The Promised Neverland Midseason Review

For that past few weeks, I’ve been at the edge my seat and distraught when the ED comes on for Promised Neverland. This series had me wanting more week after week and it came to a point where I said screw this and just started reading the manga. Two days later, I’m caught up. Now, I don’t want to talk about the manga here very much but I just want to talk about my thoughts on the series now that we are halfway through this season and somethings I learned recently.

One thing I found very interesting since the first episode was the main protagonist dynamic of this series. I’m a big fan of the structure we see with Emma, Norman, and Ray. They truly balance each other out with their strengths and weaknesses. Norman is extremely intelligent and so is Ray but they will choose the route that leads to high success which could lead to sacrifices. Emma is athletically gifted and a good person that won’t allow anyone to be left behind. Due to how Emma is, Norman can’t help but want to be like her and seems to be the balance between Ray and Emma. With these three working together you really never know what will happen.

I don’t know if it was just me but when the scene where Emma was looking at the wall and mother was right next to her, that scared the shit out of me. It was something I did not expect mostly because I felt that I’ve never seen an anime successfully adapt a page turn scare to anime and make it be just as effective. Many people can say the same about THAT moment in episode 1 but they built a ton of suspense before the moment happened so it wasn’t too bad. At least for me. The manga on the other hand just smacked you with that shit.

One thing I noticed after I started the series was I learned that it was yet another manga that was created by a mangaka duo. I’ve always been a fan of series’ that are developed by an artist and a writer. Gives each person the ability to flex their artistic muscles in their domain. Don’t get me wrong, I will always respect mangaka like Oda, mangaka for One Piece, who can do it all by himself but you can see a fine line between one mangaka and two when it comes to story and sometimes art. I actually have an article I started that will look at more manga that are developed by duo mangakas so you might see that in the future. Interesting stuff.

If you are like me and cannot wait to read the manga, just go for it honestly. The anime is only going to be 12 episodes for this season and we have no idea when season two will air. The arc that the anime is covering is good but man it’s only scratching the surface. I also enjoy going back and forth watching episodes after reading to see how the adaption adds to the experience. Like the clock motif that’s been coming up here or there. There are somethings they add to make it a bit more suspenseful but it’s still worth watching.

So far, very much enjoying Promised Neverland in both manga and anime form. I look forward to seeing what everyone says in the next coming episodes. Everything that has been developing with Ray has been quite interesting but shit’s going to get crazy!

Thank you for taking the time to read this post, hope you are enjoying this series as much as I am. I’m hoping that there are some people reading the manga out there that want to talk about it because SO MUCH IS HAPPENING! AHHHH! But for those watching, I’d love to hear your thoughts thus far! Leave them in the comments below.