Anything new that has ever been created has been tagged with a "high risk, high reward" sticker that gives new things a flavor of excitement and danger that is uncharacteristic to anything mainstream. It's because of this that people are often intrigued and attracted to new and exotic things. It's these kinds of feelings that a person gets when they pick up a new series. There is the inherent tension of whether or not this series will be huge waste of time, and yet there is the possibility that this series could launch you into a whole new realm of affection and fandom. It's a tenuous precipice at the very least. It's maybe because of this bleeding edge mentality that The Promised Neverland has served to enamor and intrigue me over its first fifteen chapters.
For those of you that have never read The Promised Neverland, it has to be one of the most fresh and invigorating series that I have had the pleasure of reading in a long time. I frequently find myself waiting with baited breath and heightened anticipation for every new chapter that comes out each week. It's not just that The Promised Neverland is a new comic within Weekly Jump, it's that the series is an outstanding work of fiction and mystery. From the sheer breadth and depth of its characters, to the multilayered and fully faceted features of its storytelling, The Promised Neverland is a manga that is at once inviting and riveting.
The premise of The Promised Neverland is fairly straightforward; a group of orphaned children live peaceful day-to-day lives where they play games, take care of their small home and engage in strenuous tests for their intellectual aptitudes. Despite the utopian exterior of their child-like world, the characters of The Promised Neverland have some telltale characteristics that immediately underline some strange things about their world. The uniform white of the children's clothing, the rigorous mental examinations, and the numbers tattooed to each child's neck serve as silent indicators to the weirdness that seems to inhabit and permeate the world in which these children live. I think it goes without saying that the truths and secrets hidden behind this over-familiar introduction are where author Kaiu Shirai and artist Posuka Demizu make their bread and butter.
If you haven't had the opportunity to check out The Promised Neverland, it is one of those series that I have every confidence in recommending to another person. The main reason for this being Posuka Demizu's artistry. Demizu's approach is one of the most delicate and unique flavor that I have ever had the pleasure of viewing. In a word, one could simply describe his style as adorable. In the whimsical lines of his drawing, Posuka creates works of art for The Promised Neverland that are so vibrant and full of child-like fervor that one cannot help but be drawn into their subtle narration. Adding to this is Kaiu Shirai, whose flexible narration and masterful writing breaths diverse and individualistic characters onto the page. These two powerhouses create a synergy that reminisces of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata works, and then engenders a more vivacious language for a more youthful audience.
The Promised Neverland is impressive to say the least, but there is still more to come. With only fifteen chapters released, it's my sincerest hope that Shirai and Demizu have a long run with their story. My reason for this is simple; there is just so much to speculate about The Promised Neverland. Like any good mystery story, there are so many facets that are still hidden and this allows for an enormous amount of speculation. From this point on, if you possess a faint heart or are not caught up with The Promised Neverland, there are SPOILERS!!
I've already talked about the premise of The Promised Neverland, in that the main characters are all in an orphanage where a lot more than meets the eye is going around. However, what has really struck a note with me is how it was that humanity got to the point where these sorts of orphanages exist. In particular the faces of the characters as they take their aptitude tests really stuck out in my mind. When I examined this closer it occurred to me that, the sever disparity in the children's level of high tension during the examinations and their lax temperaments afterward might not be entirely derived from the increased level of focus that one might expect when taking an examination. The theories that I will now espouse are rather sinister and dark in their temperament so again, if you are of a fainter constitution this is where you should stop reading this article.
The idea that grew in my own mind was a particularly simple one. Someone, at some point in time, had rounded up a bunch of children and put them into a similar situation as the kids currently at the orphanage. The difference of that time was that there was little, or none of the amenities that the current generation of children at the orphanage enjoy. Additionally, this person, who from this point on we shall refer to as "the Guardian", at the time, while nurturing, was liable to kill any child that aimed to disobey them. This first guardian likely did this either to defend themselves from the demons, or to appease the demons. Both variations are equally unpleasant.
By raising the children, the Guardian was able to live a full life by sacrificing a child every now and then. The demons, in their turn, likely supplied young children in order to have them brought up by the Guardian as a food source. With this symbiotic relationship, the Guardian would then set about creating a methodology that would allow the demons to patron their farm over other farms. Its possible that at first, the games of tag and hide and seek played by the children started out as legitimate survival tactics whereby the weaker children would be killed off immediately and shipped, while the stronger or more capable children would be kept alive. As children got older, and became capable of defending themselves from the Guardian, the Guardian was probably prompted to kill these kids in order to protect their position as leader of the farm. Additionally, the demons probably came to the realization that a more developed brain was more delicious than undeveloped ones. The first Guardian, being evil and intelligent, then created a series of tests to raise the quality of children's brains. By doing this, the Guardian was able to create a situation where the children no longer had to be hunted down so long as the kids could pass their tests with flying colors. With the immediate threat of death gone, the children then took to passing these tests, in turn creating the high level of tension emulated by the lead characters of The Promised Neverland because, unlike our main characters, the children of that time knew that they would be shipped off if they did poorly.
While particularly sinister, this "history" of The Promised Neverland creates an interesting paradigm for our main characters given that Mama is supposedly raising Emma to become her heiress. As was probably the case with the first Guardian, there are any number of scenarios where they could have been bested by one of the children as they grew older and undertook the rigorous tests. In order to truly blind side the children, the Guardian would have had to come up with a plan that would remove at least one generation of children from their farm. In order to do this, the Guardian could easily have quietly taken the older children somewhere and killed them off, or secretly killed them off one at a time while telling the younger children that their siblings had gone off to be with new families. This in turn would allow the Guardian to keep the children in their heightened state during the examinations as part of a primitive defense mechanism, while keeping them oblivious to the demons in the world outside of the orphanage. By nurturing the children as well, the Guardian effectively hid the initial circumstances of the farm. However, in order to continue the prosperity of the farm and the protection of their own heredity, the Guardian likely created a system of controls that would allow for them to keep the farm in a state of perpetual flux.
These systems of control likely entailed that only the smartest could truly survive, and only by passing a set of tests on a much grander scale would that one child be selected to continue the farm. In order to do this, the child would have to learn about the true purpose of the farm, and about the demons in the world outside. The child would then have to save themselves from their prescribed fate through their own ingenuity, culminating in a breakout from the farm. Unfortunately for the child or children who broke out, the demons would have another string of tests in place, each more trying than the last taking the course of multiple years. Over the course of these years, the child would somehow survive through a combination of luck, skill, and demon manipulation. Any other children who escaped with the child would be killed off, until the child arrived at the final test. This final test would somehow prove to this child, who had escaped the farm and tried their best for decades at this point to survive, that the only way to survive was by taking over the very farm from which he/she had originally escaped.
What makes The Promised Neverland so intriguing is the sheer amount of speculation and guesstimation that one can engage in. The theory that I've posited above is perhaps one of many more that could potentially be running through Writer Shirai's mind at this very moment. The dark and mysterious elements woven into the storytelling have created a latticework that creates a plethora of potential outcomes and scenarios, each equally intriguing in its own right. While it's entirely possible that The Promised Neverland could end without ever having to reach one hundred plus chapters, simply because the story is itself so thoroughly fleshed out and diligently directed, it's my sincere hope that this series has a much longer time in the limelight than many of its predecessors. For now though, all that we can do is wait for next weeks chapter, and enjoy the ride that Shirai and Posuka are taking us on.
For those of you that have never read The Promised Neverland, it has to be one of the most fresh and invigorating series that I have had the pleasure of reading in a long time. I frequently find myself waiting with baited breath and heightened anticipation for every new chapter that comes out each week. It's not just that The Promised Neverland is a new comic within Weekly Jump, it's that the series is an outstanding work of fiction and mystery. From the sheer breadth and depth of its characters, to the multilayered and fully faceted features of its storytelling, The Promised Neverland is a manga that is at once inviting and riveting.
The premise of The Promised Neverland is fairly straightforward; a group of orphaned children live peaceful day-to-day lives where they play games, take care of their small home and engage in strenuous tests for their intellectual aptitudes. Despite the utopian exterior of their child-like world, the characters of The Promised Neverland have some telltale characteristics that immediately underline some strange things about their world. The uniform white of the children's clothing, the rigorous mental examinations, and the numbers tattooed to each child's neck serve as silent indicators to the weirdness that seems to inhabit and permeate the world in which these children live. I think it goes without saying that the truths and secrets hidden behind this over-familiar introduction are where author Kaiu Shirai and artist Posuka Demizu make their bread and butter.
If you haven't had the opportunity to check out The Promised Neverland, it is one of those series that I have every confidence in recommending to another person. The main reason for this being Posuka Demizu's artistry. Demizu's approach is one of the most delicate and unique flavor that I have ever had the pleasure of viewing. In a word, one could simply describe his style as adorable. In the whimsical lines of his drawing, Posuka creates works of art for The Promised Neverland that are so vibrant and full of child-like fervor that one cannot help but be drawn into their subtle narration. Adding to this is Kaiu Shirai, whose flexible narration and masterful writing breaths diverse and individualistic characters onto the page. These two powerhouses create a synergy that reminisces of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata works, and then engenders a more vivacious language for a more youthful audience.
The Promised Neverland is impressive to say the least, but there is still more to come. With only fifteen chapters released, it's my sincerest hope that Shirai and Demizu have a long run with their story. My reason for this is simple; there is just so much to speculate about The Promised Neverland. Like any good mystery story, there are so many facets that are still hidden and this allows for an enormous amount of speculation. From this point on, if you possess a faint heart or are not caught up with The Promised Neverland, there are SPOILERS!!
I've already talked about the premise of The Promised Neverland, in that the main characters are all in an orphanage where a lot more than meets the eye is going around. However, what has really struck a note with me is how it was that humanity got to the point where these sorts of orphanages exist. In particular the faces of the characters as they take their aptitude tests really stuck out in my mind. When I examined this closer it occurred to me that, the sever disparity in the children's level of high tension during the examinations and their lax temperaments afterward might not be entirely derived from the increased level of focus that one might expect when taking an examination. The theories that I will now espouse are rather sinister and dark in their temperament so again, if you are of a fainter constitution this is where you should stop reading this article.
The idea that grew in my own mind was a particularly simple one. Someone, at some point in time, had rounded up a bunch of children and put them into a similar situation as the kids currently at the orphanage. The difference of that time was that there was little, or none of the amenities that the current generation of children at the orphanage enjoy. Additionally, this person, who from this point on we shall refer to as "the Guardian", at the time, while nurturing, was liable to kill any child that aimed to disobey them. This first guardian likely did this either to defend themselves from the demons, or to appease the demons. Both variations are equally unpleasant.
By raising the children, the Guardian was able to live a full life by sacrificing a child every now and then. The demons, in their turn, likely supplied young children in order to have them brought up by the Guardian as a food source. With this symbiotic relationship, the Guardian would then set about creating a methodology that would allow the demons to patron their farm over other farms. Its possible that at first, the games of tag and hide and seek played by the children started out as legitimate survival tactics whereby the weaker children would be killed off immediately and shipped, while the stronger or more capable children would be kept alive. As children got older, and became capable of defending themselves from the Guardian, the Guardian was probably prompted to kill these kids in order to protect their position as leader of the farm. Additionally, the demons probably came to the realization that a more developed brain was more delicious than undeveloped ones. The first Guardian, being evil and intelligent, then created a series of tests to raise the quality of children's brains. By doing this, the Guardian was able to create a situation where the children no longer had to be hunted down so long as the kids could pass their tests with flying colors. With the immediate threat of death gone, the children then took to passing these tests, in turn creating the high level of tension emulated by the lead characters of The Promised Neverland because, unlike our main characters, the children of that time knew that they would be shipped off if they did poorly.
While particularly sinister, this "history" of The Promised Neverland creates an interesting paradigm for our main characters given that Mama is supposedly raising Emma to become her heiress. As was probably the case with the first Guardian, there are any number of scenarios where they could have been bested by one of the children as they grew older and undertook the rigorous tests. In order to truly blind side the children, the Guardian would have had to come up with a plan that would remove at least one generation of children from their farm. In order to do this, the Guardian could easily have quietly taken the older children somewhere and killed them off, or secretly killed them off one at a time while telling the younger children that their siblings had gone off to be with new families. This in turn would allow the Guardian to keep the children in their heightened state during the examinations as part of a primitive defense mechanism, while keeping them oblivious to the demons in the world outside of the orphanage. By nurturing the children as well, the Guardian effectively hid the initial circumstances of the farm. However, in order to continue the prosperity of the farm and the protection of their own heredity, the Guardian likely created a system of controls that would allow for them to keep the farm in a state of perpetual flux.
These systems of control likely entailed that only the smartest could truly survive, and only by passing a set of tests on a much grander scale would that one child be selected to continue the farm. In order to do this, the child would have to learn about the true purpose of the farm, and about the demons in the world outside. The child would then have to save themselves from their prescribed fate through their own ingenuity, culminating in a breakout from the farm. Unfortunately for the child or children who broke out, the demons would have another string of tests in place, each more trying than the last taking the course of multiple years. Over the course of these years, the child would somehow survive through a combination of luck, skill, and demon manipulation. Any other children who escaped with the child would be killed off, until the child arrived at the final test. This final test would somehow prove to this child, who had escaped the farm and tried their best for decades at this point to survive, that the only way to survive was by taking over the very farm from which he/she had originally escaped.
What makes The Promised Neverland so intriguing is the sheer amount of speculation and guesstimation that one can engage in. The theory that I've posited above is perhaps one of many more that could potentially be running through Writer Shirai's mind at this very moment. The dark and mysterious elements woven into the storytelling have created a latticework that creates a plethora of potential outcomes and scenarios, each equally intriguing in its own right. While it's entirely possible that The Promised Neverland could end without ever having to reach one hundred plus chapters, simply because the story is itself so thoroughly fleshed out and diligently directed, it's my sincere hope that this series has a much longer time in the limelight than many of its predecessors. For now though, all that we can do is wait for next weeks chapter, and enjoy the ride that Shirai and Posuka are taking us on.