MANGA: Yakusoku no Neverland // The Promised Neverland (2016)

 Disclaimer: Spoilers of the manga Yakusoku no Neverland, but only after the warning. All of this is just my opinion based on my experiences reading it. I hope you enjoy!

• Author: Kaiu Shirai (story) and Demizu Posuka (art)
• Chapters: 181
• Genres: Mystery, Horror, Sci-Fi, Shonen

Summary: At Grace Field House, life couldn't be better for the orphans! Though they have no parents, together with the other kids and a kind "Mama" who cares for them, they form one big, happy family. No child is ever overlooked, especially since they are all adopted by the age of 12. Their daily lives involve rigorous tests, but afterwards, they are allowed to play outside.

There is only one rule they must obey: do not leave the orphanage. But one day, two top-scoring orphans, Emma and Norman, venture past the gate and unearth the harrowing secret behind their entire existence. Utilizing their quick-wittedness, the children must work together to somehow change their predetermined fate.

(From My Anime List)

Intro and Short Review

Usually, I can guess pretty spot-on if I will enjoy something just by the first few chapters and maybe a friend or two's opinions. But sometimes I hit very off the mark and get a few good surprises, like One Piece, or bad ones like Nanatsu no Taizai, but I don't think I've ever been so deceived in my expectations like Yakusoku no Neverland.

With such a strong start, a very successful anime adaptation and more fans each passing day, I was easily coerced into giving it a go. A lot of friends whose opinion I trust when it comes to these matters said it was one of their favorite anime, and within the first arc I could definitely see why.

Yakusoku no Neverland came in a time when people needed a psychological thriller the most. With the reign of Death Note ending a few years ago and the anime scene being dominated by formulaic shounen action, we were all starving, at least a bit, for something different and exciting.

So how did things ended up so badly? What happened along the way to prompt the terrible decisions and the downgrade of every aspect of this story? This manga declined so fast that the only reason I ever kept reading was because I was still hopeful that things would change, that it would all go back to the glory that was the beginning.

The setting changed and expanded but was poorly explored, the worldbuilding was lazy and the logic was so convenient it made me angry sometimes. The characters that I was so invested at first completely lost their charm, and it came a point where I wasn't even near the ending and I had already lost my interest.

I felt completely scammed, frustrated, and just plainly disappointed with everything, and I don't think I've hated anything more than the way the story ended. Even with the subsequent second anime season, my dreams of a fix-it or just anything that could help the series went down the drain, and it managed to be even worse than the manga, if that's even possible.

To try and be more fair, I will say: the next two or so arcs of the manga following the end of the first anime season are not that bad. I also believe people can still enjoy the whole manga very much if they turn of their brains a little bit, but the fact that you have to do this in a work that was supposedly psychological is very absurd to me. All in all, I definitely don't recommend this. My disappointment is immensurable and my day is ruined. Yakusoku no Neverland gets a 3/10.

Warning! Spoilers below!

Characters

Just like everything else, the characters of Yakusoku no Neverland start off amazingly well. Emma, Ray and Norman compliment each other very well, each with a different approach to challenges and different strengths and weaknesses. Seeing the three of them combine forces to go against their newfound terrible destiny is thrilling, and we are left wishing desperately that they can find safety before it's all over. 

Their pre-estabilished relationships with each other and the rest of the orphans works out pretty well, and the bond between all of them makes every emotional moment more impactful. The characters and their contributions to the plot were well balanced, so while the main trio did most of the job we still had some important secondary characters, specially Don and Gilda.

Things start to go downhill after the escape from Grace Field, after Norman's departure. We still get some nice moments, but it's at this point that the cast starts to get a bit too large to keep track of. We are introduced to important characters such as Sonju, Mujika, Yuugo, but they aren't developed near as much as they should have been, specially considering their roles at the end of the manga. The orphans (besides Emma, Ray, Don and Gilda) are also more and more neglected, and with the addition of the kids from Goldy Pond we loose our touch with them.

And that becomes really annoying as the manga goes on and Emma becomes almost obsessive in protecting these children. I get it, she grew up with most of them and is a naturally protective person, but for us they are just random kids used for reactions and to fill the background, so many scenes that were meant to be emotional were just underwhelming, because we didn't really cared about some random child we didn't even know the name of. The last straw for me was when a boy was shot and there was a whole commotion, and Emma said a bunch of things (again) about wanting to save everyone. And during this whole process I was just thinking "man... what am I doing here? Why should I care?". I'm not saying that every single goddamn character should be completely developed like the protagonists, but at least giving them some depth, some quirky traits, would've been more than enough.

Everything did look better for a moment when Yuugo was introduced. I was genuinely upset with his death later on, and not only because he was one of my favorite characters. He was, for once, a deep and flawed character, a mentor figure with a lot more experience, an anchor to reality and a reminder of how harsh life would be for these orphans. But instead, he and Lucas sacrificed themselves without much fanfare and we lost one of the best characters in the manga. He deserved so, so much better, and I will never get over this.

Another massive disappointment was Ray. I didn't think much of him at first, but he managed to positively surprise me in a lot of ways, so I was very fond of him by the end of the escape arc and was expecting great things of him. But more and more he became a secondary character, standing in the sidelines and only speaking to infodump us when necessary. I don't even count his last endeavor with the scribbles demon (idk if he has a name, I honestly can't remember, but it's that deity that makes a contract with Emma at the end) as a redeeming moment, cause he didn't to much again. And I, still expecting a scene like the fire one, was left with just sadness at the wasted potential of such a great character.

Norman's return from the dead just served to further aggravate this, moving the spotlight to his conflict with Emma. That's not me hating Norman, I think he didn't turn out that bad and he did an ok job of being another hurdle to Emma, but at this point it was like the author didn't have much more control of the story anymore, so he could've been so, so much better. It was very obvious that he would return, and I was expecting some sort of twist to his character.

But while I enjoyed his use of Minerva to build a god-like persona and his complete change of demeanor after being sent to Lambda, it seemed as if his ideology lacked something. I can't exactly pinpoint what it is, and I definitely don't want to read this again to dissect it, but the pieces didn't really fit and he didn't seemed very believable. Maybe he was too generic, maybe it didn't went well with his previous personality, maybe he wasn't developed as much as he should've been. Either way, he was just another piece on the board to eventually succumb to Emma's "power of friendship", and succumb he did, in a very bland way. 

And of course, this brings us to one of the main problems of the latter parts of Yakusoku no Neverland. With Norman first out of the way and then as an anti hero and Ray degraded to secondary character, Emma took the crown of the protagonist and most of the plot started to revolve around her. Which shouldn't be so bad after all, seeing as she was a nice character to this point. She was a little more 2D than Norman or Ray, but she still was charismatic and was the lodestone of Grace Field's orphans, keeping everyone together and hopeful.

But apparently, she wasn't capable of shouldering this huge responsibility alone. From a (very necessary, considering how Ray and Norman are) optimist character with a lot of courage, she developed into someone too reckless, too stubborn and too idealistic to still be interesting. To worsen everything, it was as if the story was doing everything in its power to make her the right person every single time, and I just grew more annoyed at her each chapter that passed. 

She put herself and her friends in unnecessary danger just because of her "no kill" ideology, and when she was forced to confront it, she was magically saved by someone else, who then did the dirty work for her every time. And then she would soon be off again spouting nonsense about saving even demons and stuff like that. It became her whole character and transformed her into a one sided Mary Sue just like half of the protagonists of shounen anime. 

She could've been a lot better if she just wasn't considered a saint and suffered a bit because of her choices, just like everyone else. Emma severely lacks development, flaws, and realistic responses to what happens around her. It's one thing to be positive, and other completely to be unaffected by the horrors you survive. She easily brushes aside all potential trauma without even doubting herself once, and her confidence never wavers. And if she for some reason does anything wrong, the only consequences are a bunch of kids crying and chiding her for being irresponsible.

Still, even though she became a plain character, Kaiu Shirai insists on keeping her on the spotlight for the rest of the manga. I honest to god almost quit reading when during Isabella's death she gave a whole discourse while Ray had only a couple of panels to show his grief. And Ray's Isabella's own biological son, her flesh and blood, the person who probably understood her the most. It felt like a disservice to both Ray and Isabella, and it made me furious. The fact that even so she was capable of making me hate her more is both impressive and disappointing. But more on that later.

I could've talked about Isabella in the first paragraphs, but I wanted to give her a special attention. For all that I complained about the characters of Yakusoku no Neverland, I have to give all the credits to her. Isabella is an amazing, terrifying villain. We are so used to think of horror as something originated from the unknown, from the supernatural, so when the cause is a familiar figure, someone we are unconsciously prone to trust, the shock is tenfold. 

This, mixed with a valid reason for her actions and her cunning and intelligence, created one of the best antagonists I've ever seen in anime. I was in the edge of my seat every time she appeared, I dreaded each conversation and each decision, and I couldn't stop reading. And even though we still don't condone her actions, we can relate to her at least a little bit; in the end, she was just desperate to survive, like everyone else, and that made her more human to the audience. I still get chills every time I hear her lullaby.

Unfortunately, such a great treatment wasn't received by the rest of the villains. I mean, Sister Krone, albeit not as developed as Isabella, was still pretty solid and a good support, but the rest of the antagonists are just pathetic. They're either monsters without any characteristic that we can relate to or interesting traits to grab our attention or, in the case of the humans, boring characters that were completely unremarkable and without an apparent reason to commit crimes. The demon queen and Peter Ratri, which were supposed to be the biggest threats to the kids, were defeated in the most ridiculous ways possible, so much that even Isabella reappearing with a gun was more interesting than those scenes. 

All of the characters of Yakusoku no Neverland could've been done a 100 times better, and I'm still very bitter about the way my favorite ones were treated. I guess a lot of people can ignore some of the mistakes, even Emma's perfect personality, but it really becomes unbearable with the final antagonists. Just like the main characters, they are the pillars of a good story, and in this case they just made the mess even worse. Regrettably, it doesn't stop there.

Story and Worldbuilding

So to get to a point where I couldn't even decide what was worse in the downfall of Yakusoku no Neverland, you can see how chaotic it was. And even sadder was to not expect this at all, specially considering how great the first arc was. The premise was thrilling and so was the sequence of events; the mind games and plot twists were exciting but not too exaggerated, and overall everyone was hyped to see where the story was going.

Personally, I had no idea about the direction things were going to take, specially with the abrupt change of scale in the setting, but I still had high hopes about it. And the manga managed to hold on for an arc or two, but I could already see the beginning of cracks on the foundation. In this transition from the orphanage to the outside world, it's as if the genre changed completely, and I struggled to adapt to it.

And so did the author, apparently, if the decline in quality is anything to go by. The main allure for me during the first arc — the psychological thriller and the mind games — ceased completely to exist, giving way to a more "survival and military strategies" type of narrative. Which is kind of expected, considering that the orphans were alone in an unknown, hostile world where they needed to somehow survive, but I still thought that the aspect of puzzle-solving was going to be kept in some way, at least when dealing with the antagonists or the search for Minerva.

But then, the solution to everything wasn't quick thinking anymore, instead changing to "we need more firepower" and occasionally a good strategy or just plain dumb luck. It was as if Emma had suddenly acquired an invincible plot armor, and the story just molded itself to her whims.

And the characters didn't really suit this change of genre. While the mind games were more believable because it was established that the main trio were geniuses, this doesn't give them any advantage in the wild. Even with the help of Sonju and Mujika, it is a totally different set of skills to be developed, and there's absolutely no way these kids could've had survived that long without some serious issues.

Despite being academically gifted, the orphans had never had a day of hardship in their lives, never were exposed in harsh and foreign environments for a long period of time, never had to perform physically straining tasks, and this is something no book can solve. And things just get worse and worse as we see the characters (chiefly Emma) develop the skills of a trained soldier in merely months and without proper guidance, performing tasks a bit too perfectly without a lot of consequences. And I'm not talking about the older kids of Goldy Pond, which were trained by someone with experience and had time to grow up and develop their habillities, even though they still did some pretty  crazy stuff.

But okay, this can be just me being nitpicky, nothing new here, so for the sake of a bit more fairness I'll let it slide. Unfortunately for everyone, things still don't get better in other aspects of this narrative. It's not like the worldbuilding was terrible, it just happened that we didn't explore near as much as I was hoping for, and the fact that the pacing was weird also didn't help. There were a lot of time skips that just glossed over a lot of details that could've made the experience a lot better, to establish this genre change without becoming weird.

We get some convenient information about the demon civilization to solidify Emma's point of view, but I still couldn't care enough about them. The last chain of events involving the demon queen and all that stuff was just so boring, because I just didn't know enough about those little things that make them more relatable. Sure, the fact that they have lives fairly similar to ours humanizes them a bit, but just a scene in passing isn't enough to make me forget about the atrocities they commit, which makes them monsters. Their relatability stops when they just do cruel actions for the sake of being cruel, which is something human beings can do but are actively punished, instead of encouraged like in the demon's case.

Going in this tangent, I still have no idea what was the moral of Yakusoku no Neverland. At first there were a lot of questions raised, which got the anime community on fire discussing ethical dilemmas and stuff like that. Nobody knew exactly how Kaiu Shirai was going to approach Emma's and Norman's polarizing ideologies, and I was curious to see what kind of social critiques he was going to work with along the way. In the end, things got to a point where most of those questions raised were completely forgotten, the main conflict became the black and white logic of shounen anime, and the author made a point to shove in our faces how poor innocent Emma was right because she's a pure, lawful good character that doesn't have flaws.

This is not me agreeing or disagreeing with her pacifist point of view, because that really doesn't matter, it's just that in a real situation things wouldn't play out the way Emma wanted to, but still she's the one with the right logic. Emma is able to go through all the events of the manga without killing anyone because everything happened way too conveniently, and when she had to confront her ideologies and make some hard decisions, she was spared by luck or by others.

And this brings us to the last arc, the peak of every wrong thing that happened in this manga. I'll admit, this was my mistake: I still got hopeful regarding the new promise forged by Emma, thinking it would be the redemption to all the flaws the manga had. It would've been just perfect if Emma had sacrificed herself for her friends, because at least not everything would happen the way she wanted. There would be a happy ending, but there would be prices to pay.

But then, it happened, and I don't think I hated more an ending like I did with Yakusoku no Neverland. I won't even talk about the part in the demon capital with Mujika being coronated out of the blue or Lewis' random appearance or everything with Peter Ratri. The new promise was the most ridiculous, convenient, bland, boring thing I've ever witnessed, and I almost quit reading this shit with only a few chapters left because of it.

Because of course the fucking scribbles demon was fucking entertained by Emma and decided to make a stupid offer in which she virtually had nothing to loose. Even though we were made completely aware that it was an almost impossible task, that it was a lot more complex than it seemed, it was as simple as that. And that makes me so, so mad. Making Emma just loose her memories and still live in the human world is completely infuriating, and of course the other kids would find a way to find her again. Kaiu Shirai could've just made her forge a promise with absolutely no consequences and things would be the same. I don't give a flying fuck about a perfect character just doing whatever without ever failing or having things happen in a different way, so I don't give a fuck about Emma's story and the ending of Yakusoku no Neverland, and I don't think this will ever change.

Technical Details and Final Thoughts

Now, the art was the part Yakusoku no Neverland excelled since the beginning. Demizu Posuka is an amazing artist and I fell in love with her cover arts; the compositions are always interesting and creative, with little details to discover if you pay close attention. Her design for the characters and the demons was very solid too. While the secondary characters are kind of bland, the more important ones are all visually interesting and eye-catching. This serves to prove that you don't need a thousand accessories or crazy styles to make characters memorable.

I don't have much to say about it besides that, and if the plot and the characters weren't so bad I would say it is a very typical manga. There are the ocasional annoying cliffhangers and over-dramatic scenes, but that is expected considering what Yakusoku no Neverland became.

I just can't help but feel sad that a saga with such a good start plummeted to the bottom of the well like this, and I'll never get over the amount of lost potential. Yakusoku no Neverland had everything to be a new Death Note, or even better, but regrettably things ended like this. Guess the only thing to do is to keep waiting, and maybe in the future someone else can do it better.