約束のネバーランド(The Promised Neverland) is a manga series about a group of children who realize they’re being raised as livestock to be eaten by demons, who escape their farm and start plotting a rebellion.
There is an anime series but, supposedly, the second season screws up the adaptation. The first season is pretty good though.

Note that I have only seen the first season.
When I initially watched the anime and read the manga, I thought the anime was a general improvement upon the source material. Now, though, I’m not as sure.
I think the anime is a great adaptation that leaves some important information out for further set-ups…though, get this, I didn’t write down what these were, so I don’t remember. What a surprise, huh?
Like, seriously, me, what’s wrong with you??

I’d consider the manga to be an almost perfect story…though I think it has a number of smaller issues that collectively make it fall short of that ‘perfect’ goal.
So, let’s start with the ending. Yeah, makes sense. I think the ending is bad and it’s bad because it screws up on a worldbuilding level. Basically, the human world has entered a post-nation state of affairs, where wars are no longer a thing. This is because World War 3 happened, if I remember correctly, which royally screwed everything up. Being sick of conflict, everyone put aside their differences and dismantled all states. Now, putting aside the fact this is obviously the Japanese Kumbaya cliché at play, there are a few other issues with this depiction. Chief among them being the fact the children should obviously find this world uncomfortable. The United States is now called ‘Area 01’…and that’s not supposed to remind them of the farms they escaped? Further, the series had been setting up^A) complications in the human world, which just…aren’t a thing? This ending was quite clearly not properly thought-through, which is quite irritating. The last thing I’ll note there, maybe, is that the mass-produced humans all end up surviving in the human world despite their complications. This is nice on the one hand, but also not like…it’s too idealistic, basically.
Now I’ll note the Japanese Kumbaya stuffagain, though a bit differently. Yakusoku no Neverland makes the standard Japanese assumption that humans fight wars with each-other and others due to mutual hatred born of whatever. I’ll put aside the fact that that assumption is naïve and untrue, because this series actually manages to do it correctly, for once.
The system that exists in Yakusoku no Neverland is a self-perpetuating system of suffering, kept running by people within that system. The only realistic option here is to put aside our differences…forgive and forget. At least for those within the system that are part of it…like all the mothers in the farms, or other such human workers. There are also rare examples in the manga of humans who are part of the system who help perpetuate it, like Grandma, who ended up consumed by it. I guess the humans from the human world would count too, but that’s not really the case. Though I think that the fact almost everyone who is part of this system eventually turns against it is a flaw…maybe. I’m not sure. There are those who maintain it, get consumed by it, or otherwise get killed during the rebellion.
Though, and this is a key oversight the series makes, this doesn’t really apply to the demons or humans in the human world. In multiple senses. First in that in the human world, this is not something that would just solve conflict. Though that’s an extension of the issue with the ending.
Instead, let’s consider a few things. First of all, the demons are the ones who helped establish the system and are the main guys running it. It could be argued that the majority of demons are not complicit, which fair enough. It doesn’t make sense to genocide them or even to fight a war or demand reparations or whatever, just leave them be. If you can’t tell, I’m currently thinking it through and whether this is really an oversight or not. The ones that are unambiguously bad are the Ratri Clan, who are helping maintain the system, hunt down escapees and are otherwise doing pretty awful stuff. Plus the humans from the human world are not actively trying to help the humans in the demon world, which is just bizarre. Though I’m guessing this is because they’re just not aware of any of this…though the ending hints they do know and it’s super strange that a united Earth didn’t just decide that they should help their kin who are being perpetually eaten. I’m just assuming that this is a big mistake and that most humans are not aware, with just the Ratri clan being aware. The Ratri clan is probably the most unambiguously evil group within Yakusoku no Neverland and the fact they seem to get off scot-free is a bit disturbing.^B)
Now let’s move onto a flaw that has nothing to do with the Japanese Kumbaya cliché. This is a general spoiler for the series so beware.
Yakusoku no Neverland has a habit of killing background and unknown characters for the sake of raising the stakes/tension, whilst rarely committing to killing named characters we actually know. There are exceptions to this, but even some of those exceptions are exceptions like Norman, who was thought dead by most of the characters and whose death was super important…but who ultimately ended up being not-dead. That said, it was properly set-up that he didn’t die. I’m just using him as an example of the overall issue. The most egregious example that I have noted is during the Ratri clan raid, where we see the deaths of - as far as I remember - five characters that we knew barely anything about. Their main contribution was having a name, being in the background and dying. They didn’t meaningfully interact with anyone in the main cast. In fact, I didn’t even recognize two of them. The deaths were meaningful to the characters in the story, but this just creates a disconnect because the audience doesn’t really get it. Though what makes this critique of mine quirky is that this raid also includes the primary counter-example: Yugo and Lucas, two important named characters who were basically part of the main cast at this point, end up dying. Though, and this is kinda funny in a dark way…I don’t think their deaths made sense within the context of the story. They really shouldn’t have died. So this is actually a completely separate issue.
Now I’ll shift to a more general…thing…to make it clear why the ending in particular is kinda…off. Yes, we’re going back to the ending again. Almost like that’s the biggest problem with this series.
Up until the ending, the entire series had been balancing idealism with pragmatism. The protagonist, Emma,^C) is an idealist. However, the real world keeps betraying her, her ideals and her dreams so, over the course of the series, she becomes more and more pragmatic while holding onto her ideals. This is probably the main thing that makes her and, by extension, the manga so interesting: she is an idealist that comes to understand that compromise is necessary and, sometimes, life just screws you over in unexpected ways, so you’ve gotta make the most of it. For example, one of her goals is to make sure that everyone survives in the end and, well, that doesn’t exactly…yeah. Though her goals do mostly succeed in the end due to her perseverance.
This conflicts with the ending because the human world, as it’s depicted, is so unbelievably naïvely idealistic that it cannot possibly exist. It’s extremely jarring in comparison to the theme that the manga had been going with the entire time up to that point. Though, there is one aspect of that that I do like…just one though: Emma gives up her memories of her family to save all the children. That is an obvious pragmatic solution to make her goals come to fruition. However, in the end, her family ends up finding her and reuniting with her. This was after they had spent a significant amount of time and effort to reunite with her. I think that this is the only good instance of pragmatism being put aside because sometimes, even if it’s exceedingly rare…yeah, good things do just kinda happen.
My notes had a brief rant at the end where I was frustrated that, besides me, nobody will really care about any of this. Though the reason this annoys me in particular is because I see myself in Emma. In a way, I’m a bit of an extreme idealist just like her and, just like her, I’ve learned that you have to ground yourself in reality. The ending, though, completely throws that out the window.
All that said, the manga mostly fits together besides a few hiccups and it is seriously extremely good.

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