The Promised Neverland: Season 1 (VIDEO SCRIPT)

Today on Anime Saturday, I take a look at Season 1 of The Promised Neverland. Let’s begin.

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/The Promised Neverland is a thriller anime adapted from the 2016 manga created by Kaiu Shirai and Posuka Demizu. It tells the story of Emma - an 11-year old orphan girl who lives in an orphanage with 37 other kids of various ages up to 12 years old, including her friends Ray and Norman. On the final day of one of the orphans in the house before leaving for her new home, Emma and Norman go to give her her favorite bunny before leaving. That’s when they find out via the discovery of the child’s body that the orphanage is actually a farm, and that they all are being brought up to be food for a race of monstrous demonic creatures. Now knowing the purpose of the orphanage and everyone’s eventual fate, Emma, Norman and Ray have to work together in order to figure out how to escape with everyone./

I first heard about this anime from Glass Reflection’s video he did on it giving his first impressions on the first couple of episodes.

And from the title and the thumbnail of the video alone, I assumed a LOT about this anime before I watched Tristan’s video on it.

You see, because the anime was called “The Promised Neverland” and I saw that the main protagonists were children, I - no joke - was initially under the impression that it was Peter Pan related anime. I legit thought that it was a story about Emma being the first female member of the Lost Boys of Neverland and her struggles in trying to get them to accept her as an equal. Which I’m not gonna lie, I’d still watch in a heartbeat

So when I clicked on Tristan’s first impression video and saw what it was TRULY about, I was like:

Oh. This isn’t what I was expecting AT ALL. Still up my alley, though...

And let me tell you Readers, I’m glad I checked this out. There’s a LOT of things that I like about this anime.

/I’m talking great flow of animation. Great use of various forms of animation. Great attention to detail in delivering proper emotions in character, and the way the story played itself out kept me engaged from beginning to end./

What initially got me interested in wanting to watch more of this anime however, is the one thing that I personally crave in anime in the first place. Smart characters.

And no, that doesn’t mean every character has to have a genius level IQ in order for me to like it; you’d have to really work some magic with the overall plot and story in order for me to stay interested if every character was like that.

/I’m talking about both small and big scale stuff, like having the natural thought to cover up your mouth when you’re hiding so nobody can hear where you are. The Promised Neverland does a good job at showing that common sense is just as important as book smarts and strategy, and I’m glad that we have those representatives in Emma, Ray and Norman respectively/

The show does a good job at establishing these roles for all three characters as soon as the first episode.

/We see that Ray is the bookworm that chooses to spend his time in the library or under a shady tree with a book. We see Norman is a pretty good strategist and just a good critical thinker in general. And while Emma is more athletically inclined than the other two, it’s been proven time and time again that while she may not be AS fast as the two in all of those fields, she can hold her own against them./

I especially like that Emma is the one chosen to be this “everyman” sort of speak, because we see her grow, learn, and get better from not just the experiences they have leading up to their initial showdown with Isabella their caregiver, but she’s also able to utilize what she absorbs from seeing what Ray and Norman dish out, including life itself.

It also makes the leadership role she takes up by the time the season finale hits all the more believable, because we now see her as this absolute amalgamation of everything she encountered, everything she had to deal with, and everything she learned over the course of the season, and it happened naturally.

But it’s like I said before; it would be no fun if you had smart characters in a scenario that they’d be able to easily decipher.

So how does The Promised Neverland make it entertaining to watch? By making the obstacles and antagonists JUST as smart in order to properly challenge the protags.

/And in some cases, proving to be the victor/

I don’t think he’s dead

Isabella - or Mamma - definitely played a role in this once she started to suspect that Emma and Norman knew about the farm.

While she’s definitely not my FAVORITE anime antagonist, I will say that she was very effective for what the overall story of the first season was.

I say that she’s not my favorite mostly because of how the anime tries to paint her and other caregivers like her in a sympathetic light, despite everything we’ve seen her do and everything she’s willing to do in order to maintain order.

/Yes, the exposition in regards to how the caregivers are initially chosen and raised was helpful, but Isabella’s overall psychopathy kinda oversteps the boundaries the anime tries to get us to accept regarding us having any empathy for her./

/Even when she’s dealing with her own son./

Speaking of the caretakers, I didn’t necessarily know what to think of Sister Krone during her...existence

Like, I could see where they were GOING with her character and her overall determination to take over Isabella’s spot, and I was indeed thankful that they used HER as the initial catalyst to show us how the caretakers are chosen.

But outside of just making her an obstacle for both the kids AND Isabella to overcome, she didn’t really bring that much to the table as far as giving us a chance to actually EMPHASISE with the caretakers phlight. Despite being the perfect vessel

/As I stated before, I could see where they were going with it. Krone had goals. Krone had trauma. Krone wanted to survive after being listed second-best throughout her training/

At least that’s how I translated it.

/These would’ve been great things for the anime to poke and prod at regarding her character before her time was up, and considering the North American audience the show has -- if it was indeed a forethought in Shirai and Demizu’s mind when they created her -- it would’ve been a hell of a lot more impactful because she’s a black woman. But instead, whether its because it wasn’t present in the source material that is the manga or because they didn’t have enough time to show it in the anime, we only got the bits that made her look intimidating, petty, and power hungry without any proper resolve./

But in what the anime fails in delivering in its villains, it succeeds in showing with its protagonists.

/Especially Norman, who has honestly the best and most powerful scene in the entire god damn anime/

I’m sorry, I just... I-I just can’t end this video in good faith without at least mentioning that scene.

Readers, The Promised Neverland season 1 was good.

The main characters are well written, smart, and likeable.

Plus, because the story and plot retaliates by being just as smart as its protags, you’re constantly rooting for them because they’re constantly being challenged.

The animation perfectly displays intense moments and properly projects emotions in a way that I found very impressive.

And while the anime I felt failed to hit the mark regarding showing the internal conflict with them, the plot was still able to utilize their villains in a way that kept me engaged and wanting see the protags overcome them.

I’m excited to see how season 2’s gonna be tackled in 2020

Right now you can stream The Promised Neverland season 1 on Crunchyroll, Funimation, and Hulu

Or if you want to watch it on regular cable, you can catch it on Adult Swim’s Toonami block starting April 13th 2019 at midnight

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So with that being said Readers, your homework assignment for the day. Write in the comment section what you thought of The Promised Neverland: Season 1 if you’ve seen it.

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But until then, this is Readus 101. Class dismissed.