Anime: Yakusoku no Neverland (2021)

I really loved the first season of Promised Neverland! Its ability to maintain an air of suspense through unexpected yet logical twists and an atmosphere of the unknown really made S1 shine---not to mention its deep capacity for authentic emotional expression in every single human character, especially in their facial expressions!

Sadly, most of those aspects that made S1 great did not return or were reworked into this season (S2)---at least not very well.

While there is continuity from S1 plot-wise, the common issue I had with S2 is that it was paced way too fast. Whereas in S1, where we experienced a slow-burning thriller that came to a climactic and satisfying conclusion, here in S2, we are exposed to a plot that seems to quickly change major story arcs every other episode. So rather than an aura of suspense that permeates throughout the season, what we get instead is a series of roller-coaster rides that are over as soon as they begin.

This is doubly true for the new characters that are introduced in this season. At first, these new characters seem interesting and mysterious, but they are introduced so quickly and sparsely that you never really get to know them---even their backgrounds or motivations are briefly alluded to in a random exposition or montage scene, if at all. Plot points and character elements that would have made great suspense and mystery themes that could have lasted for at least half the season were quickly revealed or cavalierly abandoned for the sake of an 11-episode pacing.

Worst yet, the absolute end of S2 feels like a complete letdown for fans (for me at least). I won't go into details to avoid spoilers,

The producers and/or director of Season 2 simply tried to cover more material than could have been covered well in only eleven 23-minute episodes. If they had doubled the episode count to 22 or 24 episodes or each episode length to 40-minutes or so, we could have had a more thematically faithful sequel than we did.

I want to recommend this season, but I cannot. While I personally enjoyed the overall plot and how the various characters that were carried over from S1 grew by the end of S2, I was equally disappointed by how messily and quickly it attempted to rush through the entire story and, worse of all, with its ending. If you already watched S1 and want to see what happens next (as I did), then, by all means, watch this season as well. (Or better yet, read the manga, which I probably will after this disappointment.) The only thing that can redeem this season for me is if they produce a Season 3 that begins shortly after the final arc of S2 that is also thematically faithful to S1 or cognizant of what made S1 so special for many of us anime viewers.

The first season of The Promised Neverland wasn’t as good as many say. It had a cool thriller atmosphere, but it was just jump scares around fairly bland characters. The second season on the other hand doesn’t waste any time in showing you how worse it is by ruining even that.

1) The adaptation stopped following the source. And sure, it’s the execution that matters and not how faithful of an adaptation a series is. Yet even there it didn’t try to offer a better version of that lukewarm soup the manga had turned into. It was even worse than that!

2) Nobody died on the side of the good guys for making the world outside the orphanage to seem like a dangerous place. As if that wasn’t enough of a problem, even characters who were supposed to be dead or about to be killed in the first season and proof of why the demons pose a deadly threat, return alive and more powerful than ever before. Meaning, this new setting doesn’t feel deadly despite being far more savage than their secure life within the walls, since the fear of death no longer exists.

3) The children know what they are up against. In the first season it was mostly hidden or implied. They weren’t sure who was with them or against them and most of them didn’t even know about the demons. Their fear was more psychological than physical and it was essentially an internal conflict. Now it’s just a bunch of monsters which they know of, they clearly see, and which they can outrun. Heck, one of them can outright kill multiple demons with no problem. The adversaries come off as pathetically weak compared to what they were before. Heck, there is a scene where elite soldiers with machineguns get bested by a bunch of kids with sticks and stones.

4) Since there never were any actual life or death situations during the first season, nobody was in any immediate threat of getting killed, and thus nobody needed to be saved on the spot. The second season ruined even that, because now the characters need to be saved all the time and at the last possible moment, which means they got a lot of plot armor and most of the tension is fake. For example, those soldiers from before never try to kill the children. Even when they manage to capture them, a monster conveniently appears out of nowhere for a last moment save and doesn’t attack the children, despite being sitting ducks. It attacks the elite soldiers with machineguns who are of course incapable to stop it and are wiped out, while the kids with the sticks and stones have no problem running away with no casualties and while injuring it.

5) The characters have freedom of movement. During the first season they were trapped within the walls and felt helpless to do something about it. Now they are out in the open and can go anywhere they want, including the option to run away from the danger. That wasn’t the case before, when the thing that could kill you was right next to you and you couldn’t do anything about it.

6) Another appeal of the first season was the mysterious setting, since nobody knew what exactly is going on with the world. What are these demons, where are the rest of the humans, what is going on with society? It was pure mysterybait for the pretentious overthinkers to make up any bull theories they want and for the vegans to keep proclaiming the show to be about not eating meat. Well, that’s gone once they got the answers to all their questions.

7) Even the exposition is bad, since most of the explanations are infodumped on the viewer instead of us seeing what is going on. A ton of things happened out of screen and the viewer is supposed to be content with a brief mentioning of them. There is a facility where they experiment on people and create a magic gas for killing everything, all of which are described in a flashback that squeezed material for an hour, in about 15 minutes.

8) Some plot threads even feel like they lead nowhere. That woman from the first season who magically became a good guy in the last episode and everyone instantly and idiotically felt sorry for all the terrible things she had done, returns and she’s evil again. So, is it okay to hate her again until you instantly like her again? What’s with this sudden flip flop? Well, it doesn’t matter since this plot thread goes nowhere. Despite promising to capture the children she does nothing for the rest of the show until they come to her in the last episode and she reveals she was good all along. What was the point of this nonsense?

9) This issue is like a natural follow up of what had happened in the first season. None of the characters matter. There is a ton of kids that run along with the main trio, a truckload of demons who are after them, and you are never given any reason to care about them. It was always about the thrills of what will the demons do to the kids if they ever capture them, which never happens. None of these characters matters to the viewer, because none of them do something worthy of his attention. Which is why when a massacre happens in the finale, the viewer doesn’t feel a thing.

And that is how a show that began as psychological survival horror, and which was never that good to begin with since the characters were all dull, degraded to a forgettable borefest. It was a sham all along.