I’ve heard of cliffhangers, but that was ridiculous.

It’s not a tough call for me that Norman is the most interesting of the Grace Field urchins (well – the main trio anyway, heh).  He’s the one delicately balanced between Emma and Ray – not just in terms of their personalities, but their abilities too.  Ray is the difficult genius, the master of complex tasks.  Emma is the heart, the momentum, the core belief.  But Norman has to be a little of all of those things, and more, or the whole house of cards threatens to come tumbling down.

Mama chose wisely.

Norman’s burden is a nasty one to carry on such slender shoulders, and the moments – nearly always when he’s alone – when the facade breaks down and he lets the pressure show on his face are always among the most poignant in Yakusoku no Neverland for me.  Of course when you consider the burden Ray has been been carrying – and for how long – maybe Norman isn’t even the worst off.  But given that Ray remembers fragments from as far back as the test tube, and just what those fragments are, his personality quirks are a little more understandable.

The question facing the kids now is what’s to be done, with Norman slated for the plate in a mere day, and Emma clearly unable to go anywhere for several weeks.  We’ve come to know Norman well enough to know how he’s going to approach the problem.  The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few – or the one.  And Norman knows that if he escapes, that’s going to make it night impossible for the others to escape when Emma’s leg heals.  And worse, if Norman can’t be shipped out, that means either Ray or Emma has to be shipped out in his place.

This is the first time we’ve seen Ray be just as stubbornly blind to practicality as Emma, and even more loudly.  The idea of Norman sacrificing himself is simply unacceptable.  Even as he makes arguments for why Norman should and can escape, they crumble under the weight of the facts.  But he presses on and of course, he has a willing ally in Emma.  And on some level Norman wants to believe, too – he’s 11 years old, he certainly doesn’t want to die.  Ray also makes it clear from his infantile memories that the gate is no escape – rather than lead to the outside, it leads to demon (and adult) HQ.

No, escape only goes one way, and that’s over the wall.  And Norman seemingly does allow himself to be talked into following Ray’s plan – disable the chip, pretend to escape, then go into hiding after reconnoitring the wall and wait for Emma’s leg to heal.  So it’s certainly a shock to Emma and ray when they see him stroll back towards the house, with his almost ever-present smile locked firmly in place.  What would Norman have done if he hadn’t seen what he saw from up there?  That’s left unaddressed, but what he saw is not – a sheer cliff on the far side of the wall.  And beyond the cliff, a chasm far too wide to jump across for a juvenile human.

For now, it seems as if the power trio is facing a checkmate scenario.  But of course we’re nowhere near the end of the story – hell, even the anime has three episodes left – so if there are no moves left on the chessboard, maybe it’s time to play Go or Shogi.  Or just upend the board and send the pieces flying everywhere.  As with Dororo, a theme of Yakusoku no Neverland is showing us what happens when evil forces good people into seemingly impossible decisions, and this appears to be one of them.