I recently rewatched the first season of The Promised Neverland and was amazed by it.
I had honestly forgot how incredible of an anime it was.
So, knowing that the second season had been delayed to 2021 because of Covid-19, I decided to read the manga in its entirety.
After reading it, the best way I can describe it is Tokyo Ghoul quality vs Tokyo Ghoul: Re quality.
Essentially, the first half of the manga is fantastic, just like Tokyo Ghoul, while the second half is still good but it does have a lot of problems, just like Tokyo Ghoul: Re, creating an experience that is, overall, still a lot of fun to read.
Written by Kaiu Shirai and illustrated by Posuka Demizu, The Promised Neverland follows children Emma, Norman and Ray who learn that the orphanage they live on is in reality a farm made to provide food for demons.
They, and the other children, then plan to escape and embark into the world of demons, a world that contains many friends and many foes.
As I said, the first half of The Promised Neverland is absolutely fantastic, with many great twists and characters to cheer for.
As if the characters from the first season like Emma, Norman, Ray, Isabella and Phil weren’t already amazing enough, the manga offers many more interesting characters like Mujika, Yuugo and Lucas.
Yugo and Lucas in particular are great additions to the cast and probably tied for my favourite characters in the entire story.
As for the old characters, they are just as great, with Emma standing out as a fantastic protagonist, especially in the Goldy Pond Arc.
Speaking of, Gondy Pond is definitely my favourite arc of the manga with it providing a lot of awesome fights, tension and character development.
The villain of that arc, Leuvis, is also just as intimidating as Isabella and Sister Krone were in the first season.
Unfortunately, this continued fantastic quality does not last as the story begins to have more and more flaws as it enters its second half.
One of these big flaws is character immunity.
It became quite clear towards the final stages of the story which characters were safe and which were not.
For a series that started off with the “anyone can die” mentality, it sure pulled a lot of punches by the end in regards to character deaths.
Another problem is those characters themselves or, more specifically, the amount of them.
There are so many characters that a lot of them don’t get the screen time they deserved.
Norman, Isabella and Phil are missing from huge chunks of the story and Ray becomes kind of a stagnant character.
The worst example of wasted character potential though definitely goes to Ayshe.
She is introduced in the last few arcs of The Promised Neverland and is given a fantastic backstory and motivation that looks set to put her on a revenge path that will cause her to conflict with some of our main characters.
However, after this backstory is revealed, she never does anything.
All of that fantastic build up the reveal of her past had turned out to be for nothing and made wonder why she was introduced in the first place.
There was also a complete deus ex machina towards the end that was very off putting.
As for the ending of the story, a lot of people have problems with it and, while I think those are valid, I still liked the ending and it did get me tearing up.
Which reminds me, I cried quite a few times when reading this manga.
Whenever the story ignored characters absurd plot armor and finally killed someone it almost always got a tear out of me.
So, I can definitely say that the good far outweighs the bad.
While the second half does have a lot of problems, The Promised Neverland is still a great manga that delivers a lot of emotional moments.
THE REVIEW MONSTER 