On The Promised Neverland
Warning: Contains spoilers
Imagine a cattle farm. With grass fed cows living happy lives until they become wagyu beef. Now replace cows with children, wagyu beef with human brains and you have the premise of The Promised Neverland (Yakusoku no Neverland): adult humans raise kids on farms (ostensibly orphanages) to be eaten by demons. The key difference between our wagyu beef farms and Neverland’s children farms is that, while cows are not raising cows to be our gourmet Japanese meals, humans are raising their own for slaughter. As a result, the demons require little screen time in the setting of the orphanage–allowing the show to explore human psychological relationships without getting overwhelmed by supernatural elements.
When I watched the first episode of The Promised Neverland, I was reminded of From the New World (Shinsekai Yori)–both shows concern children sheltered from fully understanding their world, a disillusionment and realization of the world’s secrets and consistent suspense. Furthermore, The Promised Neverland balances horror and emotional complexity, something that I’ve found rare in anime. The show manages to invoke thrill and horror without irrationally villainizing its characters, providing depth and character development while maintaining a level of fear even as we get to understand (and empathize with) the characters better.
The thriller elements were on point: according to my Apple Watch, my heart rate increased by at least 10 beats per minute at certain moments. The camera angles navigating the CGI house interior contributed largely–the view would follow a character walking down the hall so anything out of the character’s line of sight would also be out of our (the audience’s) own line of sight–ripe for jump scares. Occasionally the camera view would be angled from behind bushes (ie. episode 1 when the children talk about what they want to do once they leave the House), creating the atmosphere of being watched. This technique isn’t new–it’s done all the time in horror films. However, I’ve rarely seen it done effectively in anime combined with CG, which made the experience quite novel.
In terms of heart rate raising elements, I found the characters’ stylistic, freaky yet compelling eyes the most effective. In the first episode, when Isabella finds Connie’s bunny under the vehicle, her pupils shrink–nearly all whites. Later on when Norman finds out that there’s a cliff beyond the wall surrounding the farm, his pupils become hollow, with only sketched circular lines to distinguish the pupil. Finally, in the penultimate episode, Emma pulls a Light Yagami–eyes darkened and slit-like–when it’s revealed that she hasn’t given up on escaping the farm despite losing Norman. Among many moments, these three stood out–especially in juxtaposition to the children’s normally young and carefree appearance, and Isabella’s typical smiling, motherly demeanor.
To compliment the visuals, the dialogue remains simple–even when explaining strategies about escaping. Rather than go into heavy verbal explanations, the show flashbacks to the actual escape preparation. The last episode constantly alternates between the children preparing for their escape without Ray’s notice, to the present where they put their preparation into practice–both providing a concise explanation and emphasizing Ray’s shock of how the children managed to pull through on the physically, emotionally and mentally demanding escape. But perhaps the most revealing moment is when Norman walks over to the sink after he has found out that he’s going to be shipped out soon. There is no internal dialogue: it is only Norman walking, turning on the faucet and dropping his cup, revealing his shaking fingers, belying the strong front he puts up for Emma.
A lot of this “showing rather than telling” is straightforward, but effective–the vibrant red flowers that bloom and come to life only when draining a human of their blood, Isabella wearing all white and letting her hair down in the final episode, the snapshot-like flashbacks of Sister Krone’s and Isabella’s lives as children, and the parallels between Emma and Isabella as children.
The most emotionally satisfying element of the show was following Isabella’s character. Upon our introduction to her, she is portrayed as the enemy — a dangerous figure to both the children and the audience. However, as we keep watching, we learn about Isabella’s cleverness, physical ability and ruthlessness. Over the course of the series, hints are dropped about Isabella’s past through carefully placed flashbacks and ruptures in her normal composed self. Even from the first episode, we see a young Isabella looking out the window in the ending song’s animation. From the beginning, we know that Isabella was once a child on a farm. Isabella’s actions such as sending Sister Krone to her death, abandoning Ray and breaking Emma’s leg only underscore her disillusionment from childhood to adulthood. Isabella’s priority is to survive even if it means harvesting children; her goal doesn’t change over the course of the show, but our perception of it does. The final episode explains the origins of the melody that Isabella hums and along with that, her own past that Emma’s resembles so greatly: discovering the truth behind the farm and losing a friend who was sent to be harvested first. However, Isabella’s method of coping starkly contrasts that of Emma’s: she chooses to embrace the farms and demon-ruled world in order to survive rather than escape. Isabella is without a doubt the tragic anti hero of the series: unable to protect her childhood friend, resigned to the futility of escape, and ingrained in a realism that we tend to associate more with adults as opposed to children–which is what makes it so easy to empathize for her. While Emma’s hope in saving all of the children rarely wavers, Isabella holds onto life–not out of a belief that she can make a difference, but through a jaded lens of the world, for herself and her childhood friend, Leslie.
And yet, as a final acknowledgment of the children she raised, Isabella collects the ropes that they used to escape past the cliff–preventing the demons from discovering that the kids escaped from the cliff rather than from the expected route: the bridges. As self sufficient and self preservative as she is, Isabella ironically becomes a central reason to how the children are able to escape the demons–a perceived act of redemption to the audience (although not to herself). Despite the many different faces of Isabella that we are presented with or discover along the way, she remains the same. Isabella has never loved the children as a normal mother would; while they may remind her of herself as a child and evoke empathy, they are first and foremost a means to survival. It is only when presented with her defeat–the loss of the children that are her guarantee of survival, when she undoes her hair and when she reals in the ropes against her pure white dress, that Isabella finally acts without restraint.
The Promised Neverland hits all the high points for being a cliffhanger-full, psychological, sci-fi thriller. For all the plot twists, excitement and impressive animation, I was most taken by how The Promised Neverland used its dystopia and complex character dynamics (ie. humans raising their own to slaughter) to highlight fundamental elements of the human condition: coming-of-age, disillusionment, helplessness and self preservation.
