Yakusoku no Neverland

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.

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.

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.

/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.

[Spoiler Warning]

So to start I am just a dude that feels upset with the product that he received.

I read the manga last summer and stop it because there was an anime announcement made for tpa.

I don't want to compare the anime to the manga, but, I feel that is required to see why the anime is trash in the 4 first chapters.

Starting with the story, this one is a really good one that will develop into a more complex one, that probably anime onlys will praise all 2019. The anime knows that the story is good so they follow it but, still they ... got rid of some good ass scenes from the manga that made the character development really complex and understandable on why X character acts like this.


The art tbh is not that bad, is a good art style but the manga one fitted much more all, because of the darkness inside of it. I cant expand more on this point because i need to watch some scenes in the next chapters to make my point valid or not.

I like the sound of it but the ost is BAD. I'm not trying to say that the creators of the ost are bad because they are not. Indeed is really good to listen to it but, in my honest opinion this ost sucks for this series, the main point of this series is to make the spectator feel tense with mother and the 3 kids mental fights but the ost makes it like if it was a happy place to be in when there are demons waiting to eat them XD.

The last thing I wanna write is the enjoyment which in my case was 0, the main thing to blame is the pacing. Is fukin horrendous goes so fast it doesn't let you realise what is happening also when the thing gets better it gets so fukin slow, it makes no sense and there are much more things that made me wanna drop one of my favorite mangas of all time, anime.

I don't have more time to write more if one day I don't have to study or make art for my classes I will do an in-depth review, maybe when the anime finishes airing.

First, of all, I'm not a guy who dislikes something, just bcs it is popular. I watched this Anime to the end, I think if you want to hate something, you should watch it fully, and then tell your opinion.

I love horror, but TPN was kinda, stupid and boring. And this is my taste, I don't judge you if TPN is your favorite, so don't judge me, bcs I found this boring.

I love mind games, battles of mindes, but, this is unrealistic. You telling me, that these children have this much IQ? They are all genius, more than genius, and I found that, stupid.

Characters ... look strange, they have big foreheads, their faces look strange. I don't like this style.

But the biggest problem is the main character Emma. I love characters who have bad sides of them, who are sometimes morally questionable. Bcs those characters feel more like real humans, people with sins, people who do mistakes. But Emma, she is like a saint, and I hated her.

Ray and Norman were alright. I think the best part of TPN was, should I name it, Norman Arc? I think that was the best part, it was a good watch, for sure.

As I was saying, the story felt unrealistic, sometimes they force some unique facts about characters into the plot, to make more sense. The main villain was alright, she was genuinely scary. The atmosphere was ok, it had a feeling of horror.

Overall I gave it 5/10 It is not terrible, but it is not a masterpiece. I don't get how this has better scoring than Made in Abyss? Why? But, that is your taste and opinion, if you like it, good for you.

I dropped this three times, but every time I return, thinking I'm missing something, where is that masterpiece part? TPN was OK, it had some alright parts which I enjoy a little bit.

5/10

I'm a manga reader and it's in my top favorite manga series, so I expected the anime to be about as good.

Except it wasn't.

I wanted to enjoy the anime, I tried every episode to find something to let me, but I couldn't. I almost exclusively watch anime and don't read that many manga, so I'm not a manga elitist. Episode 1 was good, but the opening song was off-putting because it doesn't suit the series. After watching the entire season, I do enjoy the opening but stand by my initial reaction that it completely misses the tone of the arc's mind games.

One red flag ... is the near absence of the casts' thoughts/internal monologues, which play into the mind games. Instead the characters actually say their plans and deceptions OUT LOUD where Mother and the kids out of the loop can hear. Sister Krone is the worst offender of this because she SCREAMS her plans out loud, which is problematic because she's trying to disobey Mother--the only other adult AND her boss. Additionally, Sister Krone has a creepy--anime original--doll that destroys any image of her being the intimidating, somewhat terrifying adult that she's portrayed as in the manga (which is another red flag). The exclusion of internal monologues also prevents the story from truly showing WHO the characters are and letting the audience get to know them, which was extremely apparent to me as I read the manga and thus know who they are.

Story-wise, it seems to cover ONLY the important plot points and neglects to devote time to HOW the characters move from scene to scene, revelation to revelation. Character development is tied into these plot points, so it's hurt along with it. Also, the majority of the episodes lack a sense of urgency to escape their impending deaths.

If you want the story told properly, read the manga. And if you watched the anime already, then start the manga from the beginning or else your foundation for the story and the characters will be severely lacking.

The Promised Neverland is a story that fails to play to its strengths and ends up feeling like it realized less of its potential than it wasted.
Like most mystery stories, it is structured in a succession of small questions whose answers make the characters and the viewers progress in their search for the truth. Its main weakness is that it fails to make the viewers care about those questions, and thus becomes a plot-driven show without an interesting plot.

The first reason why it can be hard to get invested in all those small mysteries is that as early as the first episode, the show presents ... viewers with several much bigger and more interesting questions: what is the world like outside the orphanage ?, what made it become like this ?, who exactly is Isabella ? Compared to these mysteries, of which only one really gets looked into, it can feel like most of the events the characters get involved in are secondary and delay the progression of the main plot instead of advancing it.

The way the story is written also participates in this impression of stalling and dullness, for a number of interconnected reasons. One of the most significant issues is that it is difficult to get invested in the characters. Indeed, while they are far from being the worst shounen characters around, almost all of them, including the main trio, lack the things that usually make characters engaging: they are rather predictable and generic, they receive no development, have very simple personalities, and no backstory. They are simply very smart children. The only child who undergoes something that could be called development and about whom things are revealed becomes the least believable of them all, and is probably the most archetypal too. The one exception is Isabella, the children's caretaker, whose combination of cold scheming and warm maternal love is interesting. Her past and motivations are by far the most compelling mysteries of the series, but even she comes off as averagely written, as her level of intelligence doesn't feel consistent throughout the series. Sister Krone, on the other hand, is an appalling character, with her caricatural expressions, excessive monologues and near absence of plot relevance.

Due to the lack of complexity I described, dialogues between the children, which occupy most of The Promised Neverland's time, are often lackluster. They are devoid of creativity from both a directing and a writing standpoint, and rarely feature ingenious reasoning. The children simply try to convince one another of doing things that the viewers are already pretty sure they will do and make some oddly accurate big assumptions based on the tiny amount of information they have.
Likewise, the battles of wits that are the anime's main sources of dramatic tension are poorly written and very hard to buy into, because their structure is one that should make it impossible for Isabella to lose, given how clever she is shown to be and considering the extreme asymmetry of information between the two sides. When she gets tricked, it is only thanks to amateurish plot conveniences, and it feels contrived.
Additionally, the fragility of the suppositions the children base their actions on are so fragile makes the numerous twists of the story a lot less powerful, as viewers are bound to expect that some unforeseen events will happen, especially considering how frequently they occur.

Another major issue of The Promised Neverland's writing is how shaky its plot is: the illogically useful nature of the children's education, how many dangerous possibilities they are carelessly left with, the fact that Isabella almost never takes serious action despite having the power to do it, and many other elements of the series, are all elements that contribute to undermine the show's believeability.

Along with its flawed writing, the anime also suffers from questionable choices in its direction, which makes use of some very artificial-sounding ways of creating tension. In a lot of scenes, situations that end up being perfectly harmless are presented in such a manner as to make them seem frightening. On top of betraying the viewers' expectations and quickly making these scenes lose all power, this repeated absence of consequences undermines the credibility of the narrative as a whole. What's more, the episodes invariably end on cliffhangers that most of the time turn out to be inconsequential, and the dramatic moments of the series are frequently too overplayed not to come off as inauthentic.

As for the series' presentation, it is neither bad nor very good. The natural backgrounds are acceptable, but the interiors are often lackluster. Some of the character designs, such as Isabella's, are strong, but most of them go from average to awful.

Overall, The Promised Neverland is not a very satisfying anime to watch. Its mediocre writing and directing make most of the narrative feel inconsequential or difficult to believe, and its constant reliance on deception prevents it from having real payoffs. While its premise and setting seemed interesting, the execution didn't do them justice and turned them into little more than the context for a slow succession of heavy dialogues.

Neverland was a bit bizarre, it certainly felt as though it was conducted on the philosophy that if the viewer is drawn in within the first episode, then they will like every following episode, and I suppose truthfully speaking I cannot tell them they had no basis at all to do so, for I did watch all 12 episodes, despite not thinking very highly of them, and if this were a pay per view then I'd be feeling a bit conned, but regardless, the show, time to get to it.

The opening episode is quite good, actually, I'll give them credit for that, with the premise ... that we've got a bunch of kids living in an orphanage and all of them are happy and the rest of it, but their "mama" tells them never to open a specific gate, and sometimes the children get upset because some of the children get foster parents at which point they are never seen again. So, when Conny (whose name is questionably similar to cunny if you ask me) is sent off, Norman and Emma, two of the brightest orphans go off to investigate, and as it turns out, Conny, and other children sent off to their so-called foster parents are killed and eaten by grotesque demons. That's a good opening episode, and if it ended there, I'd be saying this was a great short film, but unfortunately, it didn't, and I somehow get the feeling that after this big reveal the author's ideas started to run dry.
The first strange facet of the show that comes to mind is the cinematography, which is something I usually make no note of, because it is usually not noteworthy at all, yet herein it's just all very peculiar, and not in a good way either, there were a lot of strange shots of which my only response was "what's the camera doing", and it all had a rather amateurish feel to it, with constant cuts, tilts, and zooms wherein they weren't necessary at all. I have no issue with directors who try to be creative with their camerawork, but this is just weird, I can only describe it as being manufactured eccentricity - trying to look all weird and special, just because, which in turn makes it a far worse experience than if they just directed it normally.
Cinematography aside, my biggest issue with the show was the writing, which started off well in episode 1, but once they realised they had to actually work with it and make a full show, that's when it all crumbled. For one, we have three main characters: Norman, Emma and Ray, who are all much more intelligent than everyone else and plan to escape from the orphanage, while avoiding letting themselves get caught by the caretaker, Isabella. The biggest problem is the whole damned thing seems to go on in Norman's head, and the viewer isn't told a single thing, it seems to have taken the philosophy that if the viewer is just not told any information, then the big reveal will be really stunning, and I cannot say that's absolutely untrue, but put something in there to keep the viewer in anticipation, half the fucking show is just Norman staring intently at the caretaker (whose name is Isabella, for the record) like we're in a finale of a western. That can be suspenseful, sure, and the finale of a western is actually a good example, you know one of them's going to draw any second, keeps you on edge, but not this, you can stare at each other and all, but put something in there, the suspense has no pay off at all, and sometimes they stage bungled escapes every so often without much reason at all, not when each of these kids are apparently each Macgyver, but there's just no reason to any of it. They actually got shit done in the closing episode, and it wasn't awful, but it wasn't that good either.
They also seemed to fail to elaborate on so many questions. Who are the demons? How did they come to be? Why do they eat children? Who's in charge of this whole operation? Who is Phil, and why does he matter? How are the children so unbelievably smart? Why are we still here? Just to suffer?

In summary, Neverland starts off decently enough, but every episode other than the first one seems all too content on just leaving you to wait because, maybe, in a bit, it gets better, but it doesn't. It's a bad story, with nothing to redeem it. In the words of James Rolfe, what a shitload of fuck.

To put it in a simple word this is just a: COMMERCIAL anime
"Let's scare a little some people to make sum money"
Am I the only one mad at this anime!? At first they try to make a psychological thriller - suspense series about orphan kids living in a small zone.
Lil Spoilear ahead; these kids are basically being harvested but they don’t know that because when they are about to disappear the adult makes an excuse. Just with this plot you can make a bomb anime! Instead, this people said fuck this shit and added monsters! While still trying to make it realistically!
Also some things simply ... don’t fit well. After adding weird creatures, the anime proceeded to become like some type of Made in Abyss series with monster and spirits in the forests...
The personality of the mothers don’t really make sense, there isn’t even enough background information and the plot twist was kinda dumb.
For me, clearly whoever did this had no clear objective/aim/goal.

Despite my low rating, I do think this anime has a lot qualities, but finishing the series I was very disappointed.

This series is very far from the dark, psychological thriller the fandom makes it look like and that was for me it's biggest problem. The premise was perfect for a dark, atmospheric show but, because of it trying to appeal to a mainstream audience, it looses any depth or subtlety it could have gotten. The characters may be likeable, but are extremely generic and uninteresting (with the exception of Isabella maybe) and the series is carried mainly by cheap shocking moments.

Having said that, I think ... the art and the soundtrack created a unique and interesting vibe throughout the show and some of the moments where really powerful (especially at the start of the series and in the last episode).

Overall, I do not thing it is a bad show, I thing it falls terribly short of it's potential, and it has kept me away from enjoying this really good premise.

This is a racist show. And when i say that, i'm not even talking about the depiction of the black woman Sister Krone.

In the first episode, they introduced a brown/black kid, and i was immediately curious how they would depict him. Soon, after a test, these three white kids are revealed as "geniuses", immediately following which, the brown/black kid is immediately shown saying something stupid and everyone laughs at him for "weak judgement/losing his cool".

A few scenes later, we get yet another scene where a bunch of white kids point at the same brown/black kid and say "Look, he's losing his cool again".

I've read elsewhere ... that the other black character i.e. Sister Krone is depicted in a very racist manner. I've seen a few images of that character, and i'm not the least bit surprised after what i saw in the first few minutes of the first episode.

I have not read the story, but only watched the anime, and the review is on the stand alone season of the anime without taking future season into context.

[Story]
The story starts out with a dark and tense feeling, but doesn't keep on delivering such a mood throughout. When the story, or characters, try to be clever it's all done off screen, and presented to the viewers as a twist even though we could barely know there was anything to actually twist.
The main characters were dull with the oh so familiar moody one, the cheerful naive one, and villain who never actually got around to ... do anything.
Seeing as the characters were dull, the background story of the world was what kept me interested at all, the why and hows of the world where the story is played out, and we didn't get to know anything certain about it at all in these 12 episodes but I will make sure to watch the second season to see if it in any way redeems what we've seen here.

[Art]
The art was fair without anything really standing out to me, good or bad. It didn't really have a lot to work with in way of scenery or effects, but did well with what little there were.

[Sound]
I'm usually a fan of the sound effects and music in anime and this didn't disappoint, but neither did it stand out as something terrific. There were some places where the music seemed a bit off for me, and got a bit too 'jazzy' when the mood felt rather tense, which got me out of it, but other then that it didn't feel too out of place.

[Character]
To me there were no stand out characters at all in the series. The main characters were not really fleshed out, not that the setting really made that an easy task, and everyone else just felt like extras with no purpose other than to fill the plot and setting with something at all. The villains were bland, and the looming background threat has made nothing so far to peak my interest.

Overall it was a bland anime with no stand out features except for the main plot in itself which I felt wasn't explored well enough. The intrigue and cleverness was all done off screen and left me with a sense of being robbed of the character development that could've been had, and the twists that the series offered felt forced and didn't do much to make it feel more intense and interesting.

Season 1 of this anime started out fantastic but then season 2 happened and everything just went down hill from their. Tbh I'd be lying if I didn't say that I totally forgot that this anime existed cause of season 2...

When I say season 1 is fantastic I mean that it really pulls you in and makes you interested and crave more but season 2 is the exact opposite of that.
Season 2 makes you want to sleep and die. Even the so called 'interesting parts' aren't even interesting. Also all the unexpected twists and turns that the anime has are kind of expected to and ... that's no fun either.

If we are being completely honest here I was actually thinking about dropping the anime because the lack of excitement season 2 has but I am interested in how it ends so even though season 2 is awful I'm gonna stick around until the end. (hopefully)

If you want to watch something like TPN then watch Shadows House its everything TPN could have been and more! Highly recommend Shadows House over TPN.

At first I didn’t want to write this review but I just had too. I have been holding off for too long. As a huge fan of the manga, I found the anime adaptation to be extremely disappointing.

Let’s talk about the one positive aspect of the show: the music. This is literally the only thing it did better than the manga. Everything pales in comparison.

The storyboard and framing or shots in general are lackluster. It loses the tension and mystique of the manga pages. One would think a fully animated and colored media is better but it’s not. The manga is superior in art direction, ... composition and framing.

I also didn’t like how they cut out all of the witty inner monologues and changed a certain character’s behavior. Totally ruined the clever cat and mouse feel of the series. Basically ruined the whole show for me.

I’ve never been more disappointed.

This show gave us the travesty that is the Promised Neverland Season 2. That alone is enough to not recommend this. From removing most of the story to becoming a PowerPoint presentation, this has become such a funny comedy to watch as the fans were losing their minds about becoming the reincarnation of Game of Thrones. However, it has something good to show, history. One of the most important things, why we learn about history, is to not repeat mistakes again, to learn from the past and do what our ancestors were not able to, to redeem people and lead people to new ways which ... will help the common good, the build upon the innovations of others in the past who worked all their lives to bring their children, as the people today, to a better life and world which we would benefit and us ourselves aim to improve. It shows us the importance of recording these events and learning the teaching of others as well. Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, History, Philosophy, Economics, Technology, Geology, Geography, Law, Psychology, Engineering, and more. It allows us to build upon these ideas and condemn those who attempt to destroy and terrorize these just like the disaster that is Promised Neverland. It shows the importance of education and the need to improve education and not thrust it to the ground.

It kinda sucks.
I could write a whole essay on why that is the case but I really don't have to. My mom said so.
The 5 star rating is mainly for the visuals, which are high-quality and somewhat unique.
Unfortunately after the very first episode, the show takes a dump dive towards Yakusoku no-thanks Neverland.

Except for the visuals and initial idea, execution is horrendous. Truly everything else this anime has going for it is mediocre. Whoever thought it was a good plan to mix common shounen anime tropes, themes, and clichés with an incredibly dark, serious, and thought-provoking subject was smoking major crack.

Miyazaki was right.