The Promised Neverland Season 2

Episode 4

Remember when I spent half of the last review prefacing all of my thoughts with a disclaimer about how difficult it can be to divorce my experience with The Promised Neverland from its manga source material? Well, go ahead and multiply all of those sentiments by a hundred this week, because I'm really having a hard time framing the events of “Episode 4” from the perspective of an anime-only viewer. For whatever its worth, I still don't know how pleased I would have been with where the story goes this week.

To explain why that is, we can brush aside all of the spoilery thoughts I'll expound upon in the Odds and Ends below and ask one simple question: What does this episode accomplish, narratively? In the beginning, it seems like the answer would be “quite a lot!”, since that ringing payphone that Emma and Ray found contains a recording from none other than William Minerva himself, aka James Ratri, a human who was once associated with the running of the farms before he eventually defected and began planting clues all around the orphanages like the world's most overambitious Escape Room manager. Except, that's really all we get for nearly half of the episode. The cliffhanger of the “HELP!” room is basically completely ignored, since it apparently was only ever included to serve as an Easter Egg reference to the 60-70 manga chapters that this story is hurtling right over and ignoring almost completely.

Yes, you read that right: the last episode took us to right around Chapter 50 of the source material, and by the end of Episode 4 we're technically covering story beats from Chapter 110 and beyond. I say “technically” because, as you might imagine, there's a whole heaping mess of character development, world-building, and plot twists that simply don't exist anymore. While the anime could maybe still introduce characters and story beats that would be recognizable to manga readers, it seems like The Promised Neverland is heading firmly into the territory of being “inspired by” its printed namesake, rather than serving as a faithful adaptation.

For the record, that is absolutely fine on paper! I am not someone who believes that all adaptations ought to slavishly preserve every single minute detail of their source material, and it isn't like there aren't plenty of fans who were actually hoping that the anime might go in its own direction here and there. I will admit that I actually haven't finished the comic, myself; I stopped reading at around Chapter 123 or so, mostly because I wanted to wait for the series to wrap so I could binge the final third of the story in one sitting, but I would be lying if I didn't say I wasn't a little burnt out on the series. The Promised Neverland's pacing never reached the pitch-perfect heights of that first Grace Field Escape Arc again, and while I really loved the material that came after the kids' jaunt through the evil demon forest, TPN definitely struggled to find proper footing in its back half. I suspect a lot of these anime-only changes are coming because this second season will be it's last, and to be honest, it may very well end up that streamlining the plot and trimming the fat makes for a better show, in the long run.

At this particular junction, though, I struggle to see why the anime is ostensibly jettisoning some of its very best post-Grace-Field material in favor of…more downtime in the bunker, with the plot at a complete standstill. I can see the benefit of giving the kids more opportunities to express themselves as characters, sure, but did we really need more archery practice montages? More of that one kid playing the piano? More shots of these kids bathing and showering? The extended sequence of Thoma and Lanni catching those nasty looking Goowee fish-bugs is at least something that we didn't already see plenty of in the last two episodes, but what does it amount to, in the end? A couple of more yuks with the comic relief kids?

If TPN was in so much need of narrative breathing room that it had to toss a full third of its story out the window, why does Episode 4 feel so aimless and repetitive? This is what has me so irked, really. I'd be so much more willing to go along with a complete change in direction or what have you if this episode didn't commit the one sin that The Promised Neverland had avoided so well until now: It bored me. The clunky transition to this new material even managed to nearly bungle Isabelle's reintroduction, which was the one genuinely cool element of the whole week. Given that the show has careened us to a point where I truly have no clue where it's going to take us from here, I will admit that I am excited to see what perilous plans the scorned Mama has in store for her wayward children, especially since her demon captors are dangling freedom from Grace Field as her reward for hunting them down. However bumpy the road to this new (?) ending will be, there's still a chance that the ride will prove worthwhile when all is said and done.

Rating:

Odds and Ends

• Minerva/Ratri gives the kids a new code to their pen – FUTURE – which reveals the coordinates “D100”. This is apparently the final stop on their quest for freedom, and it feels like an exceptionally quick and easy win for the kids. I joke about the guy's plans making it feel like the kids are stuck in the most elaborate escape room ever devised, but the anime is cranking the video-gamey feel of the journey up to 11.

• I haven't read the manga in long enough that my memories of Isabella's fate, and her relationship with “Grandma”, are kind of hazy. That said, I feel like this development for her is very different than what I remember. Am I totally off the mark, here?

• The Spoiled Neverland Warning – here be the manga spoilers that you may wish to avoid!!

Seriously, though, we can pretty much kiss Mister, Lucas, and the whole of the Goldy Pond Arc goodbye, huh? It's a damned shame, because while it wasn't as clean or precisely written as the Grace Field Escape, I think Goldy Pond was my favorite story that TPN ever told, at least so far as what I read is concerned. The escalating challenge and danger of the demon encounters really gave Emma a chance to shine as a heroine in her own right, not just as a caretaker of the tykes, and I loved the new dynamic the older Resistance kids brought to the story. Plus, Lucas and Mister both have some of my favorite character beats in all of TPN. Ah well. We do see the names of all those kids, who escaped from Glory Bell Farm years before Emma and Ray made their dash for freedom, scrawled on the wall in that morbid “HELP” room. Maybe we'll still get to see a version of their story play out in the anime?

The Promised Neverland Season 2 is currently streaming on FUNimation Entertainment and Hulu. James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.