The Promised Neverland Anime Review

Now that the winter 2019 season has completed, I feel comfortable providing an in depth review of the anime: Yakusoku no Neverland, also known as The Promised Neverland.

If you were somewhat busy or did not notice this show in the sites you use to enjoy your favorite content, I don’t blame you, it flew under the radar so to speak (wink wink). 

The way I structure my articles and reviews is in the format of giving you the condensed story and providing thoughts on character action, structure and overall story plot. I don’t wish to spoil anything in terms of exciting story developments, If you would rather not risk it I don’t mind please enjoy another one of my posts regarding a show you are more familiar with and see my perspective. 

The show centers around 3 main characters, all 3 of which are 13 year old genius children with different specialities. Emma is a youthful, energetic girl who excels at physical ability and courageous action. She has an innate intelligence and a warm heart that others look towards for comfort. She has orange hair that resembles a lion and green eyes. Norman is an analytical, clever boy who uses tactics and strategy in order to surpass his classmates. He has the highest intelligence among the group and has chilling white hair and blue eyes. Lastly we have Ray, a black haired dark horse. Ray is naturally talented in many things and is the quiet type. He can be very secretive and has an aggravated look in his eyes. As you might expect Ray resembles many characters in shounen stories, he has longer black hair that covers half of his face and is the character who you want to like, but know something is up. 

The show essentially centers around these children and their gated orphanage. They have no knowledge of the outside world and simply know that once they turn 14 they will leave to go somewhere. After a shocking discovery, the 3 realize that they need to escape the orphanage, which now feels more like a holding cell. We as the reader follow along the journey of these 3 and their foster siblings, hoping for the best. 

If I were to watch this show again and knowing everything about it it would still be an enjoyable time. Although the story itself seems to complete itself over the course of 12 episodes, I would still say that there are questions in the back of mind, and to me this marks a good show. I have seen that I am not alone in this thought as it has received rather high ratings when competition was fairly this winter. I think part of the charm of this anime was that the artwork and scenery design was rather good, I felt as though I was there in the orphanage. I felt the tension when they went to places they shouldn’t have. I also felt the fear and courage that they expressed when things got dangerous. Since the viewer only had to focus attention on one area being the compound and 3 main characters, we were able to delve deeper into why those characters acted the way they did. 

If I were to grade this anime I would describe it through 3 metrics: creativity, story and characters. You can see my rating below!