Yakusoku no Neverland

'll split this into parts. There are many moments that deserve recognition separately. But as a whole, I give this anime a 5. Its a great manga, dont get me wrong. This is one of the best stories/concepts i have come accross in a while. You're always kept in the dark about something leaving that mystery element in the air constantly. The twists and turns are unexpected

The first arc of this manga was amazing, in my own opinion. The sudden turn of events and the unpredictability of it kept me on the edge of my seat; I didn't even want to put my phone down for a second. I was kind of reluctant to accept Emma as an MC. at first merely because of her lack of intellectual skill compared to the others. Don't get me wrong, she's a smart kid. She isn't high grade for nothing. But her skills lied primary in her physical abilities, which I'm not very fond of. But that was made up for by her use of skills picked up by Norman and Ray. And at the same time, Norman and Ray were forced into making up for their lack of physical capabilities. And Emma provided that. So all was good. The story, I find fairly intriguing. Personally, I've never read a manga with a plot such as Yukusoku no Neverland. It truly does stand out. The first arc is well executed, is interesting, and provides a balance between mystery and, if you will, action. The mysterious element of it standing out the most.

Now. Its only downhill from there! I find it hard to notice any real character development in Emma. She's introduced as this brave female who's brave, who's adventurous, and, although it isn't her greatest strength, has brains. Although, as the story continues, it's hard to notice much change in her character. There's no development. There's no part of the story where she learns something important. When she makes significant changes in her behavior. She stays the same confident, brave girl she was since the beginning. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. But in manga like these I've come to expect a point in the story where the character is completely broken. But is able to come back, as a stronger, better person. More confident in her decisions, more considerate of other's more aware of the feelings of these surrounding them and their surroundings. But Emma was already introduced as all that. So there's really no developing for her character to undergo. Instead, the development is found in side characters or the co- MC's; Norman and Ray. On top of all this, the story just becomes extremely predictable, thus boring. I call this "The reverse AOT effect". Attack on Titan begins with action, excitement, thrill and mystery and manages to keep that feel all while somewhat shifting the plot to be more political. In my opinion. Yakusoku no Neverland does somewhat the opposite. It starts off with thrill, excitement and mystery and as the manga goes on, all of that dies down. It tries its best to keep the same energy it came with, but as I continue reading, I don't get the same feel as I did when I started it. It dies down so much, I don't even feel like I'm reading a shounen anymore.

As for the story itself, although not executed well enough (in my opinion) it is an amazing concept. I love the feel of the somewhat post-apocalyptic world. And that mysterious element, like there's something we've missed, always lingers and I truly love that feeling.


Story = vibe check passed

It really, really hurts to see Neverland end with a whimper like this. To say the series started off strong would be an understatement, it grabs you by the balls within the first chapter and never lets go… well, until the end of the first arc, that is. Afterwards, things start to take a slow decline in quality, until it enters its final arc and absolutely nosedives into irredeemable garbage territory.


Let’s start off with the thing I didn’t mind too much about it by the end.


Art: 8/10


Posuka’s art isn’t the most complex, but it’s very charming, and adds a lot of style to the series. Her coloring and composition skills in particular are absolutely top tier, just glancing at the volume covers should tell you that much. The art ends up a little odd at times towards the end of the series, but it’s nothing all that noticeable. Overall, this is by far most consistent aspect of the series, props to Posuka.


But now that that’s out of the way, well...


Story: 1/10 (First arc: 9/10)


The first arc of the series is by far one of the best starting arcs in any manga. Hooks you right way, and then it never stops being tense, interesting, and an absolute thrill to read through. This is due to the fact that this starting arc had already been meticulously planned by Kaiu Shirai and Posuka Demizu prior to publishing, as a STANDALONE STORY. This detail is very important, because it’s the reason this arc is so insanely well executed. Perfectly paced, perfect foreshadowing, perfect ending, it’s great, works just fine by itself. The problem, though, is that after this arc, they had absolutely no idea where to go next, and it shows. With the addition of some plot devices, they manage to justify extending the series as a full weekly shounen manga, and the story after this point changes drastically.


The series ditches its super intense mind games to become a fantasy adventure manga, and to be completely honest, it’s not all that bad at first. It’s not as good as the escape arc, sure, but the Goldy Pond arc manages to be decently tense and fun to read through, despite not being part of the original plan. The issue comes right after this, when it’s starts to become clear they don’t really have any clue where they’re going with this story, and they’re just making up stuff along the way and hope they manage to stick the landing eventually.


And man, they did not stick the landing. After a 2 year timeskip, the series enters its final arc. An absolute atrocity of storytelling. It starts off alright, then it trails off into an incoherent mess of plot points, themes and character motivations that all add up to a completely worthless experience that invalidates anything that came prior to that point. Whatever redeeming qualities the series had completely vanish. Plot points get introduced, and forgotten about within 2 chapters. Characters that were once important are now background characters. Conflicts are extremely bland, and impossible to care about when you know they’ll get resolved by the unbeatable talk no-jutsu. And dear god, the worst of all, the pacing. This felt like 150-200 chapters worth of story condensed into such a tiny space that any and all enjoyment that could be derived from it got squeezed out, and only a series of plot points remain. For a series with such a strong start where the writer proved he could do good stuff, the fact that we managed to get here is baffling.


Characters: 1/10 (First arc: 8/10)


Emma, Norman and Ray weren’t any kind of insanely complex protagonists, but they did the job well. They were all unique from each other, and worked super well together. Watching them figure out things and succeed was very satisfying, watching them fail miserably felt heartbreaking. I admit, I got very invested in the little brats by the end of the first arc. The side characters weren’t too bad either, and the villain especially stood out as both empathetic and absolutely terrifying, almost singlehandedly giving the arc an oppresive, tense atmosphere like nothing I’ve ever seen. I really did love the cast, which is why I’m livid at just how poorly mishandled they have been, and it’s all due to one character: EMMA.


After the first arc, Ray gets reduced to nothing more than a glorified yes-man. He completely loses any individuality he had, and doesn’t do anything other than agree with Emma, and hang out in the background of panels sometimes. Norman’s treatment has been even worse. As the one interesting character still remaining in the final arc, in the span of one chapter Emma manages to make him do a completely 180 on his beliefs and destroy whatever semblance of character he still even had. They’re not even the only ones treated this way. Hell, sometimes characters come back from the dead just to help her. With the power of talk no-jutsu and friendship, she single-handedly defeats any kind of obstacle that ever came in her way, and single-handedly ruined any kind of tension or stakes the manga had left. No doubt, the single biggest reason this manga went to shit like it did. Fuck Emma.


Enjoyment: 0/10 (First arc: 10/10)


The Escape arc is one of the best experiences with manga I’ve ever had. I remember seeing the name The Promised Neverland offhandedly mentioned somewhere, looked it up and saw the cover, thought it looked pretty cool. Started reading it completely blind, and little did I know I’d be taken on an adventure filled with intrigue, heartbreak, betrayal, sacrifice, and triumph, no doubt one of the wildest rides I’ve ever been on with any story. For this reason, seeing the series turn into a shell of its former self and eventually into one of the biggest steaming piles of doo-doo WSJ has ever seen has been absolutely depressing.


After the dip in quality after the first arc, I was one of the dudes still defending the series, holding out for the moment it becomes good again. And I waited. And I waited. But that moment never came. The series did nothing but plummet deeper and deeper into oblivion, until any hope I had left was gone. The series becomes nothing. There’s nothing to like about it, nothing to get invested in, nothing interesting it tries to say or do. It might as well just be blank pages for 100 chapters, there’d be the same amount of enjoyment in it. I feel as if someone killed one of my loved ones in front of my eyes, skinned them, then taxidermied them, and now all I’m looking at is an empty husk that barely resembles them. It’s really, really bad.


Overall: 3/10


Having just finished the final chapter, you’d think I’d feel something considering this was a series I was deeply invested in at one point. But nope, I feel absolutely nothing. I’m even kind of happy the series is finally done and I don’t have to read it anymore. It becomes clear that the series never had any kind of point to it to begin with. It betrays any expectations I had for it, and ironic to its name, never delivers on its promises. By the end, I didn’t end up with anything except regret that I didn’t drop it before it got to this point, and a whole lot of time I’ll never get back.

Being a relatively new manga, I'll be basing this review off of the currently released chapters. I've never reviewed a series so soon after the original release, that's how good this manga is.

Story: 9/10
I'd honestly like to give it a higher score... but because I'm only going off of the few chapters that have been released, I have to give the story a 9 for now. The story is EXTREMELY original, well-paced, with just the right amounts of darkness and lightheartedness. I'll just be reading along, and all of the sudden, my stomach balls up, turns over, and shrivels with tension and real fear. Best part?... only takes one turn of a page to do it.

Art: 10/friggin10
Jaw dropping. Magnificent. Bubbly, rounded and soft at all the right times (with all the right characters), yet sharp, angular, and intensely disturbing just when you're not (quite) expecting it. Detailed backgrounds and characters provide for an wonderfully immersive experience.

Character: 8.5/10
Like with the story line, I can only give this an 8.5 for now because I'm waiting on further character development. But for me to be so invested in and attached to these characters with so few chapters released... doesn't happen often for me. Happens rarely, in fact. Each character is complex and interesting in their own way. They bring out of you real affection, suspicion, and intrigue... as well as the dark rumblings of a fear you don't yet fully understand.

Enjoyment/Overall: 9.5/10
Read everything I've written above ^
And then read this manga. You won't be sorry.

The Promised Neverland or Yakusoku no Neverland is a true masterpiece created by Kaiu Shirai.

Let's start with the summary. This story takes place in an orphanage and the protagonist is Emma, a bright and cheerful girl that lights up everyone around her. Every orphan has a number etched on their neck and after their 6th or 12th birthday, they are given off to a "foster family". One of the rules of this orphanage is that they are never allowed to go outside. One day, Emma and her friend find out the secret behind this orphanage that would change their lives forever.

That is the summary. I've tried my best to be as subtle as possible.

Now on to the characters. They are absolutely brilliant. These children are nothing like regular shonen or shojou manga. The character development is excellent and most of them are smart which is something you don't often see in a shonen or shojou manga.

The manga will grip you tightly and will not let you go. I started this manga on a whim and I finished all 94 chapters of this maga(till date) in 2 hours. The suspense, the story line, the plot... Everything is all a manga reader could wish for.

I'd give this manga a solid 10. I haven't been so emotionally invested in a manga in a very long time. You'll see what I'm talking about

The Promised Neverland has an extremely strong start. The first arc is a genuinely fantastic thriller with interesting characters and a very compelling mystery. Unfortunately, the series starts to go downhill around the point where the anime ends, and becomes extremely repetitive. Combined with a very unsatisfying conclusion, this leads to the series not even reaching close to the potential its strong start showed. If you do view The Promised Neverland, I recommend stopping reading it at the end of the first arc. Many of the central mysteries of the premise, such as "what are the demons", do not have satisfying answers.

The Promised Neverland was one of the first manga I ever read, the first manga I bought and was a manga I stuck with for many years, so I clearly feel a little bit sad that this manga is finally complete and the journey was over. But sadly those emotions are also clouded by tons of disappointment by the end as it was almost depressing seeing how far this manga fell from grace overtime.

Story & Writing (3/10)

The manga in my opinion, easily has one of the best starts in all of manga for me with the Escape Arc. It's a simple concept but with the showcase of mindgames between Isabella and her children in the orphanage as they tried to find a way to escape and survive, it was incredibly thrilling, captivating, mysterious and left me on the edge of my seat. Each single step towards escape was well crafted and planned, and seemed to have a good payoff too.

But then after the arc, as the mystery themes faded a bit and it transitioned to a new kind of storyline, mainly focusing on survival and discovery, The Promised Neverland was slowly faltering a bit. It still was progressing fairly well in the Goldy Pond arc with good mysteries and plot elements being set up to understand what is happening with the world, but minor cracks were showing here and there with it.

Unfortunately after that arc, that's where the manga starts to fall apart for me - with the final arc.

All the plot twists, cliffhangers, tension building, well crafted storytelling for its mindgames and world building, were all thrown out of the window as the manga lazily tried to end the entire storyline in the most passive, underwhelming ways possible. Twists felt like they underdelivered massively with payoffs, or some twists felt incredibly rushed, some felt like it was too easy to solve or that the consequences were barely present that it came across as comedic. All the amazing detail and writing just washed away and the manga ended in such a timid, and mediocre fashion that it truly was depressing to witness as a long term fan of the past. Shame that Shirai could not tie the plot threads together whatsoever and instead just slapped on some bullshit to somewhat end it.

Characters (4/10)

The main trio were very likable at the start. You have the optimist and charming girl in Emma, and the guys who were incredibly smart and observational and cunning too in Norman and Ray. With a main trio that's likable, well written and even fascinating to watch at the start, as they try to scheme against an interesting villain in Isabella, the caretaker, the cast was well set right from the get-go. Even the other children were fairly nice too.

But again, after Goldy Pond, a ton of characterization felt incredibly wasted due to meaningless twists, ruining the potential of what could have been a great cast. Not to mention, a lot of the motives were one dimensional and that led to affecting the plot massively, especially with Emma in the second half of the manga not being able to change her ways of thinking which led to her acting as a driving force for a ton of the plot issues that led to happen afterwards. Norman's character was just a massive clusterfuck too by the end with so many inconsistencies added to his character that resulted in little payoff whatsoever.

Not to mention, the antagonists in general were mediocre as hell except Isabella. Uninteresting, underwritten and as one dimensional as Emma. Even stupid to a degree I would say.

Art (9/10)

I feel bad for Posuka Demizu since her art actually was really good except some inconsistencies at times with designs, especially with Norman in the middle of the manga.

Her art was very expressive, with great character designs and amazing cover art that look truly wallpaper worthy. The designs were fantastic, the setting was well portrayed and even the antagonists and monsters looked good. Sadly, Shirai let her down with poor storytelling big time.

Enjoyment (4/10)

The enjoyment was a 10 for me in the first half, but a 0 for me by the end given the number of failures in writing that occurred every single chapter, leading to more and more issues and frustrations.

Overall, a manga that had everything amazing going for it, but washing it away with its final arc due to bad writing and failures of solving mysteries and delivering great payoffs for the amount of tension and twists that were setup that led to a 10/10 worthy manga limping all the way to an average rating.

It's amazing how many Shounen Jump manga have brilliant starts but throw it all the way in the middle or at the end, and The Promised Neverland may personally be the most painful example of that for me. What a shame.

Score 4/10

This is really a masterpiece, even though Im not a Shounen fan, (as mater of fact I hate this genre), But I enjoyed reading this manga, The unique story, the characters development, the Unique atmosphere of this manga everything was 10/10 for me, I didn't like the drawing that much though, It was much better in the anime, The anime was perfect in everything I liked it much more than the manga If I could I would've give in it more than 10 as a rate, However the manga was also great And I enjoyed it my single complaint was about the art style, but it wasn't that much of a problem and it won't prevent me from giving it the full score!

*THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS*

Sometimes receiving various influences to create a story becomes something very good and advisable, as a way to further expand your creativity, even though you have learned a lot about some more well-known titles. Usually imagination and reality become a step of coming together to cover what we call fantasy, being a simple fantasy or a dark fantasy, and in this environment of dark fantasies, it common to always have those that stand out, but even with a dangerous and violent universe, like Berserk for a more famous example, stands out for leaving a message for the reader to absorb, or at least questions that can generate discussion.

In a way, these discussions can be present in our daily lives, and we would have a very timeless work, in fact we have several ancient mangas that plunge into the dark fantasy in search of a critical message to human beings, it was something that during times of Cold War has become very present and solid, we can have Devilman (1972) as an example of this, a manga that in turn is famous for carrying these same criticisms, but it is understandable, although some of them are no longer useful in the context of our world, it becomes something that we can fear in the future, and this impact generated in mixture with the gore makes for a unique experience. Although Devilman's manga is not as solid in writing, and often borders on a tremendous exaggeration from a cartoonist point of view, and sometimes with so many problems, he manages to stand, and his criticism, however exaggerated, was quite subtle. Subtlety is the important step to make a general analysis of human nature that could be exposed in fiction, subtlety can also generate a bit parallels within the work and within real life, so that when the viewer could finish reading something, it reflected a lot , and this becomes a rich consumption of reading dark fantasies, and what they can tell us, even with flaws, we always need to look at old mangas of this type as examples, of what was for their time and also as a study of things that they must be done nowadays, to leave a comfortable reading and very flexible to what a manga proves audacious.

And the reason why I'm talking about it? Because I have never seen in my life that there could be a manga that fails both in the genre and in the message itself, and that manga is called The Promised Neverland. I agree that he has a popular fan base and as soon as he got through his arcs many called him one of the best shounen of all time, it was a fame that I could understand at the beginning, but that after so many chapters I started to distance myself more and more from this story. First of all I have a little consideration for the first arcs, despite several problems I see that are fun to read, but from the time-skip the whole story fell apart, or better, since Norman came alive this manga got even worse.

The narrative structure carries several influences from Western children's books better known as Alice in Wonderland and Watership Down, as much as they were childlike in their way, carried a dense atmosphere and talked to the reader through more obscure figures, things that from time at times, many try to adapt but end up failing in their purposes. Bearing in mind what kind of work we are talking about here, The Promised Neverland nurtures inspiration but doesn't carry anything it needs, the dark fantasy aspect could easily be attributed here, since we find a dangerous world and we see children trying to survive, we can say that is a survival right? I would like to believe, but there is nothing here, since you are witnessing Goldy Pond, any conflict with demons doesn’t present any danger, there is no realism or consequence on the part of the children against it, you only see a bunch of worthy actions of a low quality Sony Pictures blockbuster movie, all tension is forgotten, no need to be suspicious all the time, but the manga forgets that there are demons even stronger than the children themselves and decides to exaggerate all of them by being super heroes in the end of the day. Can you see the situation? He managed to fail even in the genre of survival and there is no conflict about it, you just feel that the biggest enemy would be humans, and then history decides to return that the biggest enemy is a demon, and then repeat everything again...

Honestly he doesn't decide what a threat represents, some may say that both would be a bigger threat, but how can we have an idea of something bigger if the manga doesn't show interesting conflicts for the same to happen? I am repeating: you will find only generic and simplistic action scenes, even in the last arc where we see the villain hiring armed and trained men to face the children and they are just dumb as a stone, they are fucking trained guards and not pieces of paper, none of them dare to shoot because the children will always be stronger without having 5% of their training, it is stupid to raise protagonists so simple when they do not show cohesion in the face of a dangerous world.

The characters are in general: bad and stupid, Ray is one of the worst and most disappointing characters I have ever met, the one who carried a strong personality, had functions in the plot during the first two arcs, maintaining a good construction, only to become any person with no role in the story, can you notice that he would easily be replaced by another character there, a good part of your dialogues don't even become as important or shocking as they should, do you remember the construction in your first arc? Forget it, it doesn't matter anymore when a character didn't show purpose or function in any context during 150 FUCKING CHAPTERS, seeing one of the fans most loved characters being treated like a piece of trash was something that hurt me, because I was interested in his future , if someone skips all the dialogue that he decides to say he will not miss much that makes the experience worse, it is so simple and expository that you pretend it doesn’t exist, when you notice that even the character can be removable and be replaced it’s because you did a terrible job characterization on top of it.

Norman is another disappointing character that I had to see collapsed, from a time I can be fair that he is at a certain point, much more tolerable than Ray, his construction and purpose has a role in the story behind the threat of demons , but a good part are cliché executions, that centralist and idealistic character that needs to be the counterpart of the main character’s ideas just because: the script wanted to get to this point, this kind of thing is not at all original, but being well executed, it can be something very usable... If Emma were not a character that convinced all convictions and ideals, making everything a sea of roses, although at this point I cannot say that it is a criticism of mine but a dissatisfaction, because seeing idealistic characters can bring wealth to a work, we see them as solid characters and this becomes remarkable, but to see it succumb and fall into the same conversation as Emma is to waste even more the idea of opposite minds, something that you notice that it was inserted only in an arc and would stay there, but I say that he is the least evil of the characters here, but still his voice is lost to emphasize Emma again.

I have to admit that Emma is a good character, I would say that she is quite solid to build her morals and motivations, since she was a child, someone who cares about everyone, and who is open to understanding things, it is something I respect, and being worked on up to a limit it was something very cool, it is the character that most representative human parts, no matter how exaggerated I say this, having said that I don't have much to complain about the way it is done, but look to the entire script conspires so that the whole her adventure is always the lucky charm, makes me dislike even more, the conflicts are cheap and few inspiring to care about any danger, she will always be fine in everything that the manga provides, and the author cannot even disguise ''why'' from that, you notice that everything is about to go right, when it should least, it's a taking a trip without any pleasure wherever you want to see it as a dark fantasy.

As for the other characters: pathetic and forgettable. Gillian, Ayshe, Oliver, Adam or any other character in the Norman group are also forgettable, with terrible characterization and emptiness, a potential wasted on plotting based on various interesting points of view, construction, impact function, not that be a difficult task, but the lack of them here makes the whole narrative weak. Ayshe is the most disappointing character I ever met, because she had a good construction, she proved to be more of a human being worked on and then to be discarded like a piece of garbage, there is no disagreement about her since the story presents does not give her focus , but to alleviate part of this pain we have: Don, Yuugo, Gilda and Musica, which are the most recognizable, but they are memorable because you have been with them from an important momment, and because of their natural proximity makes you become attached. The role of Yuugo and Musica are the best as they showed progress in Emma, and I value that, but it does not support the ocean of weak characters that the work has, but instead of building and developing them in each arc, they prefer to focus in the construction of only our protagonists and villains... The worst kind of narrative that can be provided by living up to the focus between black and white, without any nuance that you can remove from the arc.

The message that TPN brings is lazy, stupid and totally contradictory. Sometimes I have seen futile messages, inconclusive messages, but I have never seen the combination of the two, which is an impressive factor for me, it is nothing original to make a parallel in which you have already witnessed a manga that 50 years ago brought another perspective, but we are always able to find new positions, and this manga has none. TPN at its climax to discuss the message that "humans are worse than demons", but you don't see any victimization behind the demons, you only see demons that in parts are more dangerous there, but never a presence that could make writing tangible and show that sentimental side that they are more '' human '', all the time the manga shows you more danger than humanization, even if there are characters like Musica is not enough to demonstrate that they are the victims, a character does not carry all the victims and good people that they could be. And in the final of the series, when she is discussing it, we never see images of demons being killed or injured by humans, the only thing we see is a lazy parallel to our reality, in which humans hurt other humans, and what kind of conclusion and impact can we have on this? That there is no victimization about them, and that everything the manga shows you in words is a lie that only the author uses as an excuse for a bad message, is totally contradictory, even more so that we could have images of Norman torturing a demon or even someone else, but instead of victimizing one side, he prefers to victimize those who were examples of awful humans.

Remember what I said about the subtlety that needs to be done in the criticism/message? The manga went well, we even have a big panel worthy of an imbecile journalist cartoon made by someone who thinks the world will change due to a drawing that "matches" reality, but neither is done naturally, all this flashpoint was totally played without any backbone, because as much as fiction shows us criticisms and parallel realities that discuss current themes, it would be risky to draw the same parallel of our world, both in date and in context, few know how to do it in a way good. There is no subtlety about this criticism, it is as if the author was calling the reader himself a dumb for not understanding simple reflexes of moral discussions and needs to appeal to this ridiculous flashpoint, try to imagine another fantasy manga going on in a period troubled by medieval wars and suddenly, they decide to bring an image of our daily lives just to give impetus to their criticism, the way it is done is lazy and totally insulting to the readers, when you hand over the characters talking about the “reflection of humanity in the demons” '', which was one of the most artificial dialogues I have ever seen in fiction, your criticism becomes invalid, because you demonstrate your intentions by talking more than a character could speak, there was no reason for them to say something like that, but everything is pushed because the author wants to and not because history should naturally progress to that.

I feel that the author reads one of those cheap newspapers every day and decides to choose what kind of image he should put in his manga in the greatest desperation so that his criticism is solid but it is not. It is not necessary to justify everything that the characters do, again, to do this work is to offend those who follow their work, if their decisions are already convincing enough, there is no need for dialogue exposure to reach an agreement, and I will enter in this aspect.

The narrative text of TPN is totally worldy and expository. Some may not care about this, because reading a manga with an even more open mind and caring more about the situations of the characters, this can be overshadowed, but I will have to be sincere, as I mentioned, I will continue, whenever a new information is introduced, still in a terrible way without a structure, it is always placed so that the reader himself does not feel convinced of this idea, you will see an excess of words repeating themselves transcribing stupid emotions and not so close to the situation than in a way whatever the ideal, it is tiring to have to read several pages of something that you do not know, but there is no interest in grammatical text providing artificiality and explanations that are not direct, but that jump from lines to more lines, and this makes part of the dialogues problematic when interventions are needed, it is the youthful style of writing, so to speak.

I need to mention a serious problem that this manga commits, which always relies on an artifice used in a terrible and exaggerated way: Cliffhanger, every time it needs one for the narrative to progress, and when we have the continuation, we see that it is useless and the situation was not impactful or tense, I know that a manga chapter needs to reach its momentum, but the way the author abuses it is terrible and offensive, it got to the point where I got tired of seeing it all the time, cliffhangers poorly constructed in contexts that do not need to be provided, execution is completely blatant.

You notice that when Emma is about to invade Grace Field again, we could have a plan being discussed there, but the author again abused a hasty reading, just to justify the characters acts by flashbacks... How low would it need to be to transpose the laziness of going directly with the chapter, ''show, don't tell'', because that is what the whole series ignores, what is important is treated in the most trivial way possible, and that makes a distance in writing and for me to care about a plan, without nuances, without argumentative oppositions, the fact of ignoring this, is because not even the author took the situation seriously, or we see the demon God '' lying '' only in the next chapter to reveal his promise, it’s fucking a superior life being, not a clown of riddles.

The forced victimization of TPN villains: Addressing a topic I already wanted to discuss about characters above, I want to first start that I liked Isabella being built in the first arc, but her return only made her character even worse, she is one of the worst characters I’ve seen, just notice Isabella pointing the gun at Emma when she just surrounded Peter, but in the next chapter, she turns out to be a “good” person (again a stupid and poorly driven cliffhanger) and all her actions are justified by flashbacks expository, not even natural in things, are ideas without execution just to make a "redemption", a terrible redemption that didn't even show the structure to be convincing, even the way she died was stupid, precisely the author created his eighth Deus Ex Machina to kill her, with a demon emerging from nowhere, only to immerse an artificial and forced danger, resulting in a silly and poorly characterized death, is so stupid that even the author doesn't it seriously, with the characters overcoming all that pain in minutes, without any form of shock, the author does not care about the characters, nor does he care about the work.

Remember Lewis? It was a good villain right? Quite solid to his purposes, until the last arc destroyed his character, a character who was previously totally cold and had his own morals about humans got a 360 and quickly changed his mind about humans and so did his personality, and the shape how does the story explain this? It couldn't be less than an idiotic and lazy flashback that he became a cuckold for '' losing '' the battle and living like a lone wolf, WITHOUT EXECUTION, just because the mangaka wants the story to go his way and not that it follows a natural course that understands its own ideas, changes over decisions must be made carefully, providing a cohesive pacing becomes something common to make it part of the world, and here it shows us that an idea is nothing without its execution, this artificial construction is so damaging that it managed to destroy the impact that Goldy Pond had as an independent and solid arc, every threat made is transformed into the most stupid being existing in this manga. Peter could be a good villain, but deep down he is just a character from Sword Art Online, I could accept this whole psychopathy, but the author decides to victimize him... A complete nonsense shit, there was not enough reason to to try to do that, it is simply a coward to introduce someone so '' purely evil '' and then victimize him, which only demonstrates that the author wants us to feel sorry for him, and this self-pity does not convince me, in addition to further contradicting the ideas of '' demons are reflections of humanity '', after all only humans suffer, and demons none at all... The search for humanization of character tries to prove important, but every line of reasoning about them follows the same module: artificial speech of villain > reaction after the first conflict > after being cornered he shows himself to be more sentimental, then he will call it "humanization".

As for the non-victimized villains, despite being to some extent solid, they suffer from an outcome like Deus Ex Machina and exaggerations, like Andrew survive a gas explosion, and his glasses get 80% destroyed, yet he can get up to kill the characters, and even when he is about to kill, a demon appears out of nowhere just to be the "savior of the exact moment when he needed it", or we have the Queen of demons, who after losing all his sanity, stay on the edge of madness, seeing all his people die, about to destroy everything, and decides to stop to listen to Emma and die with it... That's exactly the level, but I guarantee that even if justified is ridiculous, the manga demonstrated that these types of demons do not agree with the feelings of humans, now imagine a 100% berserker demon, a solution being made in an imbecile way.

The lack of action and consequence makes me loathe all narrative progress, as much as there are holes in the script here and there, nothing would irritate me more than a story that ignores its own consequences or at least does not decide to do it. Because doing this is not taking on the responsibilities, just because you want to, resulting in bad writing. You don't have to be a genius to notice this with several cases where they face stronger demons, where Emma makes all the decisions of the group and there is no consequence of any of their actions, each dialogue must be taken seriously as the author wants it to be. that is, but not even working on divergences and questions is done with respect to the reader and history, if there is an idea to be followed no matter how moral it may be, someone needs to think otherwise, because this way you balance human relationships, even if the character doesn’t change because of that, it’s always credible to be done, but here it’s not a series that tried to do that, which makes each arc fall in its own way for me.

Normally I would say that the experiences are worth much more than last impressions, but when it is a story loaded with a lot of context and message, with a totally bad conclusion that disrespects the themes themselves, I don't see why I should believe that an experience could speak more loudly, I would have to lie to myself, but I can't hide what I spent reading this, I don't see any quality in the TPN script, even though there are few interesting and solid characters, they are not enough to carry the manga approach. I like Posuka's art, she is really a good artist, and deserves recognition for that, as much as her art is inconsistent in several chapters, I believe she has her own tom, and the whole production of her drawing is very good, if she were in a monthly magazine, maybe we would see her art coming out in a more natural and grandiose way, because working in monthly chapters requires less worrying than weekly workload, I I wish her every success, I will be more anxious for her own stories and what she thinks, is someone I support a lot and has a lot of potential.

The ending is the sort of convenient bittersweet ending you'll find, and even an ending it still surprises me with mestupidity, Ray having heard Conny to find Emma is one of the most senseless and stupid crap, at least it gave me some laughs, overall, I would never imagine that a mediocre character would serve not only as a tool in the first chapter but also in the last, this parallel is not pretty, it is just a lazy and meaningless resource, the fact that Emma meets everyone, in search of fanservice, without the weight that the promise should, if Emma had everyone's memory, even if the others are forgetting her, would be decent, there is no point in forgetting them, and they still being able to find it, but even though it this ending, it does not make this manga less bad than it already is.

This ends my review of The Promised Neverland, an extremely flawed manga in its ideas and messages, a poorly conducted story that ignores the progress of actions and consequences, poorly constructed villains, weak text narrative, bad characters, abuse of script archetypes , lack of subtlety, lazy script development and something that managed to destroy its own genre. I honestly don't recommend this series to anyone who is interested in something '' different '' from Shounen Jump, honestly go read Chainsaw Man, it's more fun, or if you prefer a story outside of the manga, read Watership Down, or even Devilman, because TPN gave me one of the worst readings I had.

This manga, albeit very new has gotten my attention well enough to prompt me to write a review. With the ending of popular series like Bleach and Naruto, myself and many other people have high expectations from the newer generation of authors. And I believe that the authors of Yakusoku no Neverland have great potential.

YnN starts off with Emma, a happy go lucky girl who spends the days of her life in pure bliss along with all the other orphans. All the kids there enjoy their carefree everyday activities like playing tag, eating delicious food, and taking an extensive IQ test with absolute focus... wait. It is at this moment you realize that this is no ordinary orphanage, but the kids who grew up there are completely oblivious to that. It is not until Emma witnesses the horrible truth about the purpose of the orphanage that is encircled in walls that she and some other orphans begin to wonder about mysteries outside the orphanage.

I kept my summary vague to keep the element of mystery intact, which the authors do a phenomenal job of keeping you intrigued while still maintaining a steady pace. It is especially important because that is one of the aspects that keeps you coming back for more.

The other one are the characters. The main character Emma is at first glance the typical shounen character beaming with optimism. Her character is somewhat reminiscent of Gon from Hunter x Hunter, that is, a feral, stubborn, bright, but also very calculating. In fact all the main characters are depicted to be smart in their own way and for a good reason. Unlike many shounen characters who are frustratingly stupid, the characters in this manga would do and think about all the things the readers are thinking.

My only fear for this manga is that it hopefully won't reveal it's overarching mystery too soon, and characters don't stay true to what they are already established as of now. But the way the authors are going, makes me hopeful that they know what they're doing. Could this potentially be the new Hunter x Hunter? One can only hope.

I will update this review after this manga has reached Ch. 100 and blown up in popularity.

[Spoiler Warning]

The first arc of this story is one of the best self-contained stories I've ever read. You're always kept guessing, due to the unique setting and sheer drought of information that is present. The protagonists are fun and endearing, the antagonists are cool, sympathetic and very intimidating, all round great.

However, that's only a quarter of the story so far. After its' conclusion, the story begins to degenerate into a post-apocalypse story with so many genre-trappings, tropes and predictable story beats that, as a fairly genre-savvy person for this kind of story, things have only gotten less and less interesting as the mediocre storytelling is propped up by a depleting list of mysteries about the greater world, with most revelations being kind of underwhelming anyway.

I would say that the story only really began to lose me after chapter 112, which is the vast majority of the story so far. So if you want to know whether you should read it, you should! Even if just for the first arc, but the rest of the story before the current arc begins after chapter 112 is also really engaging and fun, if not a bit unoriginal. But I'm afraid that without a change to the plot or setting as radical as the first arc to the second, the story seems to be going down a pretty bad path.

PS: Nearly every single panel in which Gillian appears is absolutely hilarious and golden. She's the best.