Yakusoku no Neverland

(Spoiler warning of episode 1)
Thriller, horror, psychological and mystery. These 4 along with some genres I guess makes excellent shows not only in the anime industry but also in other platforms. This is because of there uniqueness. There outtake of the story is unique with uncommon sceneries, settings, characters, plot and conflict. This Winter 2019 anime season, we were introduced into the world of "The Promised Neverland". A world where if you are a healthy young blood, you will never like this world. You will never hope that you will be a main character of some parallel world or something. With kids being the main ... characters of the story, you thought this will be your typical "slice of life" drama or comedy things that you enjoy. But it turns out, not every show that have little children as the main character can always be light hearted. It can also become your worst nightmare.

Story:
The story of "The Promised Neverland" starts off with little kids in the Grace Field House, which is an orphanage. The three eldest of the family of children are Ray, Norman and Emma. The three of them are seen as talented, skillful, agile and intelligent base on what we see on the episode. From Hide and Seek to playing Tag, this two excels on physicality. They are seen as big brothers (Ray and Norman) and big sister (Emma) to other kids. Of course, these three will not take care of the children all by themselves right? The main caretaker is their "Mom" in the orphanage. She is your typical mother-like figure who loves her children so much and admire them. Everyone seems happy. Everyone is having fun. "Mom" loves her job. Children love her back. Ray, Emma and Norman are having a normal life until a departure of a friend came to play. A girl named "Connie" was about to depart or leave the orphanage because so-called "parents" are now going to take care of her. It was a joyous moment. Everyone was happy for her to leave and finally have a family. Then of course she left something behind and Emma and Norman proceeds to give it to her back to the gate. The night was really dark and a tragedy will happen. What Emma and Norman saw was not a family reunion. It was a murder, done by supernatural beings a.k.a "demons" from the "outer" world. Turns out that Emma, Ray, Norman and every single living child in the orphanage are "livestocks", caged in an orphanage surrounded with walls and vegetation. This drastic change of tone and mood of the atmosphere was overwhelmingly good. Plot twist on every episode synchronizing the characters' goals whether to escape or not. The Promised Neverland story is really unique among any other winter 2019 anime this season. It provides us a fresh idea of escaping one's position whether it is physically or mentally. It also delivers well with the plot twist making us audience grasp for more until the next episode and the plot twists are not just there to make us say "Wow okay". It is there because it connects to the story of the anime. It is there to not only surprise us viewers but also provide us the ongoing intake and pattern of the story without affecting the overall goal of it. In the end, The Promised Neverland is a type of anime where you must get involve to with its unique capability of placing plot twists on each scenes and an intensifying story. With each season having different types of genre but less/few mystery and thriller, The Promised Neverland is a great anime to start-off the year and it is a masterpiece.

Characters:
In the first episode of the anime, the joyful atmosphere made the personality of the three characters especially Norman and Emma. Norman is the master strategist and the one who admires Emma. Emma which is the girl who never backs down no matter what and have more physical capabilities than Norman and Ray. Ray, on the other hand have that gloomy tone (edgy one which makes sense because his hair looks like Sasuke) but he is also a master strategist like Norman. All of them looks normally fine and happy tho in the first few minutes of the episodes. As the plot twist came along, character development and their change started to appear. They became more fierce, deceiving and strong. Not to mention, Gilda and (character) as well. These kids were the highlight of the show and it was enjoyable and thrilling to watch them get over with the trials Mama and Sister Conney (who is a vital character that presented the possibility of children coming from the orphanage/House). All of these characters contributed to one of the best anime this season to come out ever.

Art:
After I watched some few episodes of the anime, I can't help not to read the manga as manga readers kept on telling how good the manga is. Comparing the art of the anime and manga, they are the same on my perspective. The anime captured the thrill, chilly atmosphere and the characters expression to every situation that they fall within. The shock factor of the characters, the cries, the demons, everything was intense with the art at played and it synchronizes with the music as well. Overall the art was good for the shock factor. It is not your best art but it fits the theme. Of course I have to mention the backgrounds of the OP and ED as they both define implicitly how dark or thrilling Promised Neverland is and they did it well.

Sound:
Ohhh boyyy the opening is really a hit on my ears. The OP's song and transition with the background art depicting how events can turn unfold without explicitly showing it is just excellent on the sound. The excitement, the rush to the chorus, the saxophone on the starting of the OP, it is all perfect. I have to worth mentioning the ED as well because it is a good one (but the OP is better). Aside from the songs, the background music whenever I chilling moment comes really goes through my spine and felt the chills. It captures well to the scene and makes the scene more thrilling. Overall, sound is perfectly played on this anime.

Overall thoughts and Enjoyment:
The Promised Neverland are one of the anime I am so engaged to watch on. It is mostly because of its engaging story. It captivates you to watch it more with its shock factor and plot twists on every scene. It makes me or you question "What is going to happen next?!" and once you get to know it, disappointment is not really there. Instead you will be fascinated how the author played out the scenes all correlating to the main conflict of the story. Hence, The Promised Neverland is a must-see show for those who wants to watch a thrilling anime that has no cliche or whatsoever. It is a fresh intake from the anime this Winter 2019 season and it is really really really enjoyable to watch.

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 of ... the 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 it ... stand 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 my ... attention 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 a ... lot 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.

Have you ever thought about escape?

The Promised Neverland starts with Emma, ​​a happy lucky girl who spends her days in pure happiness along with all the other orphans. All the children there enjoy their daily activities that are not as burdensome as playing, eating delicious food, and taking extensive tests with full focus ... but wait. This is when you realize that this is not an ordinary orphanage, but the children who grew up there completely forgot about it. It was only after Emma witnessed the terrible truth about the purpose of the orphanage surrounded by walls that she and several other orphans began to ... wonder about the mystery outside the orphanage.

I will make a concise summary so that you can enjoy this series comfortably and to keep the element of mystery intact, which I do with a phenomenal work to keep you intrigued while still maintaining a steady pace. This is very important because it is one aspect that makes you come back again.

We move to the character section. At first glance, the main character Emma is a typical shounen character beaming with optimism and cheerfulness. In fact, all the main characters are portrayed as intelligent in their own way and for good reasons. Unlike many shounen characters who are very stupid, the characters in this manga will do and think about everything the reader thinks.

Art is a priceless masterpiece. There is no problem for animation, they do a good job from the point of view of the camera, color selection, key animation, and character design. What I like most is that they are very solid in the quality of animation. I appreciate this video and need hard work.

I will summarize the two chapters in this paragraph, which is the voice and sensuality part of enjoying this series. Voices in this series are very suitable for the characters they play not only that they can also make a good opening theme without any spoilers in it. At first I heard the manga and light novels "Yakusoku no Neverland" from my friend, he recommended reading this manga and as a result I really liked this series.

Horror is a genre that I rarely see effectively executed in anime. In fact, the genre itself seems to be pretty scarce in the anime medium. The first episode of The Promised Neverland perfectly encapsulates how to properly utilize horror. The atmosphere is great. We’re presented with a seemingly happy orphanage life being lived out by the characters, all children, and their “mama.” Yet as the viewer, it becomes apparent that everything's not quite what it seems, and there’s just this sort of unnerving tension in the air. The presentation is also top notch. Visuals and music are handled expertly and are very complementary to ... the buildup and eventual revelation of the truth behind the Grace Field House, the farm that the characters live on. Yet despite the technical brilliance of the first episode, it concludes with the secrets of the children's home and their mama, named Isabella, being completely revealed. So where does the anime go from here?

That’s where the genius of the writing kicks in. The anime seamlessly transitions into more of a psychological battle of wits between Isabella and Norman, Emma, and Ray, the three primary protagonists. For after discovering the truth behind their lives, these three make a pact to escape from their home and cruel fate. The anime proceeds to focus on the brilliance of these three prodigies and how they attempt to outwit Isabella and escape with not just their lives, but the lives of their younger siblings, all under ten, as well. But Isabella isn’t just your run of the mill caretaker, and she actively attempts to foil the children’s plans and make them fall into despair. The escape plan itself is expertly crafted, and just seeing all of hard work the characters put into freeing themselves without getting caught is just a joy to watch. Deception and mind games are a commonality in each episode. And despite this transition in genres, the horror aspects of this show aren’t just completely discarded, because there’s always a sort of looming dread in the air, especially when the heroes are faced with the fear of being discovered by their mama. Oh, and Sister Krone’s entire character is simply horror inducing, so there’s that too. While Neverland isn’t pure horror, it’s just executed in such a way that makes it so convincing. The blend of genres works great, and they intertwine in such a way that allows for the narrative to be quite compelling.

And I really dig that.

I’ve always had a thing for intelligent characters, so I ended up liking all three of the child prodigy protagonists. I found it pretty interesting that the main characters were children, and the anime did a great job of incorporating behaviors and actions typically found in children to make them more believable instead of just having kids doing what adults would and could easily do in their place just for the sake of having a unique cast. They run around playing games like hide and go seek tag with the other children, ask for gifts from Mama as rewards for being good, and more. What makes these actions special is the fact that the anime actually incorporates them into the kids’ escape plan, which is the primary plot point, thus giving them value beyond simply bringing the characters to life.

On to the characters themselves. Norman is probably the most intelligent person in the show. He’s the sort of mastermind character who everyone else thinks they’ve outsmarted at some point only for him to be like “all according to keikaku” and explain how he outsmarted their outsmarting. He also has a crush on Emma and will do anything to save his family, even sacrifice himself if he has to. Let me remind you that this dude is 11 years old. What a badass. My only problem with Norman aside from his bizarrely animated profile is that he is pretty plain in the personality department. He’s still a chill dude nonetheless.

Emma is the lone girl in the triad of protagonists, and she’s a seemingly typical energetic/sporty girl. However, unlike most anime characters who fall under this archetype, Emma is no baka. She’s quite observant and intelligent, not to mention a great actor, and is a vital part of the plot. That’s right, this girl doesn’t just stand around and cheer on her friends. She’s heavily involved in planning and executing the escape, which increases the value and likability of her character. Her absolute moral righteousness could, however, potentially be a turn off for some people. While I appreciate her desire to save all of her beloved siblings, she can come off as quite stubborn with her complete denial at even the mention of anything morally ambiguous like leaving behind the younger kids to increase the survival odds of the rest. While this is by no means an inherently bad trait, it does take away from any potential layers that her character could of had.

Ray is voiced by Ise Mariya and has a super edgy character design, so you just know that he’s going to be a badass. This fiery boy will do anything for his two friends Emma and Norman, and would even sacrifice the other children and himself if it meant that those two could live. He’s generally level headed, but push him too far and his crazy side emerges. He even gets some distorted facial expressions during certain instances to further emphasize just how insane he can be. Though honestly, they’re sometimes a bit overstated. He’s an all around courageous character, though his courage sometimes causes him to enter the realm of recklessness.

The other children are primarily there to look cute and innocent and make viewers feel bad for them. I will say however that there seems to be more to Phil then meets the eye. I could totally see this kid being the true hero of the series…

The opening theme song, Touch Off by Uverworld, is, to put it bluntly, simply on fire! The first time I heard it in the anime, I just had to rewind and listen to it again because of how catchy it is. Maybe it’s just advanced recording and editing techniques, but the vocalist of Uverworld seems to have improved his vocal quality and control significantly from some of his earlier songs, which is also a plus. I’ve already briefly discussed how the animation and soundtrack positively contribute to the show’s atmosphere, and I’d just like to reiterate how effective they were most of the time. Unfortunately, there were a few awkward instances, such as music being played at times where it should most definitely have not been used. Also, there were some weird occurrences where the camera would just slowly pan through parts of the orphanage for long periods, and I’m not really sure what the purpose was. Maybe to show off the eerie place? Ultimately though, the production values for this anime are simply great.

This is a pretty awesome anime to be honest. Even if it sometimes gets a little ridiculous by over exaggerating the capabilities and personalities of the characters from time to time, it was still one enjoyable ride. I was captivated by each episode, even some of the duller ones, due to the anime’s excellent presentation. The Promised Neverland was definitely a success in my eyes, and I look forward to seeing where the series goes in the future!

Damn... Its been quite a long time since Ive given an anime a solid 10/10. I really want to critisize Yakusoku no Neverland but its just way too damn perfect! This anime actually nailed absolutly everything! There is just no other way to put it...
The story is phenomenal! I personally love the "escape" and "mind game" theme of the anime, and I would really love to see more animes with this theme. The way everything plays out is just so bloody brilliant! I love it!
The Art is one of the best I have every seen! Every second of this anime I could feel my ... eyes having the biggest bloody orgasm just holding in all the damn squirt.
The Sound... NANANA NANANA NANANA NA! I fucking love it! This anime without a doubt goes into my top 3 anime OPs list. The soundtrack also plays out so damn well!
I LOVE EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER! I could feel the emotions of all the characters. I have an interest for every single character. I have genuine interest in what the characters are thinking. Its just too damn brilliant... *Wipes tears*
As of this review, Im up to date with the Manga, and all the current episodes are just adapted way too damn well... I GENUINELY CANT CRITISIZE THIS ANIME! Everything is just too fucking good! EVERYTHING!
An anime has never been this interesting to me since "Made in Abyss".
Overall giving this anime a solid ∞/10. I enjoy every single episode and I have constant orgasms watching this adaptation. Absolute masterpiece right here lads! <3

The Promised Neverland is one of the most hauntingly brilliant anime I’ve seen in the last decade, and it definitely deserves the hype it’s receiving at the moment.

Horror is a genre that anime has always struggled with, as when you try to mash conventional horror tropes such as gore and disturbing imagery with eyes that take up half of a character's head, it usually isn’t horrific in the slightest bit. Because of this, horror in anime commonly strays away from the horror conventions of horror films in the western world, and instead revolves around psychological horror. This is the approach that The Promised Neverland has ... chosen to take when telling its story.

And it’s absolutely terrifying.

I suggest that you go into the first episode completely blind to get the full effect of the show, but if you need some more convincing as to why this show is worth your time, then read on.

The Promised Neverland revolves around a group of children that reside in an orphanage known as the “Grace Field House.” It’s an orphanage located in a secluded area in the woods, and the children that live in the orphanage are only given one rule by their “Mama”: they are not allowed to exit the gates of the orphanage that leads to the outside world, nor are they allowed to cross the fence that separates the children of the orphanage from the nearby forest. The children of the orphanage are raised to be naive, so they don’t question these rules. However, we as the viewer know something is off, which adds to the looming dread and tension of the beginning of the series.

Two of the kids then discover that the orphanage is actually a farm that raises children and prepares them for their “harvest”, when they’re murdered and fed to demons at a steep price. Upon discovering the truth of their existence, three of the orphans devise a plan to escape the orphanage once and for all.

After this, the story evolves into a terrifying cat and mouse game that is reminiscent of a series such as Death Note. There’s constant intellectual battles between the adults and the children, and the stakes are so incredibly high that it’s hard to stop watching. Every single scene feels more tense than the last, and the lingering fear of the chance that our three protagonists will be caught and immediately murdered permeates throughout the entirety of each episode.

Even more surprising about the series is that it’s based off of a Shonen Jump manga, and don’t let this turn you away from the show, as I checked out the source material and the manga feels nothing like the majority of the works published in the magazine. It feels far more Seinen than Shounen, and this adult edge helps to greatly elevate the levels of tension and horror in the manga.

Overall, The Promised Neverland is a terrifying look into despicable human behavior that could possibly make the entire anime community vegans due to its similarities with farm animal treatment. Jokes aside, The Promised Neverland is shaping up to be one of this years strongest shows, and one of the most horrifying anime of the past decade. This is not one that should be missed.

Apart from Dororo, this is my anime of the season! It's a flawed masterpiece and has earned a 9 from every single category I judge an anime on which is both a great thing but shows that it could've been executed slightly better overall and been a true masterpiece!

Art/Sound:
Cloverworks is not a studio I particularly like at all, however I must give them their props, apart from a couple of budget limitations in some occasional backgrounds or distant characters- the animation is mainly crisp and fluid with fantastic emotion being portrayed in the way each character is presented! Furthermore, I must praise the stylistic direction ... and camerawork that almost creates a claustrophobic atmosphere in scenes of tension and that make the horror element of this anime much more prevalent. Uverworld sings the OP. That is all I have to say for you to understand that it's fantastic; as is everything else sound wise in the anime with the exception of the lackluster ED in my opinion!

Story/Characters:
Firstly, I love the juxtaposition in the first episode that set the scene for what the story was truly about; it's gritty and has been excecuted at a very high level! The concept is very interesting and can go many ways in which they can open up a variety of different threats that the characters may face! However, the story so far seems slightly rushed and seems to be following a basic predictable route which I hope will change soon as it's got incredibly high potential! In addition, the characters are probably the least flawed thing in the entire show, the anime's main 3 heroes are all fantastic and can already be identified as being complex and 3 dimensional, furthermore, I'm loving the "villains" and their attitudes probably even more than the main characters because of how amazing they appear to be right from the beginning, I won't spoil anything btw.

Overall:
Having not read the manga, I cannot feel any disappointment so far because just as with Dororo, my expectations were extremely high but the anime managed to exceed them. I'm not sure if the manga contains all these flaws but regardless of their existence, this anime is an absolute gem and one of the best this season and I predict of this entire year! Just as I stated in my opening statement, this anime is a masterpiece... a heavily flawed one :)

Let’s think for a minute on how fragile human lives is. We can die by so many different ways that it’s frightening to think about. Immortality is a far cry from a reality. In a desolate world where kids realize that their entire lives has been prepared for death, it feels like a living in a nightmare. To live in fear is also frightening to think about. Don’t believe me? Just ask Emma, Ray, and Norman.

Welcome to The Promised Neverland (Yakusoku no Neverland), a series that managed to make a new breed of itself among the popular Jump manga family. Consisting of 12 episodes, it’s ... a show that blends elements of survival, science fiction, mystery, horror, and suspense. It’s a thriller that manages to capture the essence of life at its innocence while masking the façade of horror. The first episode spells out a deceptive first half opening when we meet a group of kids at an orphanage. Among the children, Emma, Ray, and Norman stands out the most as a trio of friends. They come from the Grace Field House, an orphanage managed by caretaker Izabella, also known by the children known as “Mom”. The innocence and lighthearted story is broken when we discover why these kids are sent away when they reach a certain age. From the first episode, the truth becomes a living nightmare when we discover that there are more than just humans living in their world. And they got an insatiable appetite for human meat.

Like most survivor thrillers, the producers aimed to make the series deceptive as possible at first. Newcomers may be surprised especially for those who has never heard of the show or seen the promotional material. Coming in as a manga reader, I knew what was to be expected and the first few episodes achieved nothing short of excellence. The ability to create an atmosphere in a world of uncertainty is accomplished through the openness and freedom of the children. Although they are monitored for tests, the children are treated with love and care. It isn’t really until the revelation hits that we realize something much more sinister going on from behind the scenes. Izabella is a symbol of a manipulator as she is the one who is pulling the strings. We realize this early on but to decipher her true agenda remains a bigger mystery. On the other hand, we have Emma, Ray, and Norman who lives a carefree life as normal children would do. Before any casualties appear on screen, everything seemed normal.

The word “promise” is a significant word and part of the series’ title. After discovering that their lives are in danger, our trio of friends make a promise to escape together and control their own destiny. Don’t be fooled because these kids are far more intelligent than you may think. Norman is a prime example with his planning and strategic thinking. Taking life with an optimistic direction, he is no doubt the most intelligent child at Grace Field House. With his deductive and analytical mind, the show makes him an invaluable friend and ally of the children. Similarly, Ray is also cunning with a clever mind for his logical thinking. His only flaw may be his outspoken personality and temper on occasions. Finally, Emma is symbolic for being a bright hope in the show. Always playful and energetic, she provides a positive attitude with fierce valor and determination. To her, promise is more a word but a commitment to succeed. She also knew exactly what they signed up for. And to escape, she is willing to put her own life on the line. While not as intelligent as her two friends, she is a quick learner and shows great potential as a survivor.

You may be asking yourself if these three main characters can carry this show. Being a 1 cour (12 episodes) adaptation, we see what they’re capable of as they play intelligent games against Isabella. Indeed, expect a lot of psychology in the show with plot development with each episode. Unlike battle shounen with power ups and fighting, The Promised Neverland takes on a more psychological approach at its execution. The story contains a great deal of mystery with its plot elements ranging from the objects our characters discover to who can or can’t be trusted. It formulates a success for a thriller as viewers will have to anticipate each episode to see what may or may not happen next. What is Izabella’s true goal? What exactly are those monsters in the show and where did they come from? Can these kids fulfill their promise and make their ultimate escape? These are just a few questions I’m sure most people have in their mind as each episode progresses. In the meantime, the anime adapts the first arc and structures it in a way to make the show flow together. Don’t expect this to be a 1:1 adaptation as characters such as Krone is introduced early on. In fact, I think what the producers were aiming for is making this into a psychological thriller. And to be honest, it’s very polished made.

A thriller like this needs a great character cast and although I mentioned some already, there are other names to remember. One of the more prominent cast member is a woman named Krone who decides to form an alliance with the children. Whether she can be trusted or not is a big question mark. This is because she knows what Emma, Ray, and Norman are planning. Now as I watched more and more of this show, it made me realize that Krone is rather similar to our trio. Her motivation is to survive although unlike them, she trusts only in herself. Indeed, this brings back the question of who or who can’t be trusted. As a psychological thriller, the anime creates a sensation as to who may be the real master at pulling the strings. The mid-season episodes reveals a “traitor” that brings in more tension to the storytelling.

Cloverworks helms this project along with its talented crew and it’s definitely a visual performance to feast eyes on. The ominousness of the first episode demonstrates that there’s a lot more than meets the eye. The visual production enhances the experience with the quiet world setting. Meanwhile, character expressions communicate their feelings such as fear or happiness. Character designs for the children displays a variety of characteristics with the most common ones being innocence and youth. Outside of the main protagonist group, the younger kids are portrayed with playful energy and charm such as Connie. However, the most notorious impression this show made is the monsters’ appearances. With their grotesque and repulsive look, there’s no doubt the monsters are the ultimate obstacle the children must deal with. It is their very existence that threatens the fragile lives of the characters.

For an anime with just 12 episodes, The Promised Neverland lives up to its promise of bringing in a unique manga translated into animated form. Accompanied by its unique storytelling, meaningful character cast, and colorfully decorated themes songs, it’s a show that will get viewers’ attention from the very first episode. While this season is no doubt more of a thriller for teasing more content to come, it’s a start of a survival journey. With everything said and done, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that The Promised Neverland is in good hands.

The answer to this question is totally in the eye of the beholder, but in your eyes, what would you say makes a good concept? While some prefer thematic depth, others emotional poignancy, and others sheer creativity, I am of the belief a concept can only be proportionally valuable to its execution. An ingenious conceit can bog itself down an infinite number of ways in scripting, just as a stock setup can write its way to a masterpiece. The Promised Neverland is a show which constantly toes the line between squandering and strengthening its unique and exciting concept which, in the right hands, could’ve easily ... been one of the strongest, smartest, and most thrilling anime narratives of all time. So, naturally, in order to properly review this show, I will have to spoil the ending to episode one which fully reveals said concept in the following sentence. I recommend this show, so go watch at least episode one before reading: the orphanage where this show takes place is actually a human farm wherein the children are cattle, mere protein for monstrous demons who’ve taken over the world.

It’s a truly exhilarating and consistently intense setup which, when the creators properly capitalized on it, made for a phenomenal mix of mystery suspense and full-on horror thriller. While it’s a Cloverworks production, the studio which A-1 Pictures graduated literally seven months after establishing them, and the animation looks just about as inconsistent and barely average as I expected, the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree because they know exactly how to put their money precisely where it matters just like their conniving corporate parents over at A-1. When the tension ramps up, they deliver some of the most phenomenal facial animation I’ve ever seen which conveys the characters’ visceral emotions in a keen and piercing fashion, and I often got goosebumps from some of the more chilling elements of psychological horror. Even during the rest of the show, outside those standout scenes, the visuals still (mostly) hold up thanks to the show’s great direction. The inventive angles, the tonal framing, and the unique visual queues all work together to make the show as visually stimulating as it can possibly be on a budget. Even the sound design was a surprising treat, and that’s really saying something for a show as relatively juvenile as this. The unique creaking of the floorboards depending on which part of the orphanage they were in, the unique sound of every individual character’s footsteps both indoors and out, the unique ambiance like the ticking of the clock in the bedroom, the echoing voices in the hallways, and the twigs crackling underfoot in the forest all serve to make the show fairly audibly stimulating as well, and that’s before I even get to the soundtrack.

If I’m taking an average here, then the soundtrack as a whole is pretty good, nothing to write home about, but if I’m going to cherry pick then I must say there are a small handful of tracks in the OST which absolutely blew me away! There’s a track at the end of episode two which sounds like a Hiroyuki Sawano track taken straight out of Kill la Kill making an otherwise milquetoast dialogue scene into a blood pumping epic declaration of war I won’t forget for years. I’m not exaggerating. There were two tracks at the beginning of episode five which sounded like Yuki Kajiura tracks out of Fate/Zero which turned a dialogue based info dump into a gritty, intense, and nearly scary confrontation which served as probably the best, most defining character moment in the entire show. There was a totally nonchalant BGM track in episode seven which took the operatic chanting of Kenji Kawai’s music and beautifully combined it with the soft piano and sharp violin of Yoko Kanno’s music. There was even a track at the end of a certain episode I won’t number to avoid spoilers which was, and I’m being serious, purposefully bland to catch you off guard only to cut to silence in such a shocking manner as to have me flip out of my chair, “Wait, WHAT?!”, ending with a cliffhanger which raked through by brain for the whole week over. Again, as a whole the OST was a solid seven out of ten, but being selective has me giving the best of tracks an easy ten. And all this is on top of the fact the composer, Takahiro Obata, made his DEBUT with this! This man is some kind of Kevin Penkin or Evan Call level prodigy crawling out of the woodwork, and I couldn’t possibly be more excited to see where his career goes from here.

Where the show starts to lose me is in its characters. To oversimplify it, they’re not very believable in the context of the narrative and world. To start, in episode one the main characters are introduced via respective monologuing wherein they literally do expository narration for each other’s respective character stats and skills as if they’re living in a video game’s player selection screen and deciding who’s going to play which class, and my immersion was broken immediately. The two adult women secretly working for the demons are no better, since one is a generic hardened killer and the other a generic psychotic maniac, neither of whom develop any further than said tropes. When the director plays to the strengths of these cliches he can get some serious gold out of them, but it’s not often he does so. The interactions between the kids and the matrons are even worse, because they both know each other’s hand at all times. The idea is the two matrons know a few of the kids have figured out the truth behind the orphanage, and they can’t do anything about it even if they know exactly who is aware because the demons owning the farm would punish them for letting the kids in on the secret. Therefore, it is in their best interest to feign ignorance and not tell the owners anything, simply maintaining their current facade with the children until it comes time to ship them out. This makes sense temporarily, but once it’s clear to you the farm is NEVER audited by the demons and they’d have no way of ever finding out the matrons messed up as long as they deliver the product, you start asking yourself why the matrons don’t just lock the knowing kids away in the myriad hidden rooms and passageways the house is equipped with and tell the other children they got adopted, since that’s literally what they’ve done for every other child who’d previously been shipped, a lie which even fooled one of our alleged genius main characters until they happened upon the truth by pure freak coincidence.

And those meekly criticisms are me holding way, way, way back. Frankly, I could just slap you in the face, tell you to grow up, and ask the real questions. Why not raise them like animals? Why even raise them as humans, for doing so would pose this very risk of having them become situationally aware and attempting to use their intellect to escape. They speculate this is due to the demand for “big brains”, as there is no other logical reason the matrons would school them otherwise, but that makes absolutely no biological sense, even in context. Why raise them in an environment lacking common security measures like thermal motion detection or surveillance cameras when you have the wherewithal to implant military grade tracking devices in them from birth? Why raise them in groups with whom they can retaliate as a force? Why not mutilate their bodies to relieve them of the physical agency to flee? Why even teach them language with which they can communicate and plan an escape? There’s such a long list of very basic questions, any one of which could completely shatter the show’s internal logic instantaneously, thus it was and remains impossible for me to take seriously as a mature person thinking at all critically. While I’ve devolved into negative criticism, I do want to assure you I wasn’t lying about recommending this show. Sure, the plot holes grow exponentially the further you dissect it, but if you know how to indulge, then I’d say The Promised Neverland is some of the best superficial entertainment I’ve seen in quite a while which capitalized on the seasonal airing format with some truly intoxicating cliffhangers, a mystery box style narrative this medium seriously lacks in numbers, and brilliantly timed plot twists with which some episodes had me absolutely on my face throughout the entire rollicking ride. While it’s obviously made for teenagers and college kids younger than myself, and I’ll only ever view such a series as nothing more than popcorn entertainment, when the popcorn I’m stuffing down tastes this good, I can’t help but recommend it to everyone I know.

Thank you for reading.

SPOILER FREE

“Na na na na na na na na na na”

Man oh man am I excited to get into this. I remember when the manga started publication and I doubted it would last so I never got around to reading it. 3 years later it gets an anime so I had to finally check it out. Boy am i glad i did.

Before I get down to business, I think it is worth mentioning that by episode 3 I was so interested that I HAVE now read the manga and am up to date - however this is a review for the anime, not the series ... in general. If you would like a discussion on why this is still a fantastic piece of work, even if it’s not identical to the manga, scroll down to the end of the review for my thoughts.

Now that's clear time for the..
[ REVIEW IN SHORT ]
Characters are great and unique. For once an anime has children characters that aren’t helpless. Rare to have a young female MC character in a non-sexualised way.
A VERY refreshing, original and well thought out plot. The good type of anime that makes you think.
It’s dark, it’s creepy, it’s eerie and it’s fun.
Sometimes, however, tracks cut short in an attempt to build tension, but it can feel unnatural.
There are some short scenes in the manga that I wish was in BUT this isn’t a big problem.
Yakusoku no Neverland is fantastic and I look forward to seeing how things continue and highly recommend.

[ Analysis ]
Story: 9/10
Characters: 9/10
Art: 8/10
Sound: 9/10
Enjoyment: 9/10
Overall: 9.2/10

[ Main Review ]

Story:
It’s different. In a time of generic anime, this really felt like something different to a lot of other things I’ve watched or read. The plot is set from the start, so it’s always clear what’s going on. Anything that’s more subtle is then explain later on. The monologue is, usually, pretty good and appropriate. Of course there are more tears than you might ask for, but the plot is about children at an orphanage so what do you expect? Yakusoku no Neverland had a gripping and promising plot, let’s see if this can be well established in a 12 episode season.

Characters:
I truly think the characters are great. Whilst being intelligent and strategic, our main characters still hurt and have emotions. The expression of the character’s is astonishing and really makes their emotion feel real.
A female lead in a non ecchi, how rare and well done. Strong, charismatic, athletic. Its golden. But the other main character’s are also great, yet suspicious individuals. There has been serious thought put into both the appearances and personalities of these characters to make them distinct and likeable.
Can’t score full because side characters still have a lot of development yet to come to improve their character(I hope). At times, most of the children feel bland and part of the scenery rather than characters. The writer has made an effect to give most children different personalities, which is an effort I can appreciate.

Art:
Love it. It feels as though they’ve taken the manga art and made it alive. The facial expression, I’ll mention again, are great. The eyes. There is so much to be said about how expressive the eyes are and the kind of tension this alone builds. At times it feels ugly, but that’s just because this isn’t my kind of art. However, it suits this series perfectly.
Also the opening animation is really nice, gets me pumped for each episode. I really think they’ve done a great job animating the opening.

Sound:
Love the voices, love the opening and ending but not so much that it's perfect.
The opening really grew on me. First time round I was like “this is okay”. Second time “hmm i like it”. And by the third time “NANANANANANANA”.
Tracks play at good times, so much so that i noticed and thought “damn this music adds tension”. You know the sound is good when you’re unconsciously thinking about how good it is.

Enjoyment:
I’m loving it this anime personally. It’s eerie and intense and time flies when watching. I was so excited for the next episode that I went to read the manga (which is even better). Though until the plot moves along more im not obsessed with the anime, yet.

Overall
9.2. Yes why not a 9? Because its too good to be compared to other animes that deserve a 9/10 rating. This anime is very complete (thus far) and is easy to watch. There’s excitement and tension but not so much that it’s hard to watch. It’s fun for those who enjoy mystery and those who don’t. I HIGHLY recommend this anime.

*On a side note, as someone who is more of a manga fan than anime fan, the criticisms are silly. Yes monologue has been cut, but it’s replaced with other scene or moments. Does anyone know and anime that is word for word identical to the manga? No me neither. As for some characters being better in the manga, I agree they’re not as good here but there’s still time for that to change.

* *This review will be updated following the final episode - THANKS FOR READING

God why did I watch all of this shit

Story - 3
Vaguely interesting goes nowhere. Even as it's progressing it's either predictable or just stupid. Falls flat because it's no more complex then kids keep secrets from their guardian and then run away from home. There is no Mystery either, everything that's going on is abundantly clear from episode 2 onward.

Animation - 3
Really bad, looks atrocious with the shape of faces and proportions. Also kind of racist depiction of black people (big red lips is a feature of blackface).

World/Tone - 0
Whoever decided to make the anime opening synth and feature actual children under ... the age of twelve doing parkour, frontflips and looking "badass", is an idiot who can't understand what this show is supposed to be. Utterly fails at being horror or scary, and doesn't even attempt at being psychological.

Character - 1 (FOR ONE DIMENSIONAL)
I can't remember more then a single personality trait of any character, let's try and go through them.
emma - Cares
White hair boy - Altruism
Ray - Logical
Glasses girl - Shy?
Tan boy - Rash?

To close, I don't know why the hell this is being compared to death note when it utterly fails at everything it set out to do. Not Horror just generic shounen BS. Not psychological we barely hear anything about the inner thoughts or feelings of the characters. All of this is entirely the fault of the director btw, someone made a generic shounen out of something that had potential to be so much more. I remember hearing about this when it was announced and being really excited because I love psychological anime, and horror, I was obviously let down. I hope the people who enjoyed this did so out of ignorance / inexperience with these genres, but this was only enjoyable in the way watching the world burn is.

This review will contain some spoilers and I'll mark them.

Yakusoku no Neverland takes the classic notion of limited survival space, in which our three protagonists play mind games and tactics with “mom”, and tried to escape after discovering the orphanage they lived is only a farm to raise kids to be sacrificed to demons. Similar to AoT, this “limited survival space” set up let you constantly question: What is outside of the house? Is it a demon society? Why does mom obey demons? Therefore you will never feel bored during the show with this set up that left much to be explored and the ... fast pacing of the story. The story maintained a careful balance between psychological mind game and the nature of kids mainly manifested in three protagonists. Emma is the typical naïve yet brave kid who has a mindset of escaping with everyone no matter the cost. If she were the only protagonist I would be much pissed because irrational character is never compatible with the mystery genre. Luckily we have Ray, a genius who does things realistically and has his “selfish” goals. Lastly we have Norman, someone that has the genius of Ray and the kindness of Emma. The story has one of the better openings that quickly escalate the intensity of the show, followed by many inner thoughts here and there that successfully explained the logic of kids and creates tension.

Okay, enough about the manga. Now let’s talk about the anime.
Let me just clarify one thing before going into the context, if you think this review is from a manga reader that got pissed because of how much they cut the inner monologue, it’s not the case. I didn’t read the mange before finishing the 3rd episode and there is a reason to that. My entire argument in this review is how the Promised Neverland can be a much better show and why this is just not good enough to be considered “great”.

Let’s keep in mind that this show is an anime about mind games and tactics between two parties (Or multiple parties, to be exact). Now what distinguish this show from shows like Death note or code geass? It’s the fact that this time we have three 12-year-old kids as our protagonists. This choice of main cast is smart so as to limit the main focus on mind game instead of fights or violence (as a choice of high schoolers would probably cause.) And that’s exactly the point of psychological genre; the main focus is on mind game and tactics (Code geass’ first season gets much criticism exactly because the mecha element sometimes completely defeats the purpose of tactic in the show). However, having kids as protagonists has its drawbacks. It’s often unrealistic for kids to make bold moves and form rather complex plans. So how do you make up for that then? The answer is by including a lot of inner thoughts to let audience know exactly how these kids move from some premises to their conclusions so as to not feel their logic is bizarre and out of no where, although we still pretty much have to assume Ray and Norman are some superhuman but it’s acceptable. You know what’s not acceptable? It’s how this anime adaptation manages to butcher the most important aspect of this genre, the logic.

Let me quote a conversation from episode 3:
#Spoiler starts now#
Emma: That sister hasn’t done anything since.
Norman: That’s probably mom’s order. Mom used to suspect us, but it doesn’t seem like that anymore.
Emma: I wonder why?
Norman: What do you think, Ray?
Ray: what about you, Norman?
Norman: Mon did something behind the scenes so she won’t have to move herself.
(Followed by several sentences basically sum up to: what do you think, Emma)
Emma: There’s no security camera or recording….
Then jumps to the conclusion that there is a traitor among kids.
#Spoiler ends#

What kind of super human logic is that? This whole deduction is a gigantic plot device that has no coherent logic whatsoever. (In the manga the explanation given makes much more sense but I won’t spoil, check out yourself)
Also keep in mind that this is not the only conversation that’s baffling, their conclusions on “demons want to eat brain” also makes no sense when, what’s more amusing is that the show holds a theory that brain size is the determinant of your intelligence when it’s clearly that molecular activities at synapses matters more (This one is just me nitpicking). I can’t help but to feel this is too contrived. What makes these logics ridiculous is the fact that there could be millions of explanations for the premise three kids had, now it is a universal truth that if you want to jump from a premise A to a conclusion B when there is no obvious relation between the two, you should rule out all other possibilities. That said, allow me propose a few questions: premise: (Mom used to suspect us, but it doesn’t seem like that anymore.) Why couldn’t it be that Mom thinks they are not the kids at the gate? Why couldn’t it be that Mom already confirmed that they are the kids at the gate so no need to suspect anymore? Why is it not potential security camera or recording devices? (Because Emma said there are no? Because Norman said he looked around before? So the search for hidden camera happened off-screen? How convenient. How about it goes like this: Norman: I’ve checked, there is no suspicious kid among us, maybe there are hidden cameras---on to the classic search for camera plot in death note.) Why can’t sister Krone keep on eye on them so mom doesn’t have to be there herself? Why can’t it be other supernatural explanations when there is a freaking inconceivable demon group out there? So many questions can be asked about one single deduction but these kids always reach the correct conclusion (there is traitor among kids), which makes no sense at all. It feels that the show is pushing for this classic “traitor” plot while totally disregarding any logic in between, and that’s the problem with this show in general, the plot progression is forced. The manga gives a way better explanation, which actually answered some of the questions listed above, but I would contend it is still kinda sketchy, what Cloverworks does is to magnify that sketchiness by 1000 times to the point that the conversation between three protagonists no longer seems like kids talking, more like the show trying to dump as much info on you as possible in order to move the plot forward. These conversations are never natural from my perspective. And instead of including a more detailed conversation and/or monologue, the show wasted precious sentences on meaningless "what about you/ what do you think" staff that contribute little to no to the overall story telling. (I personally think meant to test Ray at some point, but it was never revealed.)

Apart from that the anime also left out quite a number of important facts from manga. This is not intended to be a criticism since it’s pretty much a manga reader only problem. But all am I saying is that by including these details the anime can be much better. Just a few examples: 1. In that tag game when Emma was carrying two kids running, she was apparently trying to test if she can outrun sister krone. 2. Norman explicitly states it’s possible to kill Sister krone when Ray appeared behind sister krone in the tag game. 3. Norman apparently showed fear and nervousness in manga the day after they discovered the truth but in anime it is not shown. There are many subtle things I could honestly go on forever but I don’t want to nitpick too much.

Now at this point some of you would say: you have all these concerns only because you’ve read the manga, anime watchers won’t feel how unnatural the conversations are, stop comparing anime to manga, blablabla. That’s perhaps the most retarded argument I’ve ever heard. NO, that is not the case. Please keep in mind that I only watched the manga because the logics in those conversations are so absurd that I had to check out the manga in order to keep up with their “logic”, and then I find out what a huge disappointment the adaptation is.

Not to mention they make sister Krone like a complete psycho who would shout out her nasty plan loud in her room and speak to a doll. The amount of ridiculousness of her character design rivals that of the eyeball ninja and big-head women in Miral Nikki. And that is not good for a story with such intensity and mind game. They could make sister Krone creepy, but not too far as to make her seems stupid and laughable.

There is a reason why I am so pissed about this adaptation. Logic and/or inner monologue to mystery/psychological genre is what fan service to ecchi, think about death note without 80% of L and Light’s inner monologue, do you think it would be as enjoyable as it is now?

At the end of the day, this is not a trash adaptation by any means; it’s just not a good one. I find the art style pretty good, the story is rushed but still maintains a solid storyline, and you won’t find it frustrating if you apply the “turn-off-brain” method. The show itself is still good since it’s based on a good source. The main focus of my criticism is the fact that the show could have been much better. And I am greatly disappointed about all the potential wasted since horror and mystery of one of my favorite genres.

It’s true this review is only for first 4 episodes, and the rest 8 episodes could see some improvements. I am pretty sure some of you would start ranting: Can’t you evaluate the show after it finished airing? Sorry I can’t, because this is not a problem that could be answered “later” and I’ve read the manga so I don’t need any answer; the problem is how Cloverworks approaches this adaption. Now 4 episodes in, I am pretty certain Cloverworks doesn’t even know what makes the manga interesting, it’s not art style, not an awesome op, it’s the freaking logic and inner thoughts that contributes to intensity, and I don’t see the improvements coming, not yet.

Overview:

"Don't get on that ship! To Serve Man...IT'S A COOKBOOK!!!"

Promised Neverland is basically this season's Made in Abyss and it is HYPED. Do I think it's currently a tad overrated? Absolutely. However, I stopped giving knee-jerk bad scores to decent series just because they're currently rated too high. The rating will naturally balance out and if not, I kind of stopped taking MAL's ratings seriously a while ago. Promised Neverland is a mixed bag, but I honestly had a lot of fun with this one.

Background: (Spoilers)

1,000 years ago, demons and humans fought for control of an alternate Earth. The 2 sides came to a stand ... still and the humans sued for peace. The humans got half the planet, but the demons got to keep all the humans living in demon territory and raise them as food. The top quality human meat is raised on orphanages that are basically free range farms, while the low quality meat is mass produced in clone factories. The orphans are forced to constantly take difficult tests in order for their brains to grow bigger and juicier. The demons want the smartest chidren with the biggest brains. Side note: gaining knowledge doesn't actually cause your brain to keep increasing in size. The mangaka learned his neurology from Looney Toons. Oh and for the record, brain size is only modestly correlated with intelligence. Development and number of neural connections in the pre-frontal cortex is far more important than raw size. Otherwise, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis would have landed on the moon and split the atom WAY before their smaller brained African cousins. Anyways, this story takes place on one of these orphanages run by sociopath adults who willingly raise the children as demon food.

Plot and characters:

The children from one these dystopian orphanages have to figure out the awful truth about the world and engineer a great escape. The main 3 kids are Emma, Ray, and Norman. Emma is a cheerful girl who maintains an optimistic attitude and like Captain Kirk doesn't believe in no-win scenarios. Ray is Emma's exact foil. He's the cold, calculating pragmatist of the group. Norman is by far the most interesting. He's the most intelligent of all, but he's never arrogant and doesn't act better than anyone else. Norman has feelings for Emma and is persuaded by her emotional and morality based arguments, even when he finds them irrational. Norman is naturally more like Ray, but chooses to go against his own nature. This internal conflict makes him by far the most compelling of the trio in my eyes. While I didn't care for Sister Krone, I did think Mother Isabella was an interesting villain. Isabella believes that any resistance against the demons and any hope is futile and can only cause pain. She believes that raising the children in a kind environment and giving them a quick and relatively painless death is the best possible outcome. She suffers no guilt because she truly believes she's being a humanitarian and not a traitor.


Art:


The character art is fine, but this is no Made in Abyss. While that work had truly gorgeous visuals, Neverland never hits the same highs. Neverland also has some unfortunate instances of jarring CGI that I hate. While this isn't the best looking series of all time, I'm not going to just crucify it for bad art. The first 3 seasons of MAL's most beloved OVA, LotGH, was made by the god awful Magic Bus and doesn't look all that amazing.


Overall:

I actually think the premise is kind of stupid. It had moments that made me bang my head against a wall, like Ray revealing his memory is so amazing that he remembers being an embryo in a test tube. Yet this series got its hooks in me. At the end of every episode, I was desperate to see what happens next. I didn't go into this with super high expectations. I wanted to believe because I LOVE Neverland's director Mamoru Kanbe. However, I wasn't sure if he could make this work. It's basically a shonen horror for ages 12-15 that mixes the Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man" with the 1963 film "The Great Escape". I'm a 31 year old boomer and it consistently kept me smiling and engaged. Hats off to Kanbe! He made this series pretty decent overall!

Jesus christ, okay first of this is an review on the first episode of Yakusoku no Neverland.


I've heard a alot about the manga, so i had some expectations and i can safely say, It definitely delivered , I know that It's the first episode and that the first episode is always supposed to have the best quality and stuff since the first impressions supposedly matter the most but I hope they can keep up with the good quality and animations, Im giving this an all around 8 based on the first episode, the sound and the animations was on point, the face animations when they ... were hiding under the truck, literrally gave me the chills, and the designs on the monsters were very creepy and satisfying in a weird way Xd

Could easily be one of the best animes of 2019, imo :)

/spoilers/

I'll start with the art, which was absolutely dreadful. A complete mess with cheap looking backgrounds and characters, weird designs and overall being generic as fuck when it's not being outright terrible. The colour pallette is horrendous, the characters look weird with their long chins, and the background is bland at best. The expressions the characters make tend to be awful and distracting during the horror scenes and the reveals, with me just outright bursting into laughter at Isabella's face when she hears Ray hum a song back in episode 12. The demons or monsters thingies are nothing new in terms of character designs and ... come off quite cringe to look at. It's horrific.

The premise? Nothing unique. A bunch of kids attempting to escape a farm lest they be consumed, way far into the future, a cheap dystopian drama garbage I'm sure I'll find countless of examples from by merely scrolling through Goodreads. It's survival and dystopia mashed up together with elements remniscient to Animal Farm and Shinseki no Yori, something I'm sure we've all have heard before. The premise is generic and bland, filled with cliche elements which could have been saved with a graceful execution. The premise of a mind-game, a cat and mouse hunt between the characters and the mother, is something I admittedly do find unique, and I'm sure others do as well, so I'll give them that.

Regarding the mind-game themselves, the plots and the plans, the pseudo intellectucal garbage spewed out in an attempt to make the characters seem smart? Maybe I'm being pretentious, maybe others are stupider, maybe they really aren't the focus of the story, but all in all it's pretentious writing with no substance pretending to be smart, creating contrived mediocrity that canonically drives on for MONTHS only to end with the house being set on fire (typical distraction) and the characters using ziplines to escape a cliff. This is the climax, folks. This is what it all boiled down to. So many plot-twists and executions that make you cringe at the obvious prospect of the author utilizing anything in his power to add a little substance to his story. The eleventh episode for instance, starts with the plotwist "Oh god they haven't given up!", jumps to plot-twist "We've established they'll try to escape and Ray has been creating stuff to help him escape, but here Ray is going to kill himself!", jumps to "We've established that they've given up but actually they were creating a plan" jumps too "Oh they'll start the house on fire" and then jumps to "And by the way, we've established that they'll use the bridge but meh they'll use a ziplines instead" which all in all is cheap and utter filler to create tension. The story is filled with more filler and less cat-and-mouse games because it lacks substance. The double, triple, quadratriple Agents spiel they tried to go for was filler that dragged for one or two episodes, and it fell flat because Ray's plan was to kill himself despite him claiming he used his mother's gifts to create means to escape in exchange of spying. The Sister Krone filler was blatantly offensive because the woman did nothing and contributed nothing to the story beyond joining up with the team, figuring some of their plans out and immediately dying afterwards, and she took much screen time with her inane, irrelevant ramblings and her cringe "creepy" expressions. There was some other garbage regarding secret doors with Don and Gilda, but I won't cover that because I kinda forgot it. Emma breaking her leg did nothing but drag their plan for an additional two months, where they supposedly did training, and I admit that part confused me because Emma and Ray would be pretending to give up to throw off Isabella yet these fuckers would be training right in front of her.

And skipping all that, I have one line to show you all. "I have memories since when I was a fetus." I'm done.


Even excluding that, the experience was dreadfully stale and boring due to continuous expositions and the camera zoom ups to their faces and expressions. The laughter and the smirks and the smiles when someone did something threw me off. Krone wanted to make me kill myself, and Ray and Norman's interactions with each other came to a close second. I remember wanting to ditch the anime around episode 4. Completely say fuck it. Because I didn't want to continue.

Speaking of the expositions, the characters were all too pretentious trying to be smart and all. The anime completely broke the "Show don't tell" rule by sticking to "telling" everything. It was extremely pretentious. The gestures of the characters, their smirks and their smiles, did nothing but contribute to my boredom and made me hate them even more. There's literally nothing of substance to the characters besides Norman playing 2000D chess, Emma being happy and wanting to save everyone, and Ray being edgy, so I can't comment on any of that besides pointing out to the complete blandness of it all. There was some interesting backstory to Ray, but his development at the end essentially entailed him wanting to kill himself and escaping completely shocked that they were planning something behind his back and Emma was not actually retarded. Emma is your typical happy-go-lucky lucky girl. Norman is just... There. He loves Emma, he made some plans, showed he had an IQ of 500 and then he fucking dies. What can I say? Isabella's and Krone's flashbacks were cliche but interesting though, I'll give them that.

The music was good. I mean I actually don't really remember it but I recall getting emotional at some points. I don't really know.

That's just it folks.

I bet the person who made this anime was a vegan.
-my brother

Yakusoku no neverland is a masterpiece ,i will try to make it a short review and simply explain why : i'm afraid it may contain spoilers "ALERT"

STORY \
you are a fan for mind games and psychological horror ? will this fish need to be in your dish, this anime was able to get both the curiosity to know what would happen next? what is happening? and the first question that will pop in your mind after watching the first episode ,where are humans? ''we will have fun knowing the answers later''
and of course the ... sense of excitement yet fear of a sudden change of event and what may happen next ,the enjoyment of horror
No sudden jump scares nor gore ,pure fear which is rarely seen in anime under the ''horror'' category

a happy cow living her life in a beautiful farm with her friends who consider as family ,some of her friends being transported to live with another family and a loving farmer .
one day the dear cow find her friend dead and turned into a burger , she thinks oh no !! we are food? we are being raised to be eaten? and the nice farmer was thinking of us as meat? all of our brothers and sisters are dead? they are now Mcburger ? horrible !!
this cow starts to discover the world around it ,is there any other ''cows'' out there? what happened to the ''world'' outside? and she starts her journey to run away from the farm....with her family of course duh....

Characters /
just perfect , what a normal human being would think and act ,if we considered having an I.Q over 180 normal

can't say anything more you will enjoy it and the ost/sounds matching greatly with the atmosphere are outstanding


I live for plot twists ,and i can guarantee this anime already nailed it ,if you are not a manga reader you will rarely get any guess right ,which means you will have fun working your brain cells ''and hopefully get a higher IQ than this anime characters lol"

Once you will see the list of producers, you'll understand.


The story is simple but interesting, Kids are set in a location they must escape at all cost, the conflicts are predictable(Should we save all the children or leave them behind? etc.) but the dialogue is interesting, and shows how serious the children are and that they aren't just pushover goody two shoes, except for Emma obviously.

The anime however leaves out important parts of the dialogue. Little bits and pieces that make us question where their morals really lie, especially for Norman. A kid who would do anything to save Emma, even if it meant ... risking his own life. It seems nitpicky but they also left a moment where Norman says that killing on of the adults isn't impossible. That is an important to his character especially how dark he can get to save her.

The characters are mediocre, this is also a problem with the manga, atleast where I'm at. I mostly care about Norman and Mama, probably because they are the most twisted of the bunch. But I also like Ray, who isn't twisted but just realistic about the situation they are in.

However, the anime has it's moments, in some way. I like how they use the idea of cute faces saying morally twisted shit. But I don't wanna keep watching a show that has it's "moments", so this is a drop.