You haven't watched The Promised Neverland?!

 

So everyone has heard of the promised neverland right. Be it the manga or anime, somehow or another, you do know about this amazing title. It’s first season was released back in 2019 and it got the hype that it deserved in every sense. Right off the bat, this series has me interested. Why? because its main characters are children but the setting doesn't focus around their everyday school life. A refreshing change that I Will always take when I can get it. Now these children are aged anywhere between infancy and 11 years old. They all live in a remote orphanage-like setting under the protection of a matronly woman that the kids refer to as mother. Here at this place they are taken care of, educated and admittedly are having fairly calm and peaceful lives. Spoiler warning while we're not talking about the manga, for this series today, this is still the point where I have to say if you haven't seen the series yet, I beg you to go do so. If the knowledge that this series is my full recommendation I put it in the title after all I'm lobbying hard for this one and to explain why or to briefly attempt to summarize my reasons why there are going to be some spoilers for the first few episodes. 

So here we go meet Emma, one of our main protagonists who, alongside the young Norman, accidentally sees a part of their perfect little world that they shouldn't. They see one of their fellow children thrown into a cart. Dead monstrous demon that talked about the children like they are livestock and their mother who calmly watches and acknowledges these events as if everything is happening as it should be. It is at this moment that our two innocent little protagonists realize that they are not being kept and raised for their own benefit. They are being raised to be eaten like one would fatten up livestock and now with their world shattered the children have to figure out how to survive, how to escape and when and if they get that far, how to live in the world outside the walls in Utopia that they have known their whole lives or you know stay and be lambs to the slaughter. The universe that this show has been presenting us or rather the entire setting of it is both fascinating and completely unsettling. The only problem that I have with it currently is not really a problem but it could be late and that's that there is so much that we don't know and that knowledge or lack of knowledge rather is what has been the most fascinating thing. So we don't know who or what these demons are. We don't know the system that raised or created the caretakers that the children call mom. Let alone how the children themselves are created and this lack of not knowing these things adds to the artificial stress and anxiety that the setting gives us which while on the one hand might lessen the tension once we start getting some answers. it might also make the whole thing lose some of its shine especially if those answers are not as interesting as the questions that birthed them. If that does turn out to be the case, we still have our characters and their stories to keep us going and there is plenty of room for new mysteries to come into focus.

Overall this series has made me feel and experience things that I have not done since watching an anime called shinsekai yori which if you haven't seen, you should. Watching these young protagonists in a scary unfamiliar world and seeing how it changes them has been even so far absolutely fascinating. Let alone what I can imagine, we're going to see in the future and the way that this story has been leading us one way and then making sharp turns in the narrative unexpectedly is so good. I'm still lobbying for art. There still is something that just seems a little bit. I'm only mentioning it because it's this feeling that I have about the series and I can't necessarily place it and that alone makes it notable for me. Even if I can't explain what that feeling is where it's coming from I just feel this weird uneasy while watching the series and I know it's not the setting because the setting is set up to make me feel uncomfortable and uneasy that I can understand but I just feel like there's something about this show that is missing and I can't quite put my finger on it so when I figured that out I'll let you know but that still hasn't stopped me from being able to mention this show and tell people anytime they ask the inevitable question so what's good this season what's good this season that's obvious the promise to never leave but this is only my first reactions perhaps it'll turn out quite a bit different from what i expected.