The Winter 2019 Anime Preview Guide

The Promised Neverland

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Emma enjoys a charmed life at Grace Field House, together with her fellow orphans. Days are spent chatting with friends and playing tag, and there's always plenty of good food to eat. Even their daily tests aren't so bad, especially since Emma always gets such good grades. But there is a secret within Grace Field House's shuttered doors, locked behind its ever-present gates. This secret will spell the end of Emma's idyllic days, as she learns the true nature of her beloved home. If Emma wants to leave Grace Field House alive, she will have to abandon all she has known, for those who exit through the front gate never return. The Promised Neverland is based on a manga and streams on Crunchyroll and HIDIVE, and Funimation, Wednesdays at 10:00 AM EST.

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Nick Creamer

Rating:

Along with Mob Psycho, The Promised Neverland was one of my most-anticipated titles coming into this season. What I've read of the manga was a thrilling experience, and a very novel twist on the general shounen template. Though the adaptation's director Mamoru Kanbe has had a fairly hit-or-miss career, the overall adaptation team seemed strong, and so I was eager to see this story in motion. So how does the adaptation hold up?

So far, mostly so good. The actual narrative substance of this episode is just as compelling as it was in manga form, as we're introduced to Emma, Norman, and Ray, along with all the other orphans at Grace Field House. The bulk of this episode is taken up by a demonstration of their initially charmed lives, as the relationships between the characters and threat of the outside world are illustrated through the course of a full day's schedule. Though I felt there were occasional splashes of awkward exposition (especially in the very first scene), for the most part, this episode unveiled its universe and hinted at its mysteries with relative grace.

As far as the visual design and direction go, this adaptation has done an excellent job of adapting Posuka Demizu's unusual character designs to animation, and this episode was absolutely brimming with charming, flavorful character animation. The storyboarding and shot-to-shot pacing do a great job of instilling otherwise mundane scenes with a sense of lurking dread; some shots are held just long enough to feel ominous, while others cut so quickly the viewer is immediately disoriented. Neverland's one visual weakness is one I was already anticipating from the trailers - the show's background art feels unfortunately flat, and Grace Field House in particular is rendered with such flat CG shapes that it fails to possess much inherent character. “The world itself is against us” is a key element of Neverland's appeal, so the weakness of the backgrounds feels a little bit more frustrating here than it might in the abstract.

All those complaints faded when it came to this episode's climax, though. Through a mix of evocative direction, ominous sound design, and wonderfully tense pacing, the reveal of Neverland's big secret feels genuinely terrifying, bringing us closer to the horror of this situation than even the manga accomplished. It's a killer hook, and a strong statement of purpose for this adaptation.

On the whole, while I had various quibbles with this premiere, I still greatly enjoyed it throughout, and feel it does a fine job of bringing the manga to life. The Promised Neverland is going to be one of this season's most thrilling rides, and I'm already eager for episode two.

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Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

As far as “creeping horror” goes, you don't get much better than the first episode of The Promised Neverland. Adapting roughly the first half of the manga's opening volume, the story is much less influenced by J.M. Barrie's early 20th century children's novel Peter Pan than you might think – although the “neverland” in the title does make sense. After all, Barrie's Neverland is a place where children don't grow up – and the kids at The Home are never going to get the chance to.

That's the horrifying realization that Emma and Norman come to when they finally figure out what all of the pieces of their lives have been adding up to. We as viewers are already clued in to the ominous nature of things when we see the number tattoos on the kids' necks - tattoos most frequently connected (in my family at least) to the concentration camps of World War Two. But for children raised by “Mom,” it's more the little things: letters from kids who've left that never come, fences and gates deemed as “dangerous” but that clearly aren't, odd tests that they take every day. It's really Ray, the third member of their trio, who has the best sense that things aren't right, but none of them know just how wrong they are until six-year-old Conny is “adopted”…and Norman and Emma find her corpse.

Obviously if you're sensitive to stories about cruelty to children this is not going to be the show for you. If you can stomach it (and honestly, excellent as this episode is, I'll probably just stick with the manga because voices add a dimension of horror I'd as soon avoid), this could well be one of the best shows of the season. Not only is the use of color in shaping the mood beautifully done, but there's a brilliant sense of tension built by dragging things out as long as feasible before finally letting us in on the details. Add beautiful animation and strong vocals, particularly from Norman, and this story about monstrous beings in 2045 feels like a winner.

Right now there are more questions than answers for Emma, Norman, and Ray. Literature (including J.M. Barrie's) has shown us that groups of plucky kids are often more than a match for adults who underestimate them. But Mom clearly was a child at one point – unless she's the spawn of Miss Trunchbull from Matilda, another British children's novel that feels like an influence here – and that means that she was clever enough to survive. She's not likely to underestimate Emma and the gang. Than means that Neverland may have a greater hold on them than they think.