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The Unfulfilled Potential of The Promised Neverland Anime

Trying to cram an average of 1.33 volumes into each 22 minute episode would be madness with almost any manga, let alone something like 7 Seeds. At the same pace, the Promised Neverland adaptation would have been 3.75 episodes long, for example. The plot would have similarly become a ridiculous mishmash of disparate elements with no emotional weight.

It double down on what I found to be the least interesting aspect (the demon being constantly shown to be incredibly dumb and getting out witted by a bunch of kids) while not really bringing anything that hasn't been done before.

I've watched the First Season and I've been reading the manga. After really enjoying the story It really sucks to hear that ending isn't good, but I still plan to finish the manga since I've only got one more vol to read. I'm just really hoping that Isabella shows up one more time.

This was a fascinating read. What I find most interesting is the assertion that, even if the anime had made an attempt to faithfully adapt the rest of the material, the choices made in adapting the first season would have caused issues later on. Now I'm left wondering what I would have thought of the story's change in direction, because just based on the snippets presented here, I'm not sure I would have been a fan. I mean, the idea of the kids running around packing heat as guerrilla fighters sounds patently absurd, and not at all in line with what made me fall in love with the series in the first place. Maybe that first season was like catching lightning in a bottle: it took the source material and honed it to a razor's-edge masterpiece of tension and looming horror. Regardless, I'm still lamenting the fact that I'll never get to make that determination myself, and instead am stuck having to suffer through whatever the hell this season actually is.

(Now that I stop and think about it, there's more than a little overlap between what happened here and how Berserk has been treated in animated form.)

This was a fascinating read. What I find most interesting is the assertion that, even if the anime had made an attempt to faithfully adapt the rest of the material, the choices made in adapting the first season would have caused issues later on. Now I'm left wondering what I would have thought of the story's change in direction, because just based on the snippets presented here, I'm not sure I would have been a fan. I mean, the idea of the kids running around packing heat as guerrilla fighters sounds patently absurd, and not at all in line with what made me fall in love with the series in the first place. Maybe that first season was like catching lightning in a bottle: it took the source material and honed it to a razor's-edge masterpiece of tension and looming horror. Regardless, I'm still lamenting the fact that I'll never get to make that determination myself, and instead am stuck having to suffer through whatever the hell this season actually is.

(Now that I stop and think about it, there's more than a little overlap between what happened here and how Berserk has been treated in animated form.)

taster of pork wrote:

I've watched the First Season and I've been reading the manga. After really enjoying the story It really sucks to hear that ending isn't good, but I still plan to finish the manga since I've only got one more vol to read. I'm just really hoping that Isabella shows up one more time.

I haven’t finished the manga yet but I’ve seen people who do like the ending, by the way, so it isn’t a universal opinion at least.

While it's a shame that S2 ended up being a failure, as someone who only watched the anime, I don't think I would have liked a more faithful adaptation. The idea that the show becomes a semi shonen with guerrilla warfare is not one that I find interesting in the slightest. It double down on what I found to be the least interesting aspect (the demon being constantly shown to be incredibly dumb and getting out witted by a bunch of kids) while not really bringing anything that hasn't been done before.

I didn't have time to watch this second season when it was airing, so now I guess I'll skip it. I'm not too surprised it was disappointing --- I really haven't cared much for the manga after the escape from Grace Field House, either. I think it would be hard to have a "good" adaptation because the situation is pretty untenable.

I think the writer had a great idea, but that it only went up as far as the escape from the farms. After that, what do you do? Where do your characters go next? I suppose there were possibilities (e.g., instead of two disaffected demons, an entire sub-class of demons teetering on the edge of rebellion, perhaps?), but I don't know if that could be made to work out, either.