So, this is the first review of any series that I have done on this site for anime or manga. And I really hate that it is honestly. I don't normally feel the need to post reviews of the stories I have read. I just read and enjoy or dislike them as they are. The Promised Neverland is the first time I have ever really felt a need for me to go out of my way to write a review. And that is because it is such a disappointment that it went the way it did. It went from one of my new favorite stories
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to one that I appreciate for what it did well and loathe for ruining what could have been one of the potential new classics to define Shounen Jump going forwards. I will be trying to stay as spoiler free as possible throughout this review, so if I don’t really deep dive as much into things as I could that is why.
First, let me say that this series is worth reading. To a point. More on that in a bit. The initial arc is one of the best opening arcs in any series I have ever read or watched (for other anime, not this one specifically, to be clear). The art is fantastic, the premise is captivating, and the world building is interesting. Again, to a point (except the art, the art is great). If you are just trying to see if this series is worth your time, then you can ignore my score because while I have serious problems with the series as a whole, I cannot recommend the beginning of the story(the first arc specifically) enough and it is better to go into it with as little information and expectations as you can. That being said on to the review.
Story 5/10
Again, remember that this is a score based on the story in its entirety. The story is one that had great promise. The setup is very interesting and very well done. The stakes and goals are immediately established, make sense, and make you want to know more. It is initially a tense and at times horrifying read as the villain and protagonists interact and try to outwit one another. As the story continues, the mysteries of the world continue to unfold very well and build out the world to be a very believable and thought out fantasy world. There is a small dip in quality immediately following the first arc, but it didn't bother me much and picked back up soon after for the Goldy Pond arc. The action was usually very well presented and easy to read, the villain was interesting and threatening, and the character interactions and character development were very well done for the most part. However, we then get to the arcs following Goldy Pond. Around chapter 100 of the manga, the quality takes a sharp nosedive. The characters don't progress(I'll address that later), the way the story progresses makes no sense, and the reveals to mysteries the story has been building up since the beginning end up being either very underwhelming, nonsensical, contradictory to previous info, or not utilized to the fullest extent they could have been. The stakes end up being nonexistent as no one really has to sacrifice anything and people who by all rights should be dead don't die. The villains are poorly introduced, poorly written and developed, and meet their ends before they really do anything of importance. And if they do anything of importance, it is for very, let me repeat, very stupid reasons. By the last chapter, everything is wrapped up nicely with no real reasoning as to why it should have done so and the manga ends with everyone living happily ever after save one small caveat that is introduced literally a chapter before the story ends and is then resolved in the finale chapter, kind of. Even when I say everything is wrapped up, I am exaggerating since there are still large gaps in our knowledge of the world the story takes place in and story lines that were set up and just never go anywhere like the aforementioned caveat introduce in the second to last chapter.
Art 8/10
So really all I have to say about the art is that, in general, it is fantastic. The character designs are very distinct and original, especially the villains. It is slightly inconsistent as can be expected from a weekly manga but never really dips below good. The cover pages are a personal favorite aspect of mine and are very well composed and penned. I have nothing but praise for artist and excitement to see what they do next.
Character 3/10
Ok, onto my main issues. Again, like with the story, the beginning sections of the manga are great with good developments in the main characters, villains, and even a bit of the supporting cast. The main cast of Norman, Emma, and Ray are distinct from your generic run of the mill shounen protagonists at the start. They are all very intelligent with each of them specializing in some ways that makes them different from one another. Emma is very optimistic, sporty, athletic, and has great instincts. She can come off as very naïve but has real moments of growth and depth that hint to a slightly darker side to her. Ray is a straight-line pragmatist that knows things are not likely to go their way. He has a deep understanding of the challenges he and the others are facing and what they will need to sacrifice to do it. There are also a bunch of really cool layers to Ray that I’ll leave out here due to them being spoilers for the story, but he is a very complex, layered character that is one of the key parts in making the first sections of the story as engaging as they were. Then we have Norman, my personal favorite of the three in the opening segment. He is without question the smartest of the three with a deep understanding of strategy. He cares deeply for both Ray and especially Emma and will go to any lengths to help them. He is very optimistic but in a much more tempered and realistic fashion than Emma is. He is the main push throughout the first arc for the story going forwards and does his part there beautifully. But if my earlier segment has given you any indication, this great character setup and writing doesn’t extend past a certain point. Minor spoilers ahead if you want to avoid anything further into the story than the base descriptions of the main cast. Leading up to the Goldy Pond arc, the characterization of Emma and Ray continues to expand with them developing in very interesting directions. But after Goldy Pond, this is thrown out. After Goldy Pond, Emma becomes very much a standard, stock mold shounen protagonist with the powers of talk-no-jutsu in full effect. No problem presented to Emma after Goldy Pond is able to stand a chance of not submitting to Emma talking it away. Ray I honestly forgot was part of the story after a while with him only being involved peripherally for the large majority of the last 80 or so chapters. And Norman…well Norman is a special case. Without going into specifics for spoiler reasons, Noman’s character was assassinated in the later sections of the story. The ramifications of actions that he takes are either so convenient it is honestly laughable at points or made no sense as a logical progression of what had happened leading up to that moment. The one path that could have been taken to somewhat salvage his character was cut off in one chapter with a 30 second talk-no-jutsu session with Emma in the middle of a literal battlefield, throwing away literal years of planning and choices he had made to get to that point. And none of this is going into the what happened with the ending and the shenanigans that happened there.
Enjoyment 6/10
This is difficult section for me. I joined in pretty late into the manga’s run so can’t say that I’ve been following from the beginning or anything. I started when the Goldy Pond arc was getting close to wrapping up around the chapter 80-85 mark. Being able to binge read that section of the story available is some of the most fun I’ve had reading or watching a story. It quickly became one of my favorite stories that had come out in years. But when I caught up is, like I have mentioned in other sections, just before the collapse of the story. Reading the back half of the series was an absolute drag at times. There was a point that I got 20 or even 30 chapters behind because I just couldn’t be bothered to keep up with the story. Even when the series ended, I was 10-15 chapters behind and had to catch up to just finish out the series. It was legitimately painful reading through that last 10 or so chapters with only the last 2 chapters even coming close to being any semblance of tolerable. It is just such a shame that such a promising start ended so poorly.
Overall 5/10
Like I said initially, I would still recommend people to read The Promised Neverland. It has some the best visual storytelling, directing, and panel layouts that the medium has to offer. The characters are fantastic, the world and story are captivating. You just need to know going in that there is likely going to be a point where you will notice a severe departure from what you might have liked in the beginning. I was in complete denial that the story’s quality had dropped until somewhere around the chapter 120 mark where I just couldn’t ignore that the series I had come to love had lost its way to complete mediocrity.
Jun 15, 2020
Yakusoku no Neverland
(Manga)
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So, this is the first review of any series that I have done on this site for anime or manga. And I really hate that it is honestly. I don't normally feel the need to post reviews of the stories I have read. I just read and enjoy or dislike them as they are. The Promised Neverland is the first time I have ever really felt a need for me to go out of my way to write a review. And that is because it is such a disappointment that it went the way it did. It went from one of my new favorite stories
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