I’m always on tenterhooks about what it’s safe for me to talk about with this series, but I’ll say this much – if you don’t appreciate Yakusoku no Neverland this week, you probably never will. This is about as good as it gets, and everything that makes the manga the sensation it is was on display. I’m a big fan of the first arc (which is in effect the first season of the anime) and it was with the events depicted here that I had my first real “wow” moment with Neverland. There are more of them to be sure, but this is the formula that makes everything click.
I’m also glad that, in their divine mercy, CloverWorks decided to give us one episode with Sister Krone’s story where they didn’t screw it over. Hell, even the character design of the younger version was much less borderline offensive (though I place no blame on the anime, which merely using the manga template) than the adult one. This is Krone as I remember her on the page – a woman who means business, whip-smart and desperate, not funny like a clown to fucking amuse you. And it’s a good thing, too, because what happens to her is supposed to hit pretty hard.
It’s also important – and this is an area where the anime’s earlier undercutting of Krone’s stature matters – that Krone’s formidability be crystal clear here. Because when we realize just how many five-dimensional chess moves Isabella is ahead of her, we need to be impressed as hell. Krone is ambitious and resourceful, and she’s doing an admirable job of proactively trying to ensure her own survival. But Mama has been in control the entire time, Krone’s machinations just another weapon in her arsenal. And when Krone is no longer useful in the endgame, she’s just another pawn to be sacrificed.
As Krone is meeting her fate as Grandma and friend look on, Ray is getting his walking papers from Mama too. The timing isn’t especially fortuitous either, as he’s supposed to be distracting Isabella while Emma and Norman climb the wall for their scouting mission. Ray is another one who thought he was moving the pieces, only to realize it was Isabella who was seeing the whole board. With the need for subterfuge over, she sees no need to keep up the act – she locks Ray in her room while she goes to confront his partners-in-crime. Eventually Don does free him (he must be stronger than he looks, that one) but too late to do anything but follow Isabella’s tracks through the woods.
I’ve always found Isabella’s conversation (though that’s a charitable word for it) with Norman and Emma to be a fascinating one. Mama is a cold one, no question about it – she’s a former attempted escapee herself, and she didn’t survive as long as she has without having an unerring instinct for self-preservation. Her tongue is forked of course, her logic and reasoning obscene – and it’s all the more chilling because of the syrupy way she delivers her argument. But I’ve always wondered – in her mind, how much of this talk of love and preventing suffering does Isabella actually believe? Is that a part of her that needs to believe it to be able to do the things she does, or is it all part of her endless chain of manipulation?
Isabella delivers two huge shocks at the wall, the first being the way she puts an end to Emma and Norman’s effort to foil her. Ruthless and terrible, and her follow-up “comforting” of Emma even worse. But then she trumps it by delivering the news that Norman has received his orders. Maybe this was decided above her head, but if you were Mama which one of the children would you have shipped out? Norman is the glue, the unifying force between Emma’s extreme idealism and Ray’s utilitarianism. Removing him from the picture seems like a very smart thing to do if you’re trying to keep a situation under control.
Yes, this is pretty much why I punched my ticket with Yakusoku no Neverland, and it was a relief to see the anime do it justice. There are still times when Kanbe-sensei’s direction is too clever by half, and I found the BGM oddly grating this week – like Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” was gene-spliced with Chopin’s “Nocturne No 2 in E Flat Major Op 9 No 2” and the result was a Cronenberg movie. But on the whole this was easily the best episode of the series so far, and the anime couldn’t have picked a more crucial time to deliver it.
AYA
March 2, 2019 at 1:44 amYou and I must have very different memories. According to my recollection, Krone is a clown in the manga too. Yes she’s cunning and smart, but she acted in a very crazy, exaggerated maners. I remmebered reading one panel when she’s drawn like a dog sniffing around for clues and thought “Wow, I hope it’s unintentionally, because it is really offensive.” The memories when she dead is the only part I took the woman seriously as a character.
fight-or-flight
March 2, 2019 at 2:03 amI feel like the anime just hasn’t gotten me to care enough for the characters. Kinda a theme this season with parts of Boogiepop too. I’m still invested enough to watch, but I don’t really look forward to the next episode.
I am curious just how much they have left of this escape arc to make it stretch over four (?) more episodes- it feels like it could be concluding in 1-2 more.
Guardian Enzo
March 2, 2019 at 9:29 amThe difference is, in Boogiepop that’s quite intentional. A stylistic choice (and often copied). Not so with Neverland.
I can see where the next 4 eps are going, and the pacing feels about right to me – maybe a little fast, but not hugely so.
fight-or-flight
March 2, 2019 at 1:12 pmFair enough, yeah. There’s something to be said for “supposed to be this way just not entirely my cup of tea” as opposed to “something is just generally not clicking here.” It’s the former feeling with Boogiepop and the latter with Neverland.
Mike
March 2, 2019 at 5:07 amUnfortunately didn’t enjoy this episode, so will take your advice and drop it! I wonder if it works better if you’ve read the manga.
Apart from the interesting premise, I’ve not found this show engaging at all. The pacing seems really odd – often not much happens, which in a thriller isn’t really an issue, because it’s all about building tension, but they haven’t done that successfully, so it feels kind of flat. All last week’s episode was about a battle of wills and cunning between the kids and Krone, then at the end of the episode Krone is removed from the picture anyway, so the whole thing seems immediately pointless. The pacing simultaneously seems too slow and too rapid – I remember early Death Note episodes where I’d be on the edge of my seat for a whole episode spent on things like what he had hidden in a crisp packet.
I don’t know how much narration is in the manga, but they keep spelling out every character’s motivation all the time. If we hadn’t seen Krone’s ridiculous freakouts with her doll it would have been way more intense, since we wouldn’t have known her true motivations and would have been analysing and questioning all her interactions with the other characters, trying to work out how much they could trust her. It seems like they are determined to remove tension. Overall, I get the impression this is fairly good material with really sloppy direction and translation to anime, like they are trying to cash in on a popular franchise without understanding it. Or maybe the manga just isn’t that good either!
Guardian Enzo
March 2, 2019 at 9:32 amLet me put it this way – my capsule review of the manga was always “a great premise with pretty good execution”. Apart from mangling Krone’s depiction, the anime is pretty much a faithful transition from the manga. This is what Neverland is, and IMHO it doesn’t get much better than what it is right now. It works for me as a pulp thriller, and I kind of like how there are long stretches where no big shit goes down – it ramps up the tension. But I’d never argue the series was anything profound or historically great.
Yann
March 2, 2019 at 11:35 amPretty much exactly how I feel too. I’m kind of curious about the big reveal but the animé has been pretty tidious to watch when I think about it… The characters just don’t ring true to me end the exposition feels forced, everything being constantly spelled out. On top of that, there are some annoying plot holes and the suspension of disbelief required sometimes is just too much for my taste… I guess I’ll trop it too. Maybe I’ll just browse through the manga to know what those monsters are 😉
Simone
March 2, 2019 at 10:53 pmWhile I’m moderately enjoying this show, I really get the feeling it thinks itself smarter than it is. In many ways, all that happened in the second half of this episode could have happened in Episode 3 or so with minimal changes and almost nothing would have been different. Sure, we got some more worldbuilding along the way, but fundamentally all of Isabella and Krone’s mindgames with the kids seem completely fruitless. It really boils down to: I’m more powerful than you and you can do nothing to stop me anyway, so just enjoy what little time you have left to live. Isabella didn’t need anything of what happened, didn’t need Krone or even Rey to achieve this outcome. So unless the point we’re supposed to take away is that she engages in these sadistic little games as a way to kill her boredom, it sort of de-evaluates everything that’s happened until now, as it’s all ultimately rendered pointless.
Guardian Enzo
March 3, 2019 at 10:11 amI don’t disagree it probably thinks it’s smarter than it is. It does come off that way at times.
I’ve noted in the past a certain overlap with Death Note here. Both are fun, trashy pulp thrillers (Death Note is better, don’t get me wrong) that are sometimes held up by fans as being deep and profound. The difference is that with Death note Ashirogi Muto is kind of laughing at the audience’s tendency to do that, whereas Neverland sometimes seems as if it believes its own press clippings.
DnAFan
March 4, 2019 at 7:34 pmHaving read the manga I was still surprised at how suspenseful the show down between Isabella and Norman and Emma felt. I think the seiyu’s did a great job during that scene. I wish they had taken the time to show Krone’s last ditch effort to take down Isabella during the confrontation with Grandma. I also wish they could have shown her thought processes benind leaving the pen and her dying wish that the kids escape and tear down the world. It would have showed that Krone had more of a rebel streak in her. Isabella was definitely the perfect Mama who bought into the system, Krone had more of a defiant and independent personality.
Another thing I noticed during the anime was how they highlighted the worried and apprehensive looks of the older kids when Mama brought Emma back to the house. I don’t remember that being in the manga. It probably was there. I don’t think that that scene just conveys their worry for Emma. It shows I think that not only the very exceptional kids like Ray and Phil and Norman knew something was up with their situation. Isabella’s “plant” or farm is one that raises the special kids. So it stands to reason that not only the cream of the crop would be fairly clever and observant.
This may not be a “Monster” or “Death Note” but it is a fairly well plotted mystery /horror for a shonen manga. Sure it’s not as sophisticated in its approach as some Seinen manga or western series. It is also a not a series that wallows in darkness and despair like some horror series that are an exercise in nihilism, which for some signifies meaning and realism. The author has set up a very terrible and dark scenario and could have made it darker and trashier with betrayal and brutality among the kids themselves. Norman, Emma , Phil and Even Ray are characters one wants to root for and you want them to succeed.
As a reader and not a writer like yourself, I don’t see as many or worry about the plot holes as someone like yourself or the more sophisticated readers do. I do think it’s hard when doing a genre like suspense or horror to balance the need to set up the how terrible the situation is and how to get your characters into and out of or not out of the situation. I may have been watching too many Scandinavian noir or other horror/suspense shows where everything is bleak and terrible and every character is either corrupt or compromised or just plain evil. I want clever protagonists to cheer for and while they can’t hve everything go their way, I don’t want them to keep losing either. Again I can see why more sophisticated readers or authors like yourself take a more deeply analytical and critical approach and have a negative response to elements of the series. I just think it’s bloody hard to write this genre and have likeable protagonists and a tightly written plot with no holes that portrays the horror but does not devolve into torture or violence porn and follow a weekly or bi-weekly deadline. Emphasis on the last part. No wonder so many mangaka’s burn out.
Anyway have been enjoying your write up of this series. Hope you continue to do so as I enjoy your insights.
Guardian Enzo
March 4, 2019 at 7:55 pmNicely said, and much appreciated.