#yakosoku no neverland 2nd season

[medea10]

My Review of The Promised Neverland 2nd Season

Here’s my 1st season review.

Let’s see how our escaped orphans faired out as they step away from the comforts of their home.

HISTORY: The story of The Promised Neverland goes like this. There once were 39 orphans at the Grace Field House. The orphanage was run by a woman named Isabella, but she’s known to the children as “Mama”. These children were given a happy home with plenty to eat. But when they reach a certain peak or the age of 12, they are “adopted” and leave the orphanage. What these children don’t realize that is they are NOT adopted. They are taken off the property where big scary monsters stick a sharp flower in their hearts and save them for feast later on.

Orphans, Norman, Ray, and Emma learned of this and are willing to find any way to escape their doomed fate. They learn who can and cannot be trusted, what to use for escape purposes, and teach some of the other children what to do in worst case scenarios. This, leading up to a fiery escape from the orphanage and the kids heading off to a better tomorrow!

SECOND SEASON: As it turns out, outside of the Grace Field House and the other orphanages tied to this monster syndicate are deep, dark forests filled to the brim with otherworldly creatures. Emma, Ray, and the other escaped children learned that there are going to be monsters everywhere. Either the highly intelligent ones that harvest the children or the generic, yet giant monsters you might see in any other anime. Add to the nightmare, the monsters from the orphanage syndicate are out looking for the escaped children and are ready to hunt them down. Especially Ray and Emma due to their high intelligence!

But the kids make it out of that trouble and meet two demons named Sonju and Mujika who are much different than the ones pursuing Emma and Ray. These two demons make it their mission to not eat any humans for religious reasons and to help these kids reach their next point on their journey. The next stop is to hopefully gain access to the human side of the world. Due to a 1000 year-long agreement between demons and humans, both sides are divided. The kids will continue to follow clues left behind by a man named William Minerva (an author behind many books the kids read).

And with a little help from a pen their dear friend Norman left behind, their hopes are riding high.

LICENSING: This was actually a pretty big cash-cow for Aniplex back in 2019 and so they snatched it up as soon as the series was green-lit. Problem is that FUNimation got its greasy mits on this series too. So Crunchyroll doesn’t get shit from this deal. Yeah, this is not the only series Crunchyroll got butt-fucked on despite streaming the first season. Not only Hulu and FUNimation got ahold of this series, but they got the old cast back to dub as it is also airing on Adult Swim’s Toonami. Of course, all of this was decided long-before we all learned this season was going to be a flaming disappointment.

NEW CHARACTERS: As I mentioned in my synopsis of season two, Emma and Ray meet two demon monsters when they were trying to navigate the forest. Mujika and Sonju are demons much like the monsters that kill and eat the orphan children. The only difference is that these two do not eat children. They both refuse to eat them on a count of religious standings. Here’s what you might recognize these folks from.

JAPANESE CAST: *Mujika is played by Atsumi Tanezaki (known for Futaba on Bunny Girl Senpai, Uo on Fruits Basket 2019, Houzuki on Kono Oto Tomare, Juno on Beastars, and Emilia on Durarara)

*Sonju is played by Shinichirou Kamio

ENGLISH CAST: *Mujika is played by Lizzie Freeman (known for Chizuru on Rent-A-Girlfriend, Ryuuzu on Re:Zero, Cardinal on SAO: Alicization, Trish on Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Pt. 5, and Chitose on Tonikawa)

*Sonju is played by Daman Mills (known for Yakov on Yuri on Ice, Abel on Attack on Titan, Mabu on Sarazanmai, Chika on Kono Oto Tomare, and Kai on Beastars)

SKIPPING ARCS: Soooo…this never happens in any of my reviews. There are only a few mangas where I’m actually ahead of the anime so this is a new experience for me. I can actually get on board the “I read the manga train”. And I would lodge a complaint!

Guys, what the hell are you doing cutting out Yuugo from the anime? Not just that, but the whole Goldy Pond arc! You take the time to have the kids make it to the shelter and have a scene where some of the kids come upon those names on the wall. What kind of sick-ass shit is that? And then you immediately jump ahead to the shelter being raided. Because of this, folks skip over very important details including Emma crossing over… *censored*

And meeting… *censored*

*censored* and the connection between *censor the fuck out of this*

And that wasn’t even William Minerva!

Right, this is a review for the anime, not the manga. Now I know how those hardcore manga-reading jerks feel like. Guys, if you want to please check out The Promised Neverland’s manga chapters 50-119. In fact, just stop the anime around episode 4 and pick up the manga from there. It’s only going to get worse from here on out. Be afraid children, be very afraid!

ENDING: Much to my dismay, it looks as though the Yuugo/Goldy Pond arc was never meant to be in the anime version. I stupidly thought there would be a 1% chance of there being a side-story movie telling that story. Oh well! I guess this season, they wanted to focus more on Sonju and Mujika and the best way to do that is throw away 60 chapters of story to get to the next possible point we can see these characters. Yes, my irritation is showing!

As we saw in the halfway point, Norman comes back. Yes, he’s alive! And they found it absolutely necessary to make us wait an extra week to find out why he’s there and even longer to learn about his time after leaving Grace Field. And even with all of that, is it even worth talking about? Not to mention the way they met Norman again was completely different from the manga. You’re totally bypassing the information about *censored*.

Norman’s got some new mates he met while locked up in the Lambda facility. Because of Norman’s intelligence, he was actually spared from death, unlike so many other orphans. He just became a test subject for the monsters. But Norman and other test subjects were able to rebel and escape. Next up is Norman’s ultimate plan of wiping out the demon race for good. He’s come up with a way to eradicate them all through degeneration. Now for kids who have been groomed to become food for demons, this does seem like a logical idea. Kill them all and let God sort it out. It’s just that, yes, Emma does have some sort of compassion after spending a good six months on the run. Not only that, but her time with Sonju and Mujika! Not all demons are evil.

But Norman’s time in the facility has changed him. Even making a promise with Emma and Ray wasn’t going to go down with agreed parties. Norman ends up committing the mass genocide of the demons before Emma and Ray come back with Mujika and Sonju. Thankfully, the meek crybaby Norman emerged when he realized what he was doing was bad. Mujika and Sonju were able to reverse the demons being deformed. Even Norman’s comrades were feeling remorseful about taking innocent lives when they meant no harm to them whatsoever. So that’s taken care of! Now, for a few problems that have risen to cause mayhem!

Norman and his comrades were experimented on to a point of illness. So all of those kids are pretty close to expiration unless they get some sort of cure hidden in more pen magic left by “Minerva”! Next, Phil and the others are going to be shipped out. So it’s now or never if they’re going to break out the rest of their friends. Then we have Isabella…she now has the title of “Grandmother”. And Ratri, the guy who “adopted” Norman and had him spend his days in the Lambda testing farm is watching and waiting for these escaped children to pop up. The kids were able to sneak onto the farms, fool Ratri’s guards and monsters, and sneak all the children from the farms to this one point where they can go to the human world.

They were then stopped by Isabella and all the other mothers from all the farms. But as it turns out, it was a double cross for Ratri. Isabella and the other mothers have their own reasons for this rebellion. I mean, we all remember Isabella’s memory and that beautifully haunting music that accompanied it last season. If her kids are able to find a way out of this system, she’ll take advantage of the situation and take down Ratri. On top of which, the demons in the nearby town are revolting against the system. I guess after Emma and the others saved them from the gas Norman and the other Lambda subjects released, they’re kinda indebted to her and the rest of the escapees. So Ratri is trapped in a corner with all the walls closing in. What does Emma want now? Join her in freedom.

So we get a condensed version of Ratri’s backstory. Yeah, he’s the younger brother of William Minerva. Minerva was supposed to be the head of the Ratri clan until he learned the truth about farmed children and that’s when he became…well, William Minerva. And so Ratri had his brother killed off. Ratri laughs at Emma and slits his throat. The kids make it to the gateway between the demon world and human world. Emma says goodbye to everyone as she explains she will not join them until she makes the true promise come true. She will become the new William Minerva and save other children from being cattle to a bunch of demons. And because of Mujika and Sonju, they feel they have the ability to do so.

What follows is a slide-show of all the children in the human world living their lives happily in freedom and Emma traveling the demon world. Now I’m going to be honest here, I have not made it this far in the manga and had no idea that there was a lot more story between the gateway and the very end. MUCH MORE! So…this was a very cheap ending. Especially when you’ve got a lot of story involving Emma and even her memories! Well then, Emma returns years later as the kids gather for some sort of reunion. And that’s the end!

God, this season was a rushed cluster-fuck. Before I go into that, I think it’s worth noting that while The Promised Neverland manga was very popular, the ending left many people unsatisfied. So the creator actually worked on the second season of the anime to possibly fix that mess. What we got was…a rushed cluster-fuck.

I’m so confused as to how much time has passed between the time of leaving Grace Field and the kids roaming around disguised as demons. In the manga, a good year and a half has passed. But the story had the kids meeting Yuugo, Emma’s time at Goldy Pond, Emma’s month-long recovery after being extremely injured, and the months of traveling to find the night and day destination. I feel like in the anime that it was six months. And if it was, why do a time-skip? It’d be nice to get a nice transition from one hiding area to another.

Then you have Peter Ratri “the villain”! He was absolutely useless here. Granted, we do get a few antagonists throughout the manga including Peter and the Ratri clan, but putting him as the main villain here just fell on deaf ears. We didn’t really see him do much of anything other than adopting Norman and holding a gun to all the escapees in the finale.

And that final episode! Talk about a rushed order of rotten hamburger meat. Now, I have not gotten that far in the manga, but I do know what’s supposed to happen. I can let go of Isabella’s sacrifice as we didn’t meet all of the demons from Goldy Pond. But, there are several arcs that they sloppily put in a slideshow of what happens after the kids make it to their freedom and it mostly involves Emma. Emma was supposed to give up something in an equivalent exchange sort of thing. But that never happened! I’m angry. I’m angry that I have to tell my ex and even one of my bosses at work that this season isn’t worth it. I’m angry that I even put this anime in my Top 20 list of best animes of the 2010’s. I was a premature asshole for that. I unofficially yank that series off the list and am replacing it with Demon Slayer. Congratulations Demon Slayer, you are truly one of the best.

And this hurts because the first season to The Promised Neverland was spectacular. From episode one, it drags you in the second you saw Connie’s lifeless corpse. And from then on you’re enticed by these kids doing extraordinary things in the hopes of escaping their fate of becoming food for demons. This anime was good enough for people to overlook things like facial features being too small for kid’s heads or everything about Sister Krone. But this season was just the second worse thing to come from the winter 2021 anime season. This sequel got lucky because we were somehow blessed and cursed with having the worst anime television series airing at the exact same time.

Recommendation wise, my immediate reaction is read the manga, eat your toenails, and scratch your taint with a cheese grater before watching this. But that would be wrong! Seriously, don’t do that. Since I’m on the other side of the manga reading line for a change, I would say if you’re a manga reader avoid this shit like the plague. If you’re an anime only watcher, enter at your own risk and see how it stacks up to you.

The Promised Neverland 2nd Season is available to watch on Hulu, FUNimation, and Toonami.