely, but most of the times. It generally isn't explained or shown why someone feels in a certain way or does something, or even, some objective events just straight up happen without anything leading up to it, or any indicator or reason. Many extraterrestrial events in the show are hard to follow because they just happen without any explanation at all.

The show doesn't let the characters develop, their feelings or motivations are literally non-existent, we don't even know a real backstory for many of them, just some random stuff that was considered done in two sentences.

The story is full of two things: plotholes and plot-armor. I'm not even exaggerating when I say that there's more plot-armor than real, reasonable explanations and logical chains of events. Like, it feels like the writer just wanted things to all work out in the end, and whenever they couldn't decide how to solve a problem or a plothole they just slapped plot armor onto it. Which just created more plotholes, without explaining anything. It's hard to follow, and the whole thing is illogical. It doesn't feel like there ever was a clear view for the story, the writer just wanted cool scenes or certain interactions between some characters and filled out the rest of the story with watever.

But the ending... I don't think any show has made me more furious than the ending of this. IT MAKES NO DAMN SENSE. NONE AT ALL. NONE OF THESE CHARACTERS SHOULD BE FORGIVEN. NONE OF THEM SHOULD HAVE THE PRIVILEDGE TO WALK FREE! SO WHY? These people killed, massacred, pushed the entire City of Yokohama braindead, legit made thousands of people literally braindead, and did this with a series of highly illegal actions. So why is Art forgiven by everyone? Why is everyone buddying up with him? Why are the Freemum members walking free? IT MAKES NO DAMN SENSE. And it doesn't even satisfy the veiwer at all. Especially when the entire last episode was an asspull, the entire episode was a huge plothole covered up with plotarmor. Nothing that happened was reasonable at all. I just finished watching, and I'm SO mad, because this is a literal faliure in the field of storytelling. Like, I wish I could forget about this anime forever, just so I didn't have to think about how bad it was.

Yeah, the animation was a little better than the first season, but it was still kinda underwhelming. Peace.

A bit unconventional but I’d like to start with the opening and ending sequences for a reason. I genuinely love both of them so much and admire them regarding both the visual presentation and the music. I believe both the opening and the ending sequence to be legitimately perfect with no flaws. I just wish that what’s between was just as good. Or nearly as good. But the show itself - sadly - was a 6/10 at best, though I’m leaning towards a 5/10, and I’m going to list all the reasons why.

First, I know that the opening usually gets more love and attention from ... the animators, more passion and effort goes into animating it. So it’s not very surprising when the animation in the actual show is not as amazing as it was teased to be. But man, saying that in this one the animation was underwhelming is an understatement. Even though some parts are very well animated, like Ascetic Blaze for example, which is honestly beautifully done, other scenes are not well made at all. And it’s not even just some episodes, because - and this is one of the most noticeable problems - in every single episode, when the characters run, it’s done with “running on the spot” animation, and oh boy, it looks bad, and it feels so low effort as well. And there are numerous other times when the animation looks sloppy and it’s made poorly, mostly when characters are moving, but the running on the spot is the worst, most disappointing. Even more because the show is made by Mappa. MAPPA. Very unusual to see a performance so underwhelming from them, especially in the animation department. They managed to fix these problems in the last 2-3 episodes, but I'm still disappointed. Not sure what went wrong, but regarding their standards, this is horrible. And you can say that “But Volly, the animators at Mappa are always working their butt off with great shows, or maybe they had so little time, after all their great work you could give them a pass.”, but if the circumstances are really that bad, they are not forced to take up another show for every single season. They are not forced to make twice the shows as any other studio. But the animation is not my only problem here.

Though I have not read the manga, it is probably better in terms of pacing. Because the pacing in the anime feels very inaccurate. The episodes feel rushed, just trying to fit in as much content as possible, not giving the viewer even a moment to breathe and relax. It feels like the season could have been 2 or 3 episodes longer, just so the events could be stretched out a bit and paced more well. In many scenes it even feels like some frames have been cut from the final product to shorten the runtime, but because of that the scenes feel incohesive and random, it literally feels like something has been cut from it. Which is something else I wouldn’t have expected from Mappa.

While there are parts of the plot and the individual stories of characters I like, there are big mistakes in there as well, in my opinion at least. The world-building and the mysterious nature of the area the characters get thrown into is fascinating. I love the tropical exteriors mixed with religious symbols. The mysteries of the island and the new questions that are thrown at the viewer every single episode is what kept my attention mostly. They were enough to keep me watching, including the design of the supernatural creatures that appear that are so unusual and so hard to wrap my mind around, both in appearance and communication. The character-design is flawless, the show is full of unique and easily-recognizable characters, and the power-systems it introduces are totally on point as well. I feel connected to some of the characters, at least on a level that makes me want to see more of them, see their character arcs and how their story unfolds, though I can’t say I could relate to any of them in any way, and I also can’t say I felt any kind of sadness or disappointment when some of them died. Though that might again be the result of the pacing.
One thing I didn’t really like with the story is that it never takes an actual break. Every event takes place immediately after another without any space between them and it feels wrong. Especially when characters have big fights that drain all their energy away, they get to the brink of death, they almost bleed out, and in the next minute they are full of energy and ready to take on another enemy. It feels wrong and unrealistic (yes, I know that this show is supposed to be unrealistic, but not in this way, because there is no way a character could just come back from near death and fight again, without any explanation). Another thing that wasn’t explained - and annoyed me much - is that some characters were able to master these unusual, complex techniques and powers in seconds. And this happened often as well. No explanation whatsoever, nothing, they were just able to use “tao”, or see the life energy of others without any explanation.
While I like the individual character-designs and the backstories are great as well (really, some characters have very simple backstories, but even then they manage to clearly communicate motivations), the character arcs and motivations in real time are not unfolded enough and they are confusing sometimes. At other times - like with Gabimaru or Sagiri - they are soooo on the nose, it’s too much. Like, okay, we get it, Gabimaru wants to go back to his wife, Sagiri has a strong sense of justice, it’d be enough to refer to these qualities sometimes, but they say these EVERY SINGLE EPISODE. This is not only a problem because they eventually get boring, but because they become one-dimensional characters very quickly. And, I mean, what is this character-arc for Gabimaru? He is supposed to be emotionless, but he really isn’t, but then he wants to kill these feelings because people think he is hollow (because of society), but then he can’t and he wants to be a good person who helps others… Jesus, it’s so edgy I could cut myself with it. It’s very unoriginal and unentertaining as well.

One thing I particularly like is that the writer(s) do(es)n’t pull their punches. The show isn’t afraid to kill off numerous characters. I like it because I've waited for so long for a show that does this, that actually shows how sudden death can be in a setting like this, that characters die so fast and so suddenly we can't even really get to know them. I absolutely love this aspect.
But I feel like this makes the the studio fall into trap, because this way the characters that get their backstory somewhat explored often don't get enough time for it, but they are trying to do it even so, so for a few characters their backstory goes past just a simple story but after that it isn't expanded enough, so it kinda doesn't make sense and it leaves a feeling of emptiness.

Overall, the basics of the world-building and points of the main story are amazing and the characters are fairly well thought-out, but the execution beyond that is very far from perfect, and it's also very far from an 8.18 score that it is now, when I'm writing this review. I understand that many people are able to look past mistakes because they feel that other aspects are very important to them, and that's the reason, but this show is highly overrated right now.

What can one really say? How can I actually describe the emotions inside me after watching this show? I'm not sure. But this season focused on this feeling as well, despite so many other things, on loving something even though not knowing how to express yourself. If you look at it, this entire story is about expressing yourself as a whole. One might think that Mob Psycho 100 is about cool powers and taking down bad guys with some emotional background after watching a trailer, or reading the synopsis, or even after watching the show but not paying attention enough to understand the meaning. Because, ... after all, this show is all solid, emotional character development.

Excuse me a bit, for I will write this review about the entire story as a whole, not just this one season, Mob Psycho 100 being my favourite series of all time, without a doubt. I’m so happy to have decided to watch this show.

As for the arcs specifically this season. I genuinely feel like the Divine Tree arc is possibly my favourite, although this might be because it felt a bit more complex than the 7th division or the World Domination arc, but those two should be superior if I want to look at them objectively. It was a good choice to create a plot twist showing Ekubo turning back into a villain. The whole development of this arc was very well done because the whole thing felt really surreal and anxiety-inducing with the people being brainwashed. The confrontation between Mob and Ekubo was very touching and to be honest, the whole 6th episode overwhelmed me emotionally, Ekubo turning out to still be a good guy, Mob being able to see the good in Ekubo and still treating him as a friend, and finally Ekubo making his sacrifice. It was a very dynamic and hype episode, with an emotional touch.
The final arc was also great, introducing a stunning metaphor for Mob’s suppressed feelings and how he needs to accept himself. the next paragraph references to it a lot so I wouldn’t want to write it down twice.

Mob is a very compelling character and we see throughout every episode how his environment influences him. Despite not showing much, he is a very complex and compelling character. And while after every arc we feel a bit of emotional relief, in the second half of this third season do we realize that really, all the events of the other seasons (the Psycho Helmet cult, the Scar organization, Mob's love for Tsubomi, his brother getting carried away and the abducted, losing Ekubo and his sometimes ambivalent relationship with Reigen) and the emotions caused by them were stored up in Shigeo and he couldn't control himself anymore and his feelings were let loose. Wish would be pretty normal for anyone: not being able to take any more emotional challenges. Without the show clearly stating it, Mob going rogue was a very good metaphor that one could very well understand if they paid attention. And this brings me to my point: this show is a masterpiece because Mob is so goddamn relatable! I can imagine most of us would feel the same emotions, insecurity, anxiety, sadness or suppressed anger, hell, I'm pretty sure most of us did actually experience the same situations as him. And so, it is very easy to feel for him. And I felt so bad, so sorrowful a stressed many times, especially at the climaxes of the seasons (in this season when he lost control did I feel the most terrible), because a middle schooler shouldn't be put in these kinds of situations and this much pressure and responsibility shouldn't be put on them. And somehow he still managed to overcome these things. Him exploding and releasing his powers as a result of holding in so much emotions is so real, and his abilities are such great metaphors for what a human goes through at different times, the viewer might even question at the end of the series: did all this really happen, or was this just a half-imaginary adventure of a kid overcoming the difficulties in his life?
And while all this is great, I honestly think that the greatest quality of Mob is his innocence and goodwill. He is able to turn everyone he meets into a friend or ally, and just like his environment influences him, he has a great influence on his environment. He truly makes the world a better place.
After all, it was so satisfying to see Mob not relying on his powers at all anymore in the final scenes. It truly felt like he had achieved what he needed and what many of us cannot yet: to be free of the stresses and worries that weigh him down. It's an amazing development.

I don't believe that Reigen was only using Mob for this entire time. He might have confessed that, and what he said was true, but when it really mattered, and when the times were rough, Reigen stepped up and acted like a great mentor. I believe it was because deep down he knew how Mob felt as he also felt as hopeless and anxious, and deep down he really wanted to protect others, and wanted to protect Mob from himself in a way. And Reigen had a great character development throughout the entire series as well, although you have to think: so did all this have to happen for him to become a better person? Well, it seems like the situations had to become drastic for him to step up, we always see him saving the day at the climaxes of the arcs with his almost instinctive reasoning. While he was a liar for a long time and exploited Mob, deep down, he was always a good guy, but he was too anxious to show it, as he thought that he would lose Mob if he was always honest and stopped putting on a facade. And to be fair, his big moments wouldn't feel as great to us, the viewers, if he was always dependable. A lot of the characters in the story state that even though Reigen is obviously a fraud, he has a very good instinct to see the intentions of other people, and I believe this is what makes him so awesome. That he is a mere human, with no powers, but he is really needed, he goes beyond himself, be it about fighting the organization or giving actually good advice to Mob (let me get back to season 1 when he told Mob that if he actually lets his powers go to fight the evil organization, he will be the one to regret it: that was the greatest moment of him for me). In the final episode he also gave it his all to try to get to Mob and it was amazing to see him rise to a new level. Both physically and characteristically. It seemed like a final redemption for him to actually confess to Mob about himself, even though I believe deep down Mob already knew the truth, after the middle arc of season 2, still he needed Reigen to confess to actually be redeemed. And just like Mob stated in season 2, Reigen was, from the start, a great guy. Even though we see him miserably and depressed, and sometimes not knowing what to do with his life, when the time came, he always rose to be the master, the person he wanted to be, and I honestly believe he managed to be an amazing role-model to Mob. That is why Arataka Reigen is my favourite anime character of all time.

If you read this far - thank you. Even though this was probably more for myself, trying to express my never-ending love for this story.