The Promised Neverland

The Promised Neverland (Japanese: 約束のネバーランド, Hepburn: Yakusoku no Nebārando) is a Japanese manga series written by Kaiu Shirai and illustrated by Posuka Demizu. It was serialized in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump from August 2016 to June 2020, with its chapters collected in twenty tankōbon volumes. In 2018, the manga won the 63rd Shogakukan Manga Award in the shōnen category. As of April 2021, The Promised Neverland had over 32 million copies in circulation, including digital versions, making it one of the best-selling manga series.

Plot
The bright and cheerful Emma is an 11-year-old orphan living in Grace Field House, a self-contained orphanage housing her and 37 other orphans. They lead an idyllic life, with plentiful food, plush beds, clean clothes, games and the love of their "Mom", Isabella. Their education is seen as an important part of their development, and Emma with her two best friends Norman and Ray, always excel in the regular exams. The orphans are allowed complete freedom, except to venture beyond the perimeter wall or gate which separate the house from the outside world.

One night, a girl named Conny is sent away to be "adopted", but Emma and Norman follow with her favorite stuffed animal toy. At the gate, they find Conny dead and discover the truth about their existence in this idyllic orphanage – to be raised as meat for demons. Emma and Norman plan with Ray to escape from Grace Field House with the children.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) It has a unique premise in which the series takes place in a dystopian setting where the main characters live in an "orphanage" that's actually a farm meant for raising humans (specifically children) as food for the demons. Something that two of the main characters, Emma and Norman, discover after they go to return another orphan, Conny, her stuffed animal she left behind after she was adopted, only to find her dead and being traded as "meat" for rich demons by Isabella.
 * 2) Likeable cast of characters.
 * 3) *Emma is an extremely optimistic, loud, friendly, and cheerful girl who's full of life, who has great athletic skills and consistently gets perfect scores during their daily exams. Largely serving as the more energetic and upbeat foil to Raya and Norman, she cares deeply for them as well as the rest of her friends and saving them from being eaten by demons.
 * 4) *Ray is a boy appears to be aloof, introverted, blunt, and snarky; often excluding himself from playing with the other orphans and prefers to read load of books instead. However, he is able to interact well with his fellow siblings and loves them all deeply. Even if there are times when they do not get along, he still deeply cares about their well-being and would go to great lengths to keep them safe.
 * 5) *Norman is a calm, level-headed, kind, and gentle boy who presents himself to have figured things out because he wants to appear as a reliable person to people around him. At the same time, Norman is a complex individual due to his conflicting morality.
 * 6) *Phil, is a very bright, cheerful, playful, and outspoken boy. He loves his family very much and gets along with particularly Emma, Sherry, and Carol.
 * 7) *Don is perceived by others to be a cheerful, energetic, happy, and social boy who is always friendly towards everyone. In contrast to Gilda, he is very careless, rowdy, less inclined and talkative.
 * 8) *Gilda is a quiet, gentle, mature, and slightly introverted young girl. She is reliable and often helps around with chores around the House and plays with the younger orphans.
 * 9) *Yugo was originally cheerful, optimistic and valued his family who had escaped along with him above else. But after losing them during their battle against the poachers and being left all alone, he grew to become depressed and solitary.
 * 10) Some well written antagonist such as Isabella, Krone, and Leuvis. The former two both have tragic backstories that explain how they became villains in the first place.
 * 11) Jailbreak: It's not only considered the best arc in the series, but it's considered to be one of the best arcs in all of anime and manga.
 * 12) Plenty of emotional moments such as Norman's "adoption", Isabella's backstory, Isabella's death, and when the older children of Grace Field House reunite with the younger ones.
 * 13) The suspense and dialogue from the events and characters (respectively) in the series give it a "Death Note" type vive.
 * 14) Amazing art especially how the art drastically changed as the series progressed. While the characters designs aren't exactly the best (though they aren't bad either), the style of the series' art itself is breathtaking and it's clear that the illustrators but in a large amount of effort in order to make it look truly stunning.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Why do kids regardless of how old or smart they are, somehow get eaten by the demons?
 * 2) The series went downhill after Goldy Pond (or debately Jailbreak)
 * 3) The ending was rushed and butchered the themes of the series.
 * 4) Emma was flanderized after Goldy Pond.
 * 5) Some unlikeable characters such as Andrew and Peter Ratri
 * 6) *Speaking of which Peter Ratri was a poorly written antagonist

Trivia

 * 1) The series first conception originated by the end of 2013, from a draft originally simply titled Neverland, but was later changed to The Promised Neverland after running into some copyright issues. Kaiu Shirai brought the 300 page of The Promised Neverland draft to the Weekly Shōnen Jump editorial department. Suguru Sugita, the editor of The Promised Neverland, said that the series was an ambitious work, with both bright and dark scenes that needed a world of fantasy that would also create suspense. They had difficulties trying to find an artist whose style could match the story, ranging from famous illustrators to new and upcoming talent. Shirai considered Posuka Demizu as one of the candidates, as him and Sugita felt that her art was the best fit for the series' imagery. Some candidates turned down the offer, giving comments like the story did not feel like a Jump manga, or that it would not become a hit, so they were "really happy and excited" when Demizu agreed to work on it.
 * 2) Sugita said that Shirai and Demizu had a kind of synergy similar to Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, the creators of Death Note. Before The Promised Neverland began its serialization, Shirai and Demizu published the one-shot Poppy’s Wish (ポピィの願い, Poppy no Negai) on the Shōnen Jump+ online platform in February 2016. The one-shot was popular among readers and Sugita expressed that they were the right team for The Promised Neverland.
 * 3) Chapter 176, where Isabella is fatally wounded while protecting the children, was released on Mother's Day (May 10, 2020).
 * 4) Chapter 176 was delayed to May 10, 2020, breaking the manga's weekly releases, as Weekly Shonen Jump briefly shut down due to an investigation regarding a worker possibly contracting COVID-19. This ended up being... darkly appropriate. See Meaningful Release Date.
 * 5) Regarding the title and its relation to Neverland, the fictional island of Peter Pan, created by J. M. Barrie, Shirai said that it is a magical, fairy tale place to have fun thanks to Peter Pan, but that half the place is dark and dangerous. He said that these two parts, "the cohabitation of childish playfulness" and "the dangerous shadow that hovers at the bottom" are factors that he tried to transcribe through The Promised Neverland. Shirai and his editor wanted to keep "Neverland" in the title, considering the story and its development. They then came up with “Promised” around the time they were working on the post-escape story. They considered the word to be important and agreed to also mention it in the plot.
 * 6) Despite its dark tone, Shirai wanted to publish The Promised Neverland in Weekly Shōnen Jump instead of a seinen manga magazine because it was the kind of stories that he would have liked to read at 15 and that there was no reason to deprive the magazine's readership of a story due to an editorial line. He added that the series has canon shōnen manga themes, such as mutual aid or surpassing oneself. According to Shirai, the main characters are children because the magazine is mainly read by them and adolescents, making easier the identification for the reader, and the concept of children rebelling against adults was used because it is a classic theme in many stories. Although Shirai admitted that the story is darker than the majority of the Weekly Shōnen Jump manga, they avoided using "extreme trends" such as "ero-guro", "violence" or "nonsense", since, according to the series' editor, that would just make it an ordinary manga, and they tried to include those essences as little as possible and only when they were necessary to the story.
 * 7) Shirai said that the idea of students with the lowest grades being the first to leave the Farm to be eaten by the demons, while not necessarily a metaphor, was a way of inviting the reader to reflect on current society. Although Shirai admitted similarities between the series and the Japanese society and its school system, he said that it is not meant to be a underlying critique and was rather an approach to daily life family, school and the way children look at adults. Despite some interpretations made by PETA, claiming that the series is a pamphlet against mass farming and pro-vegetarians, Shirai expressed that he was not trying to put moral values, and as an author, he was not in position to judge. He emphasized that it was never explicitly said that demons were bad people in the story. He further said: "That people make a connection with veganism and intensive breeding doesn't bother me, but our main goal is to create a story to entertain people, not to offer a moral judgment. Our manga is not a critique of the consumer society as such".
 * 8) Shirai was inspired by children's folklore books from all over the world and video games like Final Fantasy for the series' setting creation, while for the horror elements, he said that he only used his imagination because he did not like horror films. He also mentioned that part of the story came from some nightmares that he had as a kid, especially after having read Hansel and Gretel, stories about children being eaten, and a manga focused on spirits that made him ask himself if the monsters could solve their problems if they raised humans like cattle. Shirai said: "All these fears, ideas, influences, have come together. This is how the story of The Promised Neverland was born".
 * 9) Demizu said that the Japanese folklore and its monsters were a first source of inspiration, also citing European fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel. She also mentioned Naoki Urasawa's Monster, Ghibli's universe and prison escape films, like Escape from Alcatraz, Papillon, The Great Escape and the American television series Prison Break.
 * 10) The series's setting is based on the Victorian England, as Shirai expressed that he wanted to "destabilize the readers, to lead them on the wrong tracks" by making them think that the story was set in an English orphanage in the 19th century. He also wanted to avoid situating the story in a very specific time frame. He had no particular reasons to choose England, but the Grace Field House orphanage name written in English in the text appealed to him. Shirai also said that the European town planning is a benchmark, a very popular style highly appreciated for the Japanese. Demizu did a two-month language study trip to England when she was younger and took a lot of photos that she used as a reference for the series. She was particularly impressed by the English forests and its atmosphere.