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181
20
Finished
Aug 1, 2016 to Jun 15, 2020
6.8/10
Average Review Score
55%
Recommend It
20
Reviews Worldwide
*CAUTION*: Contains minor spoilers. Skip to the last two paragraphs for the summary. It is really a twist of cruel irony that The Promised Neverland has lived up to its name in a way I did not expect it to: it continually PROMISED a clever, poignant story but NEVER followed it through. (I'm sorry I couldn't LAND this joke better.) TPN became an object of hot discussion among the manga-reading crowd already after the first few chapters. For all the good reasons, too: it was, at the time, a competently done psychological thriller, something that Weekly Shonen Jump typically didn't feature, which immediately made it stand outfrom the endless conveyor of action and sports series, low-brow comedies, and various mixtures thereof. And not just thatâright from the beginning TPN had established a gripping conflict with clear stakes, believable balance of power, and an awesome antagonist. Wow, what's not to like? All of this, combined with Urasawa-esque cliffhangers, made the first arc of TPN one of the tightest pieces of writing to come out in Weekly Jump this entire decade. Not perfect by any meansâbut damn impressive nonetheless. And more than that, it was a story that really wanted itself to be taken seriously. It was the first manga in many years that took relatively normal charactersâwithout any sort of superpowers or the likeâand put them in a relatively realistic setting where actions have intentions, words have meaning, and decisions have consequences. And then it just... took a bungee-jump off the cliff. Each and every time the plot itself would stretch a helping hand for the author to make a turnaround, they would high-five it and plunge deeper down the abyss of mediocrity. And if I were to identify every little bit that went wrong, you'd probably be reading this all day, so I'll just call out the most glaring, deal-breaking issues. CORE PROBLEM #1: Emma is far too sterile to be a protagonist. Don't get me wrong, Emma is not a bad *character* in principle. Her goals are lofty but ultimately agreeable. She is very one-note but could potentially work in a supporting role, considering both Normal and Ray are deeper, more relatable characters with some inner conflict that could work as a premise for a proper character arc. But the way she's written into the story makes the whole thing a farce. She's an overly optimistic Mary Sue with an unshakable conviction and a resilient physique, a set of traits typical of a better half of Jump protagonists of the last three decades at least. What makes this walking pile of cliche much worse, however, is that she is constantly put in charge of decisions based chiefly on her optimism, and this leads to situations where she is (or, by extension, her followers are) put in unnecessary danger or required to make some morally ambiguous choices... ...Thankfully, in *every single one* of those situations she suffers no long-term consequences and never actually *has* to make those morally ambiguous choices herself because others are eager to do it for her. For example, in the second major arc of the story, Emmaâwho at that point is already averse to all loss of lifeâneeds to pick a weapon for herself, but Ray suddenly picks one for her. Why does he do this? We learn the reason later when she reluctantly has to shoot said weapon to protect herself, andâlo and behold!âit just happens to be the only non-lethal weapon in that entire arsenal, which is something she didn't know about and never gave it a second thought. The enemy was then killed by somebody else, which was totally okay with her! Didn't even deserve a passing mention! Isn't it just wonderful when you get to cheat your way out of a situation that challenges your morals? And the same thing happens every time, really. She plays the card of the goody two-shoes, and the world's logic bends and contorts violently to her aspiration of never getting her hands dirty. If an enemy has to be killed, they will be killed by someone else; plenty of other characters are conveniently willing to take the fall, and Emma doesn't complain. If she makes a risky or erroneous choice, she never has to deal with the consequences herself, at least not for longâsomebody else will, anyway. Her obstinacy never comes into question and never really gets her into trouble... well, unless your definition of trouble is other kids yelling "Emma, you big dummy!" while crying profusely. Emma never processes her losses in a way that makes her question her methods going forward. What this means, essentially, is that there is no real progress to her character. She starts off as an unrealistically perfect, morally immaculate human being and ends the story in the same exact state. She never changes and never needs to. Her development stops several chapters into the story pretty much completely, and any further attempts at it end up with nothing of consequence. Naturally, even her last big sacrifice, which is already made on unreasonably favorable terms, ends up forgiven (read: cheated away) soon afterwardsâbecause the only semblance of consistency the story has is Emma consistently having her cake and eating it, too. She's got no business being as successful as she is; it simply feels undeserved and fake. Considering that she already starts the story with some pretty high specsâbeing a top-quality human material and all, already smarter at 11 y.o. than most adultsâshe fails to serve as a source of inspiration or a role model because the real world is never so overwhelmingly convenient. You don't start out as an overachieving genius with unquestioned leadership qualities, and it clearly isn't enough to just believe in yourself to attain an ambitious goal. In the real world, you won't conveniently have adults and/or helpful cues left by them that would tell you what to do every time you're at a loss. You will often be wrong, and just as often will fail to present convincing arguments even if they're sound. You will often find that there are no ready-made solutions for your situation and you will need to come up with new solutions by yourself. You will often find out that your humanity is actively working against youânot helping you. And, in the unfortunate case of having a close brush with death, you will find the experience deeply traumatizing. You will need to adapt to circumstances and be flexible. You will need to make hard decisions and be ready to pay the price if you take the hard way out. All of these simple principles could carve a great character out of an amorphous blob of stereotypes, but Emma's example teaches you nothing that could be realistically applied in the real world because she's cheating at *every single step* of the way and just coasting on her plot armor. You cannot do what Emma does and achieve even similar results, period. It would be the literary equivalent of telling a homeless person who has lived in poverty and misery most of their life to save for a house, or telling an incel virgin in their 30s to go seduce a beautiful woman, or telling an obese person with severe eating disorder to just eat lessâbecause that's clearly what they're equipped to do successfully if they only believe in themselvesâ˘. It's never relatable but it's always extremely frustrating. One might say this is the norm for a shonen protagonistâbut no, this is not the case at all, either! I mean, let's take perhaps the most typical, most Weekly-Jump-esque MC around: Luffy of One Piece (doubly relevant, as TPN's editor Sugita has also worked on it at some point). He is also overly optimistic, is unshakable in his convictions, with a clearly stated end goal and a badass physique. Sounds very similar to Emma on the surface. However, before he got to that point, he grew up in a literal lair of bandits, was best friends with trash scavengers who pretty much made him go through an obstacle course every time he wanted to play with them, had one of said friends apparently be killed before his eyes, and trained for years to master his unusual physique before he even got to leave the hometown. His morality is also remarkably grey in that he doesn't explicitly want to do good deeds and doesn't care for anyone who isn't his friend, crewmate, or family. By the D&D alignment system he would be somewhere on a fringe between a Chaotic Neutral and a Chaotic Good. He selfishly puts his crew through dangers for his own dream but also doesn't shirk from taking the hits for them. He makes rash and unfortunate decisions and in many cases pays dearly for it. He is traumatized by personal loss. He's also an actual criminal who has taken from others and made unprovoked attacks on the Navy, and the story does not pretend this will be written off even if he saves a nation or two. He bears the full weight of his sins, knowingly so, and does not expect a happily-ever-after when he's done. Not quite a Gary Stu, is he? Luffy is undoubtedly cartoony, but aside from the fantasy attributes coming from the setting and personal quirks like the narcolepsy and love for meat, he is, for the most part, a surprisingly grounded, fallible, well-balanced and three-dimensional character. His past informs his present, he has good and bad sides complementing each other, his self-confidence is grounded in the fact that he and his crew are some of the most ambitious and capable people in the world in their respective areas, who have spent their entire lives working their ass off to become better at what they do. I want to underline that at no point this is taken for granted, and both the in-universe characters and the readers know how much pain and trauma they had to go through to attain their amazing expertise. In contrast, Emma is a certified Lawful Good who grew up in a sheltered, happy, unproblematic environment with no hardships to strengthen her character, nor choices to make when there's an adult whose job is to decide everything for her, nor facilities to make her into a trained soldier she so very quickly becomes on demand (I'm pretty sure most of us had played outdoors as kids but not everyone grew enough bulk from it to run long distances over deserts and forests with rifles and such). Her self-confidence is based on second-hand knowledge, unreasonable extrapolation of her relatively minor past experience onto the unknown, and her family, well... being good at being family, I guess. How this setting managed to produce such an all-around capable, successful, mentally resilient character, or how she managed to end up less down-to-earth than the protagonist of the high fantasy setting of One Piece is utterly beyond me. To go on a yet another tangent, most of the other children aren't much better in this regard, with none of them so much as soiling themselves or becoming catatonic after multiple actual near-death experiences. (I mean, this is still presented as a thriller series, right? Act the part sometime.) But all of them would bawl their eyes out every time they have to say goodbye to anyone or have an otherwise emotional scene with forced melodrama, of which there are plenty. How does this even work? This is neither the genre nor the setting where these discrepancies fly well; even if a story is fictional, it still has to be self-consistent and maintain enough realism to suspend disbelief. The way it is, almost the entire cast becomes completely unrelatable and, consequently, unlikable. CORE PROBLEM #2: Every antagonist after Isabella is a goddamn joke. It is no secret that many genres of fiction, especially thrillers, live and die by their antagonist. TPN has several major arcs, each having a main antagonist of sorts, for a total of four. For the opening arc, this is Isabella, the "mama" of Grace Field House, and she has been fantastic in this role. Being a human just like the other cast members, she is familiar, which leads the charactersâand the audience, by extensionâto question that which they *think* they've known, and this is very cool. Her motivation is also inherently human, and the backstory compelling enough that you don't have to question why she ended up this way. She is, above all, a relatable person, so one ends up accepting her ruthless demeanor not as an act of petty villainy but as a necessary trait for survival in her unfortunate position. These traitsâhumanity, relatability, and deceptivenessâare pretty much universally shared between all of the best literary antagonists out there, in manga or otherwise. But the other three antagonists of TPN are so boring and cartoony you'd have to pay anyone to care about them and their agenda. This will be the shortest section of this review because there's just so little to be said about these guys. The first one is a psychopathic, prideful, gluttonous, overpowered villain demon that hunts humans for fun and riles them up on purpose so that they come for him with extra bloodlust... so that he feels more thrill killing them. He also has superhuman strength, superhuman speed, superhuman endurance, and his mask is tougher than the rest. (Just typing this up makes me apathetic.) This is also where the "but this is just what we humans do to animals in our world!" metaphor breaks apart, because this guy is a certified criminal who would be charged guilty of animal cruelty and put into a mental institution at the very least if he were real. This is not what "we humans" do to animalsâno, in fact, this is something for which we humans *punish other humans*. Naturally, the guy is completely flat and uninteresting, and is disposed of in a very disappointing manner in a lazy shonen shoot-out that is nowhere near as gripping as the mind games of the first arc. The second one is also a psychopathic, prideful, gluttonous, overpowered villain demon, but with one-tenth the creative budget. She has even more superhuman strength, etc. She's so non-descriptive and uninteresting I don't even know what else to write about her. I couldn't come up with any antagonist more boring and faceless even if I'd tried. Oh, but she's *literally* faceless. I guess that checks out? And then there's a human edgelord who would have been the principal antagonist of the entire series if his presence ever amounted to anything but a temporary setback for Emma and her rescue rangers. His personality? Of course, he's psychopathic, prideful... well, you get the idea. They're all cardboard cut-outs made from the same basic stencil, neither engaging nor relatable. This guy in particular dies the most hilarious death. It's so stupid and wonderfully convenient I can't even mock it better than it mocks itself. The whole sequence is completely devoid of logic and reads like satire. Of course, without good antagonists, the psychological thriller aspect breaks down completely, and all unresolved conflicts become a pile of loosely connected garbage you don't want to sift through, let alone empathize with protagonists who choose to. There's just no point nor reason to care anymore. But you know who would be a great antagonist? Norman! He's somebody we are inherently invested into, somebody who is smart and relatable, with an ultimately well-meaning motivation that is just a step away from being corrupted by fear and newfound power, and he is close enough to Emma that it would force her to think and make some very hard decisions instead of taking the easy road for the win/win scenarios. Sounds perfect, right? And he's almost set up that way... but nope, we have to deal with these sorry losers instead. I have no idea who came up with Isabella and Sister Krone, but I find it hard to believe it was Kaiu Shirai, judging by their laughable attempts to write anybody else and always arriving at the *exact same* poor result. The sad part is there have been plenty of opportunities to make actually good antagonists and a more engaging power play if only the author was willing to take some risks with the characters. Unfortunately, herein lies the core problem #3... CORE PROBLEM #3: Kaiu Shirai is, after all, a weak, risk-averse writer without any clear message to tell. This is probably the most damning one. The Promised Neverland has a really good premise and would have been an all-time hit if it had played all of its cards right. And make no mistakeâthere were a *lot* of cards to play. Opportunities to take the story in much more convincing, daring, interesting directions were aplenty. Instead, the author almost always chose to tread by far the safest, most predictable and least controversial paths. Even the brightest plot ideas were beaten into the most trite, cliche-ridden pieces of uninspired shonen action. Furthermore, it would often be muddled even moreâand on purpose!âby sudden tonal shifts from completely serious to comedic, as if the author were actually scared that the audience would take the already shaky narrative seriously after setting up such a convincing world that demanded better. To put the changes in more concrete terms... The horror and mind game aspects from the opening arc evaporate almost completely along the way and are replaced by dumb action (where the solution is quite literally "bring better guns") and occasional tone-deaf comedy. The ethical dilemmas raised so sharply in the beginning are dodged and resolved in increasingly convenient, low-stake mannersâthe author would not hesitate to use deus ex machinae if needed. Characters become able to achieve unrealistic feats of hardware and software engineering which are hand-waved by "well, they're geniuses, duh" without ever accounting for the fact that making anything complex or precise requires reference materials and tools that enable that complexity or precision in the first placeâand I doubt they would be conveniently lying around in an alien world which looks like it's gotten stuck in the Bronze Age. The kids' athleticism and control over their body also becomes so comically exaggerated that at one point a girl in her mid-teens can be seen shooting two heavy machineguns, each of them probably half her entire body mass, while standing on a tree branch, unsupported, without any regard for the recoil. So yeah, they basically gain physics-defying superpowers as well. Naturally, this means that every message, every piece of social commentary that is normal to have in any given storyâas either an attempt to put an idea forth or to discuss its implicationsâfalls completely flat in TPN. Even the pro-vegan message that everyone had considered to be on the nose in the beginning ended up nothing more than a red herring in the end. I'm not sure if this was an attempt at subversion (subverting veganism with a herring?) or just an admittance of failure to make a convincing point, but either way it went nowhere. Both the premises and the resolution to the conflict between the eaters and the eaten undermined the argument that could be made in favor of veganism, or at least in favor of not engaging in livestock breeding. And I don't even subscribe to any particular side of this or other argumentsâI just wanted them to be convincing and self-consistent in their presentation! There are other themes, concepts, ethical dilemmas, and questions that could have been explored but were only briefly touched, such as: * The dangers of recklessness (raised but never explored). * Machiavellianism (toyed with but snuffed out and forgotten). * The law of the jungle (invoked multiple times but miraculously averted each time the opponent was a human). * Corruption of power (briefly mentioned but not explored). * Life fulfillment (briefly mentioned and promptly dealt away with). * Utilitarianism (raised multiple times but mostly dodged). * The ethics of euthanasia (touched upon but never explored). * Redemption arc (invoked multiple times but was almost comically shallow in every case). * Forgiveness of cardinal sins (something Emma and others are all too eager to do for both humans and demons, but it's never discussed). * Likewise with all of the hinted-at religious undertones and many more aspects that were either never explored or were dealt away with in the most crude and hamfisted manner. There are tons of other manga that have done these and more; perhaps not at once but in a much more elegant and thoughtful mannerâwhich is more important. Even the blockbuster Attack on Titan, which many people only perceive as a dumb schlocky action romp, has actually addressed many of these concepts quite thoroughly and from a more balanced viewpoint. There is also the issue of overusing cliffhangers andâworse stillâexaggerating scenes at the end of a chapter and then retroactively modifying them at the beginning of the next one (such as by inserting extra dialogue or moderating them to be less impactful). To put it into perspective, somebody like Naoki Urasawa executes a cliffhanger by arranging the presentation of events such that the engagement peaks right at the end of a chapter, so the only thing he has to do there is cut the chapter off at the right time, like when a character reacts to something. When Shirai does a cliffhanger, they're *misrepresenting* the events to be more exciting than they appear in the next chapter, thereby artificially doping the engagement. In other words, "oh, it didn't actually happen like thatâthat was just me messing with you" is what happens. This deliberate sabotage of narrative consistency between adjacent chapters is a pretty egregious offense by any literary standards. It is such a cheap, aggravating way to engage the audience I'm surprised the editor allowed a continuous abuse of this trick. Right up there with that Shinsekai Yori scene where the MC mistakes one character for another *for no reason* other than to rile up the audience's expectations for the next episode. I'm normally against corporal punishment, but public flogging of such authors suddenly sounds appealing to me. But the most baffling part, perhaps, is that the blueprint for the entire story had been completedâget thisâ*years in advance* while Shirai and their editor were looking for an artist. There was more than enough time to flesh out the narrative and make the charactersâparticularly Emmaâmore complex and three-dimensional. Again, the opportunity wasn't taken, and it's all conforming to a consistent trend of being lazy, cowardly, and/or uncreative. At this point I'm fully convinced that the better parts of the story were coined by somebody else entirely; I refuse to believe that an author who could do so well in the beginning and had this much time on their hands to work on the story could ruin it to such an extent. But even if that is actually the case, it only drives home the point that in the end it's not the ideas that matter but their execution. To summarize, The Promised Neverland is a story that could have been fantastic and had continuously promised to do better but barely managed to escape utter mediocrity by the end of its run. The first arc is a high 8 out of 10 on its own, but the rest averages out to a weak 5. So my resulting score is a 6 as a nod to all the squandered goodness. Disappointing, very disappointing. My advice would be to read the first arc (or, alternatively, watch the first cour of the TV adaptation, as it covers the whole arc and does it just about as well as the manga). If you notice something in it that annoys you or may become a potential deal-breaker, be sure that from that point on it will only get much worse, so it's best to stop there and treat it as a self-contained story. But if you were perfectly happy with how it went, proceed at your own risk. Some have enjoyed this to the end, after all. 2022/04: MAL now has Interest Stacks, a feature that allows creating thematic listings, so I've made one for similarly disappointing manga with a good start: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/2361.
At Grace Field House, life could not be better for the orphans! Though they have no parents, together with the other kids and a kind "Mama" who cares for them, they form one big happy family. No child is ever overlooked, especially since they are all adopted by the age of 12. Their daily lives involve rigorous tests, but afterward, they are allowed to play outside. There is only one rule they must obey: do not leave the orphanage. But one day, two top-scoring orphans, Emma and Norman, venture past the gate and unearth the harrowing secret behind their entire existence. Utilizing their quick-wittedness, the children must work together to somehow change their predetermined fate. [Written by MAL Rewrite]
The Promised Neverland was one of the first manga I ever read, the first manga I bought and was a manga I stuck with for many years, so I clearly feel a little bit sad that this manga is finally complete and the journey was over. But sadly those emotions are also clouded by tons of disappointment by the end as it was almost depressing seeing how far this manga fell from grace overtime. Story & Writing (3/10) The manga in my opinion, easily has one of the best starts in all of manga for me with the Escape Arc. It's a simple concept but with theshowcase of mindgames between Isabella and her children in the orphanage as they tried to find a way to escape and survive, it was incredibly thrilling, captivating, mysterious and left me on the edge of my seat. Each single step towards escape was well crafted and planned, and seemed to have a good payoff too. But then after the arc, as the mystery themes faded a bit and it transitioned to a new kind of storyline, mainly focusing on survival and discovery, The Promised Neverland was slowly faltering a bit. It still was progressing fairly well in the Goldy Pond arc with good mysteries and plot elements being set up to understand what is happening with the world, but minor cracks were showing here and there with it. Unfortunately after that arc, that's where the manga starts to fall apart for me - with the final arc. All the plot twists, cliffhangers, tension building, well crafted storytelling for its mindgames and world building, were all thrown out of the window as the manga lazily tried to end the entire storyline in the most passive, underwhelming ways possible. Twists felt like they underdelivered massively with payoffs, or some twists felt incredibly rushed, some felt like it was too easy to solve or that the consequences were barely present that it came across as comedic. All the amazing detail and writing just washed away and the manga ended in such a timid, and mediocre fashion that it truly was depressing to witness as a long term fan of the past. Shame that Shirai could not tie the plot threads together whatsoever and instead just slapped on some bullshit to somewhat end it. Characters (4/10) The main trio were very likable at the start. You have the optimist and charming girl in Emma, and the guys who were incredibly smart and observational and cunning too in Norman and Ray. With a main trio that's likable, well written and even fascinating to watch at the start, as they try to scheme against an interesting villain in Isabella, the caretaker, the cast was well set right from the get-go. Even the other children were fairly nice too. But again, after Goldy Pond, a ton of characterization felt incredibly wasted due to meaningless twists, ruining the potential of what could have been a great cast. Not to mention, a lot of the motives were one dimensional and that led to affecting the plot massively, especially with Emma in the second half of the manga not being able to change her ways of thinking which led to her acting as a driving force for a ton of the plot issues that led to happen afterwards. Norman's character was just a massive clusterfuck too by the end with so many inconsistencies added to his character that resulted in little payoff whatsoever. Not to mention, the antagonists in general were mediocre as hell except Isabella. Uninteresting, underwritten and as one dimensional as Emma. Even stupid to a degree I would say. Art (9/10) I feel bad for Posuka Demizu since her art actually was really good except some inconsistencies at times with designs, especially with Norman in the middle of the manga. Her art was very expressive, with great character designs and amazing cover art that look truly wallpaper worthy. The designs were fantastic, the setting was well portrayed and even the antagonists and monsters looked good. Sadly, Shirai let her down with poor storytelling big time. Enjoyment (4/10) The enjoyment was a 10 for me in the first half, but a 0 for me by the end given the number of failures in writing that occurred every single chapter, leading to more and more issues and frustrations. Overall, a manga that had everything amazing going for it, but washing it away with its final arc due to bad writing and failures of solving mysteries and delivering great payoffs for the amount of tension and twists that were setup that led to a 10/10 worthy manga limping all the way to an average rating. It's amazing how many Shounen Jump manga have brilliant starts but throw it all the way in the middle or at the end, and The Promised Neverland may personally be the most painful example of that for me. What a shame. Score 4/10
Note: this review contains some minor spoilers Yakusoku no Neverland is a manga that started great, then lost its drive for a mediocre middle part, picked up a bit of the steam for the later part with a different driving force for the interest but failed to do a satisfactory/interesting ending. As mentioned, the first part is the best. Unfortunately the rest of the manga fails to catch up to the hype by both the first arc of the manga itself and by the well done anime adaptation of the said arc. The protagonists, the villains, the revelations, there is not a dull moment inthis arc. One thing about the characters is that you have suspend your disbelief to accept that those very young kids are perfectly capable of waging Death Note-esque mind wars, but this is at least somehow excused by the setting being orphanage that focuses on creating extremely gifted children. Regrettably, those engaging mindgames recede into the background as the next part focuses more on fighting capabilities and firepower. Some smartness is still included, but it can be abbreviated to running around, hiding and gunning down the demons while occasionally being hunted in turn. Or maybe the other way around. This is undoubtedly the weakest part that feels a bit repetitive and most importantly far from the uniqueness of the first part. It's still not bad, mind you, but it's still not exactly great either. Now, contrary to the popular opinion, I don't believe Yakusoku no Neverland only went downhill. I, for one, enjoyed the demon politics, hierarchy and the power struggle between them. I also enjoyed the changes within a certain character that made them grow colder as they had to sacrifice their feelings for a personal good, which also helped to make a contrast with Emma and quite surprisingly made her something more than just a generic goody two-shoes "everyone must be happy" character. While she still is beamingly positive, it is shown that those are not just reflexive reactions and she too is willing to go to greater lengths for what she believes is the greater good. Emma wasn't my favourite, but this part certainly made good job of making the reader understand her closer. The later part also has one of my most favourite moments in the whole manga to which I will refer as to a "dog girl" to avoid giving too much spoilers. It was one of the greatest twists in the series that really makes you feel and consider some other sides of the story. Reversal of expectations, in a good way. Compared to for example the final "villain" turning out to be a weird goblin with riddles who seemed to create the whole conclusion just for the lulz it makes out the uninterestingness of the ending stand out even more. The finale just doesn't fit the mood. Heroic sacrifice that gets toned down to what is just a minor inconvenience in the context of the overall situation feels just like pouring boiling water on your ice-cream. I certainly expected some more ballsy ending than this. Emma is shown to be stubborn lawful good and for this to have a character pay-out her decisions should have their full consequences to give weight to actions she did to follow through with her belief. Overall this is still an enjoyable watch that compensates for its weaker parts with the brilliant parts. You might not enjoy every part of it, but as a whole you'll most likely like it.
The Promised Neverland has an extremely strong start. The first arc is a genuinely fantastic thriller with interesting characters and a very compelling mystery. Unfortunately, the series starts to go downhill around the point where the anime ends, and becomes extremely repetitive. Combined with a very unsatisfying conclusion, this leads to the series not even reaching close to the potential its strong start showed. If you do view The Promised Neverland, I recommend stopping reading it at the end of the first arc. Many of the central mysteries of the premise, such as "what are the demons", do not have satisfying answers.
It really, really hurts to see Neverland end with a whimper like this. To say the series started off strong would be an understatement, it grabs you by the balls within the first chapter and never lets go⌠well, until the end of the first arc, that is. Afterwards, things start to take a slow decline in quality, until it enters its final arc and absolutely nosedives into irredeemable garbage territory. Letâs start off with the thing I didnât mind too much about it by the end. Art: 8/10 Posukaâs art isnât the most complex, but itâs very charming, and adds a lot of style to theseries. Her coloring and composition skills in particular are absolutely top tier, just glancing at the volume covers should tell you that much. The art ends up a little odd at times towards the end of the series, but itâs nothing all that noticeable. Overall, this is by far most consistent aspect of the series, props to Posuka. But now that thatâs out of the way, well... Story: 1/10 (First arc: 9/10) The first arc of the series is by far one of the best starting arcs in any manga. Hooks you right way, and then it never stops being tense, interesting, and an absolute thrill to read through. This is due to the fact that this starting arc had already been meticulously planned by Kaiu Shirai and Posuka Demizu prior to publishing, as a STANDALONE STORY. This detail is very important, because itâs the reason this arc is so insanely well executed. Perfectly paced, perfect foreshadowing, perfect ending, itâs great, works just fine by itself. The problem, though, is that after this arc, they had absolutely no idea where to go next, and it shows. With the addition of some plot devices, they manage to justify extending the series as a full weekly shounen manga, and the story after this point changes drastically. The series ditches its super intense mind games to become a fantasy adventure manga, and to be completely honest, itâs not all that bad at first. Itâs not as good as the escape arc, sure, but the Goldy Pond arc manages to be decently tense and fun to read through, despite not being part of the original plan. The issue comes right after this, when itâs starts to become clear they donât really have any clue where theyâre going with this story, and theyâre just making up stuff along the way and hope they manage to stick the landing eventually. And man, they did not stick the landing. After a 2 year timeskip, the series enters its final arc. An absolute atrocity of storytelling. It starts off alright, then it trails off into an incoherent mess of plot points, themes and character motivations that all add up to a completely worthless experience that invalidates anything that came prior to that point. Whatever redeeming qualities the series had completely vanish. Plot points get introduced, and forgotten about within 2 chapters. Characters that were once important are now background characters. Conflicts are extremely bland, and impossible to care about when you know theyâll get resolved by the unbeatable talk no-jutsu. And dear god, the worst of all, the pacing. This felt like 150-200 chapters worth of story condensed into such a tiny space that any and all enjoyment that could be derived from it got squeezed out, and only a series of plot points remain. For a series with such a strong start where the writer proved he could do good stuff, the fact that we managed to get here is baffling. Characters: 1/10 (First arc: 8/10) Emma, Norman and Ray werenât any kind of insanely complex protagonists, but they did the job well. They were all unique from each other, and worked super well together. Watching them figure out things and succeed was very satisfying, watching them fail miserably felt heartbreaking. I admit, I got very invested in the little brats by the end of the first arc. The side characters werenât too bad either, and the villain especially stood out as both empathetic and absolutely terrifying, almost singlehandedly giving the arc an oppresive, tense atmosphere like nothing Iâve ever seen. I really did love the cast, which is why Iâm livid at just how poorly mishandled they have been, and itâs all due to one character: EMMA. After the first arc, Ray gets reduced to nothing more than a glorified yes-man. He completely loses any individuality he had, and doesnât do anything other than agree with Emma, and hang out in the background of panels sometimes. Normanâs treatment has been even worse. As the one interesting character still remaining in the final arc, in the span of one chapter Emma manages to make him do a completely 180 on his beliefs and destroy whatever semblance of character he still even had. Theyâre not even the only ones treated this way. Hell, sometimes characters come back from the dead just to help her. With the power of talk no-jutsu and friendship, she single-handedly defeats any kind of obstacle that ever came in her way, and single-handedly ruined any kind of tension or stakes the manga had left. No doubt, the single biggest reason this manga went to shit like it did. Fuck Emma. Enjoyment: 0/10 (First arc: 10/10) The Escape arc is one of the best experiences with manga Iâve ever had. I remember seeing the name The Promised Neverland offhandedly mentioned somewhere, looked it up and saw the cover, thought it looked pretty cool. Started reading it completely blind, and little did I know Iâd be taken on an adventure filled with intrigue, heartbreak, betrayal, sacrifice, and triumph, no doubt one of the wildest rides Iâve ever been on with any story. For this reason, seeing the series turn into a shell of its former self and eventually into one of the biggest steaming piles of doo-doo WSJ has ever seen has been absolutely depressing. After the dip in quality after the first arc, I was one of the dudes still defending the series, holding out for the moment it becomes good again. And I waited. And I waited. But that moment never came. The series did nothing but plummet deeper and deeper into oblivion, until any hope I had left was gone. The series becomes nothing. Thereâs nothing to like about it, nothing to get invested in, nothing interesting it tries to say or do. It might as well just be blank pages for 100 chapters, thereâd be the same amount of enjoyment in it. I feel as if someone killed one of my loved ones in front of my eyes, skinned them, then taxidermied them, and now all Iâm looking at is an empty husk that barely resembles them. Itâs really, really bad. Overall: 3/10 Having just finished the final chapter, youâd think Iâd feel something considering this was a series I was deeply invested in at one point. But nope, I feel absolutely nothing. Iâm even kind of happy the series is finally done and I donât have to read it anymore. It becomes clear that the series never had any kind of point to it to begin with. It betrays any expectations I had for it, and ironic to its name, never delivers on its promises. By the end, I didnât end up with anything except regret that I didnât drop it before it got to this point, and a whole lot of time Iâll never get back.