donderdag 1 april 2021

(Average+) The Promised Neverland

NOTE: I watched the first half of season one in English, the rest in Japanese.

Series in one sentence:

I'll have the kids menu.

Series in more sentences:

A trio of orphaned friends come to realize their caretaker has ties with ominous creatures, and the many children who were claimed to have been adopted prior were in actuality sold as food. They become determined to plan an escape.


Way too many fake-outs in season 1, it was ridiculous. There's more to the mystery genre than not informing the audience at all.
Every time you think to have figured something out, the series goes like: "BUT ACTUALLY, the character was doing/thinking THIS!". It could be pretty annoying, but I liked the overall story.


Of course, watching this series requires some suspension of disbelieve; as it features a boy who remembers everything since he was sitting in his mother's womb and an understanding 4-year-old with good vocabulary. The little children in this show were unrealistically helpful.


I didn't think the friendships portrayed were impressive, either. The characters talk to each other like they're friends and jump in each other's arms smiling all the time, but I just wasn't feeling it. Whenever something happened to a character, some random small child I've never seen before would be like "OH NO, <INSERT NAME HERE> IS <WHATEVER HAPPENED HERE>?!? WAAAAAAH!".

Like, who are you? I've never seen you interact with this character, get outta here.


I also don't understand the peace deal these demons made with the humans from the past. It only seems to benefit the demons, who get to enjoy a human snack every so often. The only thing humans receive is that they get to sacrifice more of their kind.
Why even care about a species that apparently needs human flesh to maintain their humanity and stay peaceful among each other? You're a flawed species then, time for evolution to deal with you, goodbye. None of this is humanity's concern.

If I understood the history lesson correctly, humans were doing a fair job at battling and killing the demons, so why not continue fighting the good fight for the sake of your freedom? And why are only small children farmed and given away? They have small bodies, it won't fill many stomachs, and a child's brain will never be better developed than that of an educated adult.
Isn't
an intelligent brain what the monsters want most of all? I don't care how smart these children supposedly are, they're elementary schoolers.
Build a big college to ship them to, where they can enjoy a high level education and more life experiences, then sell their clueless asses when they're 20. Tell them they're going on an internship or a job interview.


But sure, I get it, if the victims are small children, the viewer will feel more sorry for them. I'm just saying it doesn't make sense in any other context.


In season 2, we get a one year time skip at the oddest moment, right after the caretaker of the escaped children gives a determined promise she'll find them. Looks like she wasn't doing so well.
This season was alright, but it dipped in quality here and there. In fact, it felt extremely rushed; the last episode being the worst offender. A journey that looked like it should've been its own season was compressed into a lazy clip show of 3 minutes long. I honestly couldn't believe what I was looking at. Shameful, it was.
It would've been better to end the episode early, right after the gates closed, and leave it open to interpretation. Won't work on the people who've already read the manga, but it still would've been better.

All in all, the hero characters were bland goody two-shoes, the villain characters given cheap reasons to why they're evil and/or suddenly aren't anymore, the conflictless ending was unsatisfactory, I'll likely never watch this again.


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