#TPN 014

[fullscoreshenanigans]

hello, i was late to the fandom so i might have missed out on this discourse but do we ever find out the real content of Ray's letter to Isabella? Is it something of a plot point the author hasn't developed in canon? If so, what would the plot be you think? Thank you so much!!

Same hat, anon 😎🤝😎 (coming up on my third anniversary of first discovering the series just this month)

Shirai has never officially, explicitly stated in an interview what's in the letter Ray writes in chapter 22/S1 episode 7, but I've talked about this before and personally find it funny how he made a big deal out of the mystery surrounding it back in a 2019 Jump interview (translated here):

When I feel most people’s first guess as to what was in it after the escape arc concluded was eventually confirmed in December 2020 with the release of chapter 181.3:

A farewell letter from a son to his mother that reveals their biological connection when headquarters purposely kept it a secret.

(Mystic Code Book Chapter 2)

It's meant to be such a huge revelation it stops Krone in her tracks and deters her from digging around in Ray's room further to discover the rewards he's been receiving for six years and the lighter fluid he's been stockpiling for five.

(Mystic Code Book Chapter 1 Q& A | Chapter 22; Krone evens whips out records she brought along in her suitcase from headquarters to corroborate what she's read.)

I've also talked before about how Ray's retaliation was threefold in its pettiness, and this letter falls into points 2 & 3. After years of bottling up his anger and resentment toward her, he wanted to incriminate her by implicating she at very least knew about the escape, potentially that she even helped with it, all because she knew of their biological connection and wanted him to survive (the same thing he wished she would have said to him back on his sixth birthday at the gate):

(Chapter 181.1)

He found it sickening how she could choose to prolong her own life by sacrificing all his siblings over the course of her tenure at Grace Field. With this, he thought he would seal her death at the hands of the demons she groveled before like a dog, while he would die on his own terms as a human.

(Chapter 14)

What he didn't count on was Isabella's prioritizing results over rules was something that was enabled by her mother, to the point they were willing to remove Krone from plant no.3 altogether.

(Chapter 23 | Chapter 181.3)

Ray assumed Krone did not have the means to contact headquarters like Isabella did, so she would keep the bait and bide her time until presented with the opportunity to reveal it to someone higher in the chain of command. Ray assumed Krone would still be at Grace Field at the time of the escape, and that after he was dead and the four other oldest kids were gone and headquarters was looking for an explanation for how a blunder of this magnitude could have possibly happened, Krone would show her hand to usurp Isabella's position.

It's why he's so caught off-guard when Isabella reveals she made a move first.

(Chapter 24)

As for why Shirai gave conflicting information about this, I'm assuming he wanted to leave the door open for multiple possibilities before his health tanked and he began aggressively cutting off story branches so he could still complete the series under his own power and maintain his sense of artistic integrity.

(October 2020 Series Completion Interview)

And that's how we arrive at the contents of the letter being what a lot of fans suspected from the jump.

[fullscoreshenanigans]

What's your thoughts on Ray and Norman's conversation after the spy reveal, where Ray says Norman should've discarded him and Norman says he would've but Emma convinced him otherwise? Was Norman really going to do that? (sorry if you've already talked about it but I missed;;)

You're good! I talked about the framing of the end of the scene here forever ago in internet time, touch on it here as an add-on to a post regarding the false belief there was a rivalry founded on the basis of a classic love triangle inextricably integrated into the core of the narrative (i.e., Norman and Ray actually dislike each other because they're both vying for Emma's romantic affection), and a brief summary of those feelings in this paragraph from this post, so my thoughts on it are kind of scattered about lol

Ray knows Norman, knows his sense of rigid morality well enough to account for him discovering his alliance with Isabella and using that to his advantage, to further push Norman away so he’ll be more comfortable with using him (he even chides Norman for not keeping his original plan to do this a secret) and so his death will hurt him and Emma less. And for roughly the entire back half of October 2045, Norman did genuinely hate Ray for his betrayal in the same way he hated Isabella, his reaction so visceral at being deceived and hurt by people he had loved all his life. He would have been willing to sacrifice Ray if not for intervention from Emma, which opened him up to directly confronting Ray and, in turn, led him to discover Ray’s true motives. He was so humbled and taken aback by the depths of Ray’s love and loyalty he returned to his original categorization of him: a dear friend who needed to be saved from his intended fate in their cruel world. Even if saving him came at the cost of his own life; even if he desperately wanted to live.

So I do believe Norman would have done it given the circumstances, and that Ray was banking on him doing so if Norman suspected him of being the traitor (and from Ray's perspective, this was the more likely outcome because of how much stock he puts in Norman's intelligence).

It fits with Ray's meticulous planning, Norman's overall morality when left on his own at this point in his life plus his pride and ruthlessness, and the series' themes of redemption/second chances for those who genuinely work toward change and the positive influence of friendship/solidarity over isolation.

Upon discovering the truth of the house, Norman's first instinct is to grab Emma and Ray and get out of there.

His mind is absolutely fried by what's just taken place and its implications, and he's scrambling to come up with a plan, focusing on whatever he believes is still familiar and safe to ground himself so he can shake off the emotional and mental paralysis he's in. I love how both the manga and anime convey how shell-shocked he is with the weary lines under his eyes and the thousand-yard stare he's got going on as he's floating outside himself. It's all completely understandable.

This is one of my most-cited details about the anime taking advantage of the medium shift. Both Emma and Norman are completely shocked by Isabella being there, but it only takes Norman a second to shift between that initial shock to sorrow over realizing what it means that the woman who he’s viewed as his mother his entire life is here casually talking with demons and not recoiling in horror at what’s taken place. He genuinely loved her.

(Chapter 6)

It's part of why he reacts so viscerally to her betrayal, another being his pride taking a hit due to being outmaneuvered by her. He's scored perfect 300s on his test since the day he started taking them at four-years-old, the first child in the history of Grace Field ever to do so. While he's never haughty or smug over this, he does find comfort in his intelligence. This undermines him in a way that not only cuts him to the quick, but also puts his family at risk, and he's determined to come out on top in this game of high-stakes wits and save them.

(Chapter 10)

So after being dealt the crushing blow that Isabella was raising him and his siblings just to be food for demons, a few days later he's dealt another one when Krone's appearance leads him to instantly suspect Ray as the most probable and convenient informant for her. Ray was one of his two main pillars of strength he could fall back on in a time where his whole world has shifted beneath him. They had been together ever since he could remember, and he was disgusted with himself for even thinking Ray could do this. Like Isabella, he genuinely loved him too. In the face of the insurmountable conclusion he'd drawn, however, he couldn't ignore reality, not when the lives of Emma and his siblings hinged on him not making any more mistakes.

The revelation of this betrayal silently festers over the course of roughly two weeks. During that time, Ray even encourages Norman to be ruthless when dealing with his enemies.

(Chapter 7)

It doesn't take long for Norman to get on board.

(Chapter 9)

And while he ultimately comes to the conclusion that suppressing the adults is the better course of action,

(Chapter 10)

the poignancy of the fork symbolism is still there: stay vigilant, stay sharp, stay ruthless. Even if it means discarding one of your best friends once he's no longer useful in the escape plan. (I'll use this as an opportunity to plug one of my favorite pieces of art on the subject by @nekokat42. It's funny how over the course of the story, Norman ends up taking after Isabella the most out of the trio on this front.)

In the same way his categorization of Isabella has shifted in his mind, so too has his categorization of Ray, and he would have stayed there if Norman hadn't sought Emma's perspective on the matter. It parallels nicely to when she acts as his moral compass in chapter 1/episode 1.

Emma's automatic, genuine desire to save everyone quickly sobers him up from his stupor and his plan for just the three of them to escape. He's touched by this, her being far more selfless than him, and he silently chides himself for not even considering trying before resolving to make Emma's ideal outcome a reality.

(Chapter 13)

Emma reaffirms the importance of considering the nuance and material circumstances of their situation, what the logical fallout would be for the traitor if they were left behind during the escape, and the biggest thing for Norman, striving for better instead of settling for pragmatism when you still have the opportunity to effect change on the world around you and reach an outcome you'll be happier with.

(Chapter 14)

(Chapter 13)

Norman being willing to use and discard Ray makes the impact of him switching his stance on the matter and later realization of Ray's true motives hit harder while also providing a basis for his actions and beliefs during later arcs after he's been isolated from the positive influence of his family.

(The Good Place; borrowing because I like the conciseness and feel it's applicable to Norman, Ray, and Yuugo.)

With the way the final seconds of this sequence are framed in the anime—going from a shot of a giddy yet harried Norman to a self-chiding Ray to Eugene's drawing of a trio of children—I feel like they wanted to draw attention to this aspect of his realization more than chapter 14 did where Norman's more focused on what Ray's position as Isabella's spy affords the plan. Here it looks like he's taking in the full ramifications of the choice he would have made if he hadn't talked with Emma; a future where he threw away a dear friend who had made years of impossible decisions as Isabella's sheepdog and was willing to die so that they could have one, because for Ray it's always been about Emma and Norman. What once appeared to be a selfish choice to save his own skin was actually one born out of love and loyalty, and once again Norman is disgusted with himself over his presumptions and saddened by Ray's intention to die, though at this point he hasn't seen the lighter fluid stockpiled under Ray's bed, so he has yet to figure out how he plans to pull it off. It's an ache profound enough to leave him startled and reaching to cover his mouth in its wake. One that could possibly be prompted without Norman intending to discard Ray since on top of everything else already going on he's now aware Ray plans on killing himself, which is devastating, but I think it's more poignant if he was going to go through with it.

[fullscoreshenanigans]

The first half of S1e05, which covers chapters 13 and 14 of the manga, is one of the most prominent sequences where many people feel the removal of flashbacks and internal monologues hit the hardest in the series, and I can’t say I disagree with them. Jairus Taylor of ANN contends this decision doomed all future seasons even if TPN Committee’s decision to cut their losses on the IP and drastically truncate the rest of the adaption hadn’t occurred:

The anime's approach to the Grace Field arc is chock full of tension, with clever camera angles to create the idea that the kids are constantly being watched. Moments of almost complete silence give an extra sense of dread, and the twisted fairy tale aesthetic series artist Posuka Demizu gave the manga was swapped for photorealistic backgrounds that make the area of the Grace Field House look significantly more real and grounded. In keeping with that focus on realism, Kanbe even stated in an interview that he intentionally cut down on nearly all of the monologuing from the manga in order to create a bigger feeling of suspense, and to keep the intentions of characters like Isabella and Krone shrouded in mystery. While this approach had its shortcomings, (changing most of Krone's internal monologues into her talking to a creepy doll just made her look unhinged rather than smart, and amplified her already yikes design even further) it made for a pretty solid season of television that was compelling enough to leave the audience curious where the story would be headed next.

The problem here though is that TPN was never really a mystery thriller in the way its earliest chapters suggested. It's a horror fantasy, and one that leans a little closer towards being a more linear version of Hunter x Hunter than the second coming of Death Note. In a similar vein to how Yoshihiro Togashi shifts the tone and genre of Hunter x Hunter with any given arc, The Promised Neverland also effectively changed genres to better support the needs of the narrative. The mystery thriller elements were vital to the Grace Field arc and filling in the blanks on the main trio's lack of information about the outside world; as that world expanded and the scope of the story grew more complex, Shirai tossed most of the mystery elements out the window. Instead, the post-Grace Field story shifts towards more literal strategic battles (with guns) and an ever-deepening dive into more fantastical elements, which range from the kids having to stave off sentient trees to Emma and Ray navigating a time-space cube in order to bargain with an Elder God that also doubles as a maniacal wish genie.

It's not exactly hard to see how a lot of that clashes with the relatively grounded tone of the anime. That grounded approach worked well enough with the needs of the Grace Field arc, but it resulted in an anime adaption that was ill-equipped to handle the story beyond the orphanage. The anime did a pretty good job delivering on suspense, but turning that into its main focus came at the expense of other elements that were vital to TPN's larger ambitions.

Aside from the aforementioned changes to the visual aesthetic of the series, a lot of the worldbuilding elements that helped to set up those later arcs took a pretty big hit. Some were cut out entirely, while others trimmed down so much that they feel more like exposition rather than explicit foreshadowing or major turning points in the story. Having all of the internal monologues cut had the unfortunate side effect of diminishing the characterization of figures like Isabella and Krone, whose motivations and deference to the sacrificial nature of the farm system is more directly contrasted to whether or not Emma will make a similar choice in abandoning the other kids. The fracture mother-daughter relationship between Emma and Isabella in particular (which Shirai stated as his reason for wanting the series to have a female protagonist in the first place) is given emotional context in the manga that is otherwise lost.

While we do have three other scenes of a younger Ray in episodes 1, 10, and 12, the flashback presented in chapter 14 that isn’t adapted visually is the first one that’s being relayed from one character to another with the intention of manipulation and misdirection of both the character and the audience. Ray feigns an air of nonchalance and indifference during his first retelling of his meeting with Isabella by the wall, keeping as much emotion out of it as possible as he frames it strictly as a business deal,

though subsequent recountings of the meeting we’re privy to confirm how devastating it was for him to have his suspicions confirmed. By doing so, he’s purposefully trying to push Norman’s buttons to simultaneously get him to agree to his plan of tricking Emma into leaving with just the five of them (really four) and really start pushing them away emotionally so that when he commits suicide, it hopefully won’t hurt them as much (this fails spectacularly, but A for effort lol). By portraying him with this level of detachment, it makes the audience second guess his true level of emotional investment in the trio’s relationship: is he prioritizing Emma and Norman’s lives out of true friendship and love, or is it because they have the best chances of helping him survive outside the walls?

Other visual evidence is presented to support the former. In chapter 13, Norman notes how “it wouldn’t have been hard to fool Conny” into parting with Little Bunny:

The wording here could be taken subconsciously to mean this was a malicious and potentially misanthropic act of subterfuge, especially since we don’t have the additional nod to his guilt over doing nothing to save her from her intended fate in chapter 19 when we see her smiling face in this single panel, along with the note to Isabella relaying the false location of the rope (another thing the anime doesn’t particularly convey well since it seems like Ray is apologizing just for lying and yelling at Don and Gilda. He is sorry about that, yes, but he’s also remorseful for doing nothing for his late siblings and how ready he was to turn Norman against Don because he wouldn’t be dealing with the suffering caused by that fallout.)

But we don’t see an overtly malevolent Ray sneakily hiding Little Bunny away as a distraught Conny sobs that she’ll have to leave the house without her beloved stuffed animal. We don’t see what Ray says to her, if anything, to prompt her to hand over Little Bunny, but she does so willingly and with a smile on her face after her older brother has gently patted them both, though he later states that he “tricked Conny, who didn’t know better.” More language steeped in negative connotations to corroborate how Norman described the act earlier so he’ll, hopefully, continue to think distastefully of Ray and be more willingly to abandon him later on. (It helps that it comes naturally from all the guilt that’s been fermenting within him over the years.) The anime omits this in favor of emphasizing Ray’s declaration that everything he’s done was to prepare for the escape they’re planning, choosing to have Norman focus on Ray specifically indicating all of this was just to make sure he and Emma don’t die during his revelation rather than him going over each point Ray told him, weighing his options, and aspiring to be more like Emma, the lattermost being the most lamentable loss.

This is when “Existence of an Insider” begins to play.

It’s mix of sorrowful strings, distorted cracklings, and techno beats intermingling to embody the conflict of sorting out just where Ray’s loyalties lie and what his existence as the insider means as dialogue ceases for an entire minute with only the sound effects to accompany the tune.

I’m not going to deny that while I enjoy this sequence, I also find it disproportionally comical, like a lot of the scenes in this series, largely because when I step back from the narrative that has thoroughly pulled me in, I’m reminded that all of this would be occurring between two eleven-year-old boys with no musical accompaniment and can essentially be summarized as Ray coming out of that exchange thinking he’s the hottest shit, slowly comprehending exactly what he said to a born genius, and then finally realizing everything he gave away with just a single sentence.

On top of the world to "shitshitshit FUCK I fucked up. I fucked up so fucking bad" in the span of seventeen seconds. Absolutely amazing, and yet while this presentation is amusing on a meta level, in-universe it never undermines the seriousness of the events playing out onscreen.

Meanwhile, Norman reaching the same conclusion is one of humbling, relief, and grief. Since Krone first arrived at the house, he suspected Ray was the traitor. He hated himself for it, but that didn’t change the conclusion he drew, and he spent two weeks stewing around in those negative, vindictive thoughts. This is the only time I believe Norman ever truly hated Ray as a person. His being aloof and withdrawn might have been annoying and frustrating when they were younger, but he still accepted Ray as he was and didn’t hate him. This development, however, was infuriating. Norman would have been willing to sacrifice Ray, like Ray tells him he should have done, if he hadn’t talked to Emma in the flashback from the manga that instead plays out chronologically here. It isn’t stated by him directly how he aspires to be like her, but it does cause him to pause, reevaluate, and take a step back from adhering to his more rigid sense of morality.

And then he realizes Ray’s true motivation and is humbled even further. In the final seconds of the song, the distorted crackling cuts out, and we’re left with the last rueful notes of the string instrument as the camera zooms in on a single child’s drawing, one that we know is Eugene’s based on the chapter 31 extra of the Grace Field House art gallery:

Eugene is a background character, they couldn’t even afford to give him eyes, so him being the artist of this drawing is ultimately inconsequential to the larger narrative, but I still have to applaud Mamoru Kanbe for pulling this out of the source material to more naturally and subtly symbolize this conclusion as opposed to using an actual doodle of the trio that we see in the chapter 37 cover art:

It looks like it’s from Yvette’s sketchbook based on the unplucked fringes, yet based on the skill she displays in the art gallery extra, it doesn’t seem like she was the one to draw it. (As a sidenote, how precious is it that the trio’s bond is so strong even the youngest of the children of art-producing age can pick up on it and want to draw it, as well as how heartbreaking it is that their separation will be so profoundly felt throughout the entire house).

There wouldn’t be a way to naturally incorporate that into the scene, and it would be even more on the nose, so the creative staff poured through the material they had available to them at the time of production and incorporated the gallery a second time in addition to the original chilling confrontation between Emma and Isabella in episode 2. A good use of resources to convey to the viewer the same affirmation Ray had given to Norman: whatever his machinations might entail, his motivation has always, always been his two most precious friends.

There’s relief in that realization: Ray isn’t out to maliciously harm them, but there’s also grief in how Ray doesn’t see himself as worth saving. A very humbling experience when just a few hours ago Norman had been so willing to throw Ray away like he wanted.

While Ray never blatantly states his intentions like he does in the final page of chapter 14:

I would argue that a similar telegraphing to this scene is presented in the opening page of the chapter thanks to the simple, subtle, and masterful layout:

Reading from right to left and top to bottom, the very first image we see is of the trio at the gate. There are some smaller text bubbles of dialogue between the trio at the time, but the largest one on the page is a repeat of the one we left off with at the end of chapter 13. Finally, we end on a resolved Ray in the bottom right corner who will do everything within his capabilities to ensure those two will make it past the wall, even if it means hurting the one who sits before him by pushing him away. An excellent central, diagonal main flow to open with.

In light of all this, is the anime’s handling of these chapters the inferior way to experience them? I would say it depends on what you prioritize when experiencing a work. Is it a worthwhile way to experience? For me, I can genuinely say yes thanks to the alterations the production staff chose, even if those choice would not have carried over well to the rest of the narrative. They kept me so thoroughly engaged with the story I binged it all in a single day and subsequently prompted me to continue on and finish the manga over the course of the next three. I haven’t had that kind of drive for a new media property in a while, so it was appreciated.

Also as a bonus, the Grace Field House daily schedule featured in chapter 17 is also included in this scene:

As well as downstairs in the dining hall:

Obviously we don’t have as richly detailed of an interior as what Demizu provides us in the manga, and yet I repeatedly come back to season 1 and marvel at all the care and little subtleties it has while utilizing the advantages of the medium it’s been transferred to.