The Promised Neverland

I will admit that I'm generally not a very big fan of shounens, but Yakusoku no Neverland is in my opinion without a doubt the best thing to have ever spawned from Weekly Shounen Jump. Then again it needs to be said that it is not very similar to most other things from the same magazine. It's been literally years since I felt the need to give out any 10s to an anime TV-series, but in the case of Neverland I knew from the start that as long as they don't mess it up, it would be worthy of it for sure. The first arc ofthe manga was simply brilliant after all, and the anime which covers it is not too different. Horror is a genre which generally does not work very well in anime for the simple reason that it's very difficult to make cartoons straight-up scary. However, they can still be creepy and eerie, and that's one of the areas in which Neverland excels. It has one of those truly great opening episodes that immediately hook you, starting off showcasing the wonderful and cheerful orphanage of Grace Field filled with children who spend their youths in complete happiness... until the rather shocking truth of the whole situation is revealed at the end of the first episode and at that point it's almost impossible to not be immediately captivated by what the story has to offer. I won't reveal anything about what that truth actually is though, and I would highly recommend you try to avoid getting spoiled by it before watching if it is somehow possible. At its heart, Neverland is mainly a mystery and a thriller though, as our main characters Emma, Norman and Ray try to investigate the secrets of the mansion which they live in and start to plot an elaborate plan to escape it along with the other kids that live there, all without attracting attention from the eyes of the ones opposing them. The direction is quite simply superb, both in terms of making the viewers feel engaged in the main characters' situation and to be wanting to cheer for them, but also in terms of slowly unwrapping the mystery in a way which is not too quick, eventually resulting in an incredibly satisfying finale. The main characters are all quite intelligent but in very different ways, with Emma being the cheerful and strong-willed one whereas Norman and Ray are more scheming and unpredictable, but for totally different motivations. The production value is also excellent. The art and animation across the board is always on point, the opening theme is pretty kickass and the voice acting does an adequate job of breathing life into the characters. I think in particular Morohoshi Sumire's performance as Emma is quite commendable in that aspect. Overall I think Neverland is a fantastic anime in terms of story, direction and the ability to immediately get you hooked an invested into the show. As a result it's a show I would highly recommend to anyone that enjoys well thought-out thrillers and mysteries. To add to that, we've now also gotten confirmation that a second season is in the works for 2020 so the joyride isn't stopping anytime soon. However, I should at least mention as a manga reader that the quality of the story does in fact drop a decent amount after the first arc and it takes a considerable amount of time before it recovers to a similar level as it had in the beginning. Thus I would not expect the second season to be as good as the first one, but still definitely worth watching at least. Or if you've been hooked enough on the story by now to be unwilling to wait that long, well then the manga always lies around the corner if you want to give it a shot.

*SPOILER WARNING. I WILL BE SPOILING THE FIRST EPISODE OF THIS SHOW. IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT YOU GO IN BLIND TO GET THE FULL EFFECT OF THIS SHOW IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED IT ALREADY* Well this was unexpected. A horror anime getting a lot of attention and praise by viewing public? This is truly a rare sight indeed. But seriously, the hype for this series before airing and its first couple of episodes was reaching really high levels and talked about a lot by the anime community. But the question is, how does this anime hold up with the horror greats of anime, can itstand in the upper echelon of horror anime like Monster, Parasyte and Higurashi? Or is this series a victim of its own hype? Well I'm about to tell you. Sit back, relax and...hold on. Wait, what's going on outside. Oh god. OH GOD! MRS TWEETY! THE CHILDREN ARE REVOLTING! Quickly, got to finish this sentence up. I present to you the anime review for The Promised Neverland. Lets Begin shall we? Story: 9/10 Ok. Now that's settled, lets begin with the story. Welcome to Grace Field House. An orphanage run by the lovely caretaker of the house Isabella, aka "Mama." The children of the house enjoy there time here. They are well fed, educated well and have fun free time playing tag. They can have this luxury by obeying two simple rules. Not to go over the fence and not to go past the gate in front of the house. Of course, the children will get adopted and will have to say goodbye to their friends. Three of the children, Emma, Norman and Ray are the brightest and eldest of the children, and they, along with the others, enjoy their time at the orphanage. However on one day. One of the children, Connie, is adopted but has forgotten her beloved rabbit teddy. So Emma and Norman decide to give it to her before she leaves. They go past the gate to deliver the bunny, only to realise that Connie is dead and in fact the children of the orphanage are livestock to Daemons and Mama is involved with it. Knowing this truth, Emma, Norman and Ray must plan to escape the orphanage with everyone before they are all lambs to the slaughter. What makes this show scary is the fact that we have an innate motive to make sure children are safe, for they do not know the dangers of the real world. So when the children find out the truth, you fear for them. You fear for their lives for they are innocent and didn't deserve this fate. You want to see them safe and you constantly hold your breath to see if they are okay. You want them to live. By showing us their fate, you know the dangers that they are in. The show however, does leave mysteries for us to think about and find out later on; giving us something to look forward to and something to fear as we uncover the truth as to why these events are happening and why security is almost non-existent. While not every question is answered, some of them are answered and we are left to theorise about the others. Now this show really does like to build things up, build to this great escape plan to get everyone out of the orphanage and it does build things very well. The suspense in this show is enough to drive anyone mad with the eagerness to find out what happens next. That is mainly because the pacing and knowing what and when to reveal things is very well executed in order to keep you on your toes. Knowing when it is a right time to scare you, make you feel uncomfortable and uneasy and knowing when to give you relief. It toys with your emotions to keep you on edge. But if it keeps building up, then it needs a payoff, otherwise what is the point? While it does cut it a bit close, it does pay off in the final episodes of this season. Characters: 9.5/10 The trio of Emma, Norman and Ray make up our main characters. They all compliment each other in some way with their personalities being different and flawed. Emma has a lively personality and is very thoughtful of others, but she is also the most naive out of the three and doesn't know when to stop. Norman is the level headed one, as well as being very calm and collective, but has a soft spot for Emma so he normally agrees for what she does. Ray is the rational and critical one of the group, but is not willing to take too many risks that could very well danger his friends. So these three compliment each other well as they cover their flaws and when they put their minds together, they can do great things. Yet while they do have the mindset and intelligence of an adult due to their education, they are still children. While they are smart, they are still naive to the dangers of the outside world and the setbacks that could be in place when their plans don't work they way they intended. Giving us some realisation of the age of our characters and that they still have some things to learn. The rest of the children are just faces with names with the exception of some but they act as a nice reminder of what Emma, Norman and Ray are fighting for. To make sure to change these sweet, innocent children's' fate and give them a better future. Their main obstacle of course is the deceptive, cunning and well prepared caretaker of the house, Isabella. And MY WORD she is terrifying. More terrifying than the daemons. What makes her terrifying though is her intelligence. She always seems to be prepared as to what the main characters are going to do next. She is able to easily predict their moves and get constant information on their actions, almost as like she has dealt with this sort of thing before. She never really worries and manages to keep a calm demeanour. It is the fact she never worries about the kids escaping leaves the viewer questions and adds to the mystery of where they are. We question why she is calm, why is she not doing anything, why is she not quelling the escape plan immediately. To give them false hope maybe? Or does she already know they have no chance of escaping. She won't simply ship them out to quell the problem, she would rather try to break their spirits to keep them in place. She would even add a wild card into the mix in the form of Sister Krone, a loud, loving, but bats**t crazy assistant to Isabella; yet is she in a alliance with Isabella? Again, she is a wild card into the mix to give the children another ally or another enemy? Animation: 10/10 Cloverworks takes the reign for the animation in this series. A roughly 1 year old studio that has done the animation for shows like Bunny Girl Senpai and the anime adaptation of Persona 5. So I din't really know what to expect. Well I'm glad to say that the animation for The Promised Neverland is damn good. What makes it good though, are two main things. The first main thing is the character motions are fluid. There is a lack of really noticeable frame by frame motion as they move naturally when they run or when they are in fear. The fluidity is very good. The other main point are the facial expressions. They are really expressive in this series, especially when the children are scared as their shrunk pupils, their tensed up faces and subtle movements make them generally scared of the situation. But other faces like Isabella's many calm and scheming faces or Krone's many terrifying expressions that would make even the faces in Higurashi wince a little. It adds to the horror because its visually scary. You are getting scared or unnerved by something simple yet unnerving at the same time. Sound: 9.5/10 The soundtrack is not prominent in this series. Often times, it is just silence as we just hear the characters voices and their footsteps on either grass or wooden floorboards. Often times for the better as we just need to hear these sounds to make us feel tense as we know someone or something is coming. The ost only plays when it needs to be played to amplify a scene and when it does, oh boy does it amplify a scene. The soundtrack can be really menacing at times as it likes to escalate the fear factor of the scene to make you quiver in fear. It is definitely a great addition to a scene and the fact they are used only sparingly makes it much better. Then there is the opening. Without a doubt the best opening of this season. Don't argue me on this, it is very clear that "Touch Off" by UVERworld is the best opening this season. The lyrics, the animation and the pace of the opening are brilliant. But what seals it is the symbolism in this opening. The use of puzzle pieces to symbolise the pieces of the plan, as well as the red string burning to ash to symbolise that they will not be tied to the strings of fate and will run to break out of their fate. It is used so well and matches the pace of the song. Speaking of the song, it is weird that the simple sounds of "Nanananananananana" would be so catchy. Well when used correctly it can be. So in summary, song great, animation great, pace great, symbolism great. Simply put, it's a fantastic opening. The ending sequences are pretty standard IMO. It uses symbolism and imagery as well to set a tone. And the songs used in these endings are also great. It helps cap off a great OST that this series provides. I didn't skip them as I enjoyed them, but they didn't wow me. Conclusion: So the question I asked earlier was that does the Promised Neverland stand in the upper echelon of other horror anime? Well if it wasn't obvious by now, it does. The Promised Neverland is a fantastic anime with a gripping plot, likeable characters, a terrifying villain, great animation, a cleverly used OST and the best opening this season. I'm glad The Promised Neverland turned out as good as it did. Horror anime is something difficult to get right. Even last year, only one horror anime managed to get horror right IMO and that was Happy Sugar Life. Yet The Promised Neverland gets it right immediately. The horror in this series is unnerving, suspenseful, tense and terrifying while also incorporating Shonun elements to improve the tension of a scene. It knows it can't be scary all of the time, but knows it has to build to it and to not use it frequently so it doesn't lose its impact. I looked forward to every Thursday night waiting for the next episode to become available, which means its doing something right. It is without a doubt one of the best horror anime I've watched. A defining anime in a very good Winter Season of anime. And just maybe, it will still be considered by the end of the year to be one of the best anime of 2019. So yeah, just go watch it if you haven't. And the fact we still have more to come leaves me really excited to see what happens next. My Personal Enjoyment: 10/10 Overall score: 9.6/10 Recommendation: Go f***ing watch it

Yakusoku no Neverland is the biggest disappointment of the year so far. Not so much because it was so exceptionally bad, but because it had potential to be outstandingly great. What looked like a prime example of well-build thriller and highly atmospheric mystery end up being just a bunch of empty promises. Perhaps the English title, 'Promised Neverland' is actually a self-parody since following the series was an experience far from magical. At least one thing the series foreshows, I guess. The first 4 episodes are all passable, of highly respectable quality to be exact. I was impressed by how it managed to gasp myattention with audiovisual story-telling and directing that was nothing less than immersive. Originally, I wrote a preliminary review with an 8/10 rating just to show how much I liked the series at that point. Then the actual story started rolling onward and the downhill was quite radical. Essentially, everything in the series exists just to delay anything from happening since apparently, there is no substance to offer here outside the superficial plot points, false-tension, beyond obvious cliffhangers, and mind-numbing twists which look like the outcome of plot bingo. Double agents, triple agents and mind games so psychologically inaccurate they aren't even laughable but facepalm-worthy. By episode 6, I was left stunned by how practically every bit of potential that there was had been destroyed by giving priority to some sort of pseudo-complex tactics instead of relying on the simple settings that already had enough room to work as a linear story. Don't get me wrong tho. I love depth and complexity, but I also strongly dislike them when done lousily/half-assedly. These need several different things from build up and planning to slow pace and development for them to work. There is nothing that even remotely is making the "depth" seen in Yakusoku no Neverland seem probable or believable, often being the opposite of awe. There simply isn't much work put behind it. To put it simply: "Show don't tell" is one of the best philosophies to live by, but Yakuskoku no Neverland is all tell and very little show. Details are not valued but instead the entire thing is just rushed thru in a manner so lame that the reveals don't even look like proper twits but empty, content-lacking ideas. Good example of how terrible the story events become is a scene that starts at the end of episode 5 and continues all the way thru the first half of 6th. **The next paragraph describes and spoils these events** SPOILERS: Secret door exists behind a bookshelf. Getting into that room where the shelf is is dangerous because the kids are not supposed to be there. Two characters go there anyway and one of them starts raging at shit (loudly, duh) for not knowing how to open the bookshelf door, followed by another character quite literally saying "use your eyes" and discovering how to solve this 'puzzle' mere 3 seconds later, followed by the door to the room-where-no-one-should-be starting to open slowly. >>cliffhanger, and wait 1 week to see what happens. *me yawwning for one week* Oh, look, it is false alarm, just another kid playing hide'n seek opening the door. Literally who could have guessed. Well, too bad there is actually a locked door behind the bookshelf puzzle, but this gets also solved in 3 seconds when black kid becomes a masterthief, bumps into mother and now we have the key and can open the door.... I was struggling here not to drown in my own drool. The events -- not just this single example -- are braindamagingly horribly written and executed and I have no idea how people manage to tolerate such levels of bullshit without getting annoyed by them. [/Spoilers End.] The writer practically never challenges himself. Whenever our characters and story are cornered, he seeks the easiest way out. After the promising start, even the character behavior starts to more like resemble 'actions and dialogue that are masked as devices' in the narrative. Emma taking Ray's hand for a split second just to create yandere-like psychological outburst that feels completely random and out of place, giving me Mirai Nikki vibes rather than even mildly resembling her genuine behavior. Ray "The Fetus Memory Man's" character seemed more and more like a puppet the further the series advanced, him practically becoming a walking keikaku doori. Sister's existence is filler at best. I would call Emma's zero fucks given attitude there "character development" since she was such a naive moral soldier in the beginning, but I am sure she was just getting as tired of watching these "twists" as I was. Originally, I compared Yakosoku no Neverland's atmosphere to something which is commonly only achievable in video games, but at the end, if this was a game, the only thing there is left are the immersion-ruining, heavily scripted events that are the epitome of disbelief, and casting that behaves like npc's. Perhaps I am being too kind praising the beginning. Even episode 1 already had a lousy cop-out in it when our main characters literally teleported from under a car to the middle of a field. And btw, this isn't even the only time when the question "How on earth did you manage to get from point a to point b?" Could be answered with "Oh, that. Yeah, I teleported." Given, I should have lowered my expectations already then, but I completely forgave it since it seemed like a mild flaw when the series otherwise was doing such convincing job, but as it is, I am very much non-happy now. It's likely that I wouldn't have become so disappointed with the series if I had been able to change my mindset for ironic -- or even more casual -- viewing after the beginning, but it was hard for I genuinely thought this was going to be a serious and intelligently constructed anime which I could like for serious reasons, but instead, the strongest sides there were, were pushed in the backgrounds, overtaken by the overwhelming amount of lame that the series' writing had to offer. I will be still waiting for that one "cute but edgy" show which doesn't make me feel like I am 20 years too old to watch.

Yakusoku no Neverland is a great anime. Despite of it's short comings and endless possibilities of being better it's still a great piece of work I say is better than most of its counterparts. Story: 10/10 From start to finish the story has been continuous and straightforward. The story was slightly complex and simplistic at the same time. I found it to be fine, as the story blends well with the characters and the setting. I found the focus of the plot to be quite interesting, unique, and well built. I found it as well hard to predict as it is surrounded with alot of questions and mystery. The individual elements of the story is done very well , I found it to be better watched in one sitting as it is an anime that connects continuously episode by episode. The ending of the anime I argue is really well done and the best of it's kind. Dramatic , tense and thrilling. Really kept me at the edge of my seat. If I was alone I probably would have shed a few tears. I felt a lot of emotions when I was watching the last episode. And that means a lot when I watch an anime that makes me feel something. Art: 8/10 The art fits well with the narrative , atmosphere and setting of the show. The art is well defined and animation wise it's smooth and consistent. The character designs I found to be well done and I liked it very much with it's cutesy mature type of art style I found very similar to a show like Made in Abyss which I very much like as well. The character designs fit's perfectly with their personalities. Sound: 8/10 The voice actors played their role really well and fits the characters. The background fits with the tone and atmosphere of the anime. I especially liked the opening song of the anime during the start of the song where it's shown in a first perspective view of venturing into darkness which really sets out the mood. The ending song is equally good as well. Both opening and ending songs were well done and quite notable. Characters: 9/10 The characters in this anime are a strong part of how much I enjoyed this show. Most of them are really smart and smarter for their own age but it doesn't really bother me, more so I think it's a really good choice, it makes me root for them even more. The characters are versed from rational to emotional and they play it out really well. The background of the caretaker's is well done and it made me understand where they are coming from. Enjoyment: 10/10 Some critics seemed to have not much enjoyed this show because of it's lack of depth and characterization , forced pacing , an okay art and etc. of all reasons the anime is not brought to it's full potential. And I understand that. But despite of all that, I enjoyed it very much. I was gripped , surprised, excited , thrilled and hopeful. This anime is perfect for non-manga readers. Though I probably won't be re-watching this any time soon. I'd say it only works once when you don't know what's happening. But that doesn't mean you won't enjoy it when you re-watch it. As much as I have said is contradictory and bias it is true. Most manga readers are probably disappointed since they expected something much more than this. But for normal anime fans and non-anime fans would probably be fine with it. It's fine to expect something great but it's also fine to appreciate it for what it is. With it's endless possibilities to become better, even if it doesn't, I anticipate for the sequel.