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.
