-This review will contain spoilers of the anime.
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Gone are the days when I thought the second season of Psycho-Pass was the worst sequel I had seen. There is a new king and that is this season of The promised Neverland. I am dumbfounded as to how to even begin to describe the things we were shown. Whatever expectations I and plenty of others had, were quickly shattered and replaced by disappointment, and for the fans of the source material, anger. The climax of the first season left me feeling like the world outside of the house was going to be not just insane but big and full of wonders, yet what we ended up seeing was...a weird mixture of a desert and a generic town of any isekai of your choice, and a forest with a few weird creatures (Those slimy fish were shown too much and it was the strangest thing to focus on but moving on). There is nothing that is interesting about how the world looks and it is not just the world-building that is lackluster, the story itself and the development, or lack thereof if I'm honest, of the characters, are also hard to not notice. If I had taken a tequila shot every time something stupid happened, I would have died of cardiac arrest.

The best thing besides the opening and ending theme, no kidding, was the recap episode since it made me remember why the first season was great. Back then, the direction of the show helped establish the mood. We felt tense, and the impending doom of what was to come, but now that has been replaced by bad comedic timing, hollow morality choices, dumb actions by characters that were supposed to be smart as hell, lack of continuity, plot convenience, and a return of a character that had no buildup for me to even care, and whose return seemed to just be to bring the plot device that would solve everyone's problems. Imagine this: the first season was like the Hereditary movie, and the second season is like watching The Nun (these are both horror movies but of very different quality as far as jumpscares are concerned. Seriously, watch Hereditary.) To end a show, that has many whats and possibilities in its story, in just eleven episodes, is madness. As soon as the episode count was revealed, that was a big red flag about how this season was going to go. No, a show having eleven episodes doesn't necessarily mean it will be bad, but given the type of show this was, I was worried. I just wish I had walked away as soon as I saw Emma doing the naruto run on a rooftop back in episode five.

Even after everything that happened, I still am clueless as to what the anime was trying to accomplish. What was the point we were to focus on? Emma having to choose a side? The kids planning an escape to the human world? to slowly morph into a weird slice-of-life and adventure anime chimera? to end the show faster than a bean bag in a hurry? to see how many asspulls they could have? hard to know but let's say it was Emma's struggle to protect her family but also not wanting to kill others, even if said others are demons. Many times the show attempts to show us this conflict but fails miserably. It was a decent action to show her giving back an apple to an old demon back in episode five, and then to make said demon tell her about the hunger they are facing in the demon world. However, everything that comes after this exchange just comes off as a dumb drama and there is not enough depth to Emma's feelings to even pay attention to how this choice, save or kill, will affect her. Emma is a child, so it is no surprise that many of the choices she makes, and/or thoughts and ideas that come to her, sound incredibly naive. Before explaining what those are, I want to sadly announce that the smart and brave Emma from season one is nowhere to be seen here.

In episode seven, Emma is attempting to sway Norman from killing Mujika and Sonju. She claims they are nice and tells him they saved the children and her. To Emma, saving them and teaching them enough to at least survive in the world, is enough to categorize these demons she met as nice. Norman had told her what he and the others had gone through, and rather than hear him out or try to talk about the whole thing, the first thing she chose to focus on was how she didn't want to kill demons since not all of them ate meat, like her friends in the forest. This behavior of hers fits with her shounen protagonist role, but it is completely tone-deaf considering she is talking to someone she has known since she was smaller. Just because Mujika and Sonju were nice to them, does not mean they will be nice to everyone else. The whole conversation Norman and she have, just sounds like the equivalent of a friend telling another: "hey, this person hurt you badly, but they have never hurt me particularly, so please reconsider and let us all be friends again". In short, she sounds selfish and is not really thinking about the worst-case scenario, and willing to make a bet where countless lives, including those she calls her family, are at risk.

After having talked with Norman and coming to an agreement to bring him Mujika and Sonju, Emma and Ray head back to their hideout in order to talk with the children and explain what they are going to do. This whole scene felt empty and all I could think of was what the hell is even going on here? Emma says she cares about demon babies and kids, yet she didn't care about the demons who were killed back in episode five. Did she just assume they had no family? this makes no sense. The kids at first were hesitant, and it looked like Gilda was not going to agree with Emma's plan, but this issue got solved in the same episode in a span of fewer than five minutes. What did Emma even think about doing? if a demon nicely asks her to please give one of her siblings up or one of her arms, so that their demon kids can eat, will she comply? the whole thing is a mess.

Another instance when Emma's intellect is nonexistent is when she is confused as to why demons would continue to eat human meat, even if they didn't need it to keep their form. This is not the same Emma that formed a big ass plan to save Ray from setting himself on fire back in season one. Well, I bet Emma would love to know that nobody, not animals or demons, need to be hungry, or depend on a certain "food" in order to want to consume it. I assure you I will go apeshit on a bag of chips if I am stressed, hunger or not. It just baffles me how surprised she was that the demons not needing humans wouldn't necessarily mean they would stop hunting them. Like Norman tells her, "if your favorite food asked you not to eat it, would you agree?" and this argument is valid. If demons like the taste of human meat, they will continue trying to get their hands of it whether they need to or not (this comes back later in episode ten in the most hilarious way, since now apparently the demons are willing to stop eating children since they don't need them anymore. Surely I don't need to explain why this is a terrible resolution to come to, especially since just two episodes ago all of those demons wanted to desperately eat human meat .) It is infuriating how the show makes Emma (to be fair, everyone looks like a fucking dumbass in this show) look like a total idiot. What made Emma great was how relentless she was and how despite being the protagonist, she knew how to use her head. None of that is present at any point in the show and she became just another boring shounen protagonist.

The series has plenty of issues besides Emma's asinine ideas. The direction doesn't add to the mood, there are plot conveniences galore, there is no continuity, the show relies on heavy exposition between characters talking to each other back and forth, etc. The way the scenes play out, the ridiculous montages of the children hunting and/or having fun (this happens even in episode ten, though we are supposed to buy into the idea that they are in a hurry to get to the human world), the lack of atmosphere and suspense, all make the show incredibly boring and it is just not what I would expect of a show where kids are being sold as merchandise to be eaten by demons. Do not even get me started on how the show usually ends up in cliffhangers that you know will amount to nothing. It is useless to have ended the first episode with Ray and Emma realizing Sonju and Mujika were demons when you have the whole ending theme dedicated for them, thus making me assume that they will join forces with the protagonist (and they do. I know, no surprises here.) just like how it is ridiculous to try to make Vincent seem like a potential traitor, when nobody who has watched this show can possibly believe he would do this, given the bunch of baloney we've had to sit thru for the majority of the series.

If the idiotic cliffhangers aren't enough to worsen one's mood, mix in the fact that none of these characters have enough sense of danger until conflict arises, and this just gets worse. Back in episode three, they found a shelter. As soon as they get in, they get incredibly cozy. Why did they not bother first searching the whole place? they bathed, cooked, one kid even played the piano. Remember how there are demons outside? they clearly don't. I love how it is the year 2040+, and the ones sent to catch these kids are a bunch of dudes that look like they were kicked out of the army. Why did not one of the kids die or suffer injuries when all these people attacked them? you are telling me kids were able to beat a bunch of what I think are trained soldiers and escape unscathed except for maybe a higher heart rate and a good workout? even with suspension of disbelief, this makes no sense. Then a CGI monster appears and it is incredibly convenient how it kills most of the armed men and then Ray is able to blind it with an arrow. This is peak fiction. I thought Nana had the biggest plot armor, but it was the kids of Grace field all along who had it instead. Continuing on this, in episode ten Ray is able to knock out a demon with a fucking pipe and I just burst out laughing. How weak are these demons anyway? Ray doesn't do much in the story, besides being Emma's sidekick and pulling impossible stunts to the likes of Assasin's Creed, but Norman does so let's talk about him.

Norman makes his debut in the show by telling us about his journey and about how he now has the ability to mass-produce a drug that will make all demons degenerate. If this show was about how Norman became this big ass boss of the underworld maybe this show could have gotten interesting again but alas it didn't. Norman and his league of villains are completely one-dimensional. They are on their quest to kill all the demons, and most of the time all they do besides talking is make "scary" faces or pose randomly. It was a mistake to make Norman and his lackeys be the "antagonists" since there is no way one would ever believe them to be the main big bad. In episode eight, we finally get to see what happened to Norman after he was shipped out. The flashback lasted seven minutes and was arguably the best thing to happen in this season. After this, the show never picked up itself, at least for me, and it became worse and worse. Norman never planned to wait for Emma and Ray to bring Sonju and Mujika. He began bombing the demon town a la Joker style and then had a meltdown when he realized he now had blood on his hands.

Remember the old demon that Emma gave an apple to back in episode five? neither did I. This old man ends up being important to the story (so much that he gets a name) and him screaming his granddaughter's name, is what made Norman come back to "reality" and face it. As soon as I heard his granddaughter was named Emma, I knew they were going to pull this dumb ploy. This is hilarious for all the wrong reasons. We are supposed, or at least that's what I got from the show, to buy into the idea that the demons are in agony. The show even shows them panicking, crying, screaming, and getting eaten by other demons. This felt forced and if this had been shown earlier, it might haven't been so bad. If you only have eleven episodes, you need to show these types of things as soon as possible so that we can digest them properly (No, the demons who were struggling to feed their families earlier are not enough for the audience to fucking know how this world works or care).

The old man from episode five becomes even more important, since he too possesses the same blood that can make demons not need human meat to keep their form, just like Mujika, and because of that now all the remaining demons from town get saved. Pushing this series even further into the point of never return, Norman's arc ends abruptly in one of the most pointless and quickest ways I've seen. He started bombing the demon town in episode eight, then in episode nine, his conflict between wanting to kill the demons and not wanting to kill, ends in five minutes. Five damn minutes and just because he had a heart-to-heart talk with Emma. Two minutes after, Barbara who seemed to harbor the most intense hatred for the demons, also decides to follow Norman's orders to not kill them. What was the point of bringing in Norman and his lackeys, if they weren't even going to be used to add some much needed tension in the series? this is insanity. This whole Norman is now a bad guy subplot is dreadful, but even more so is the fact that Ratri is what I would say is the big bad besides the demons. He is never fully characterized and was overall just boring to watch. They didn't even try to make him memorable.

I wish I could tell you the plot armor of any of these characters, the plot convenience, and nonsense end at some point, but they don't. They just increase episode by episode. A pen is magically granted to them and said pen contains the entire layout of the farm and even a cure for Norman and company, the kids sneak in the farm with fucking hot air balloons and none get shot, the civilian demons band together to help the children escape and are able to fight off demons who are accustomed to battle (I mean, they weren't able to kill one fucking kid with their spears and they pass the fuck out by getting hit with a pipe so maybe they really aren't great. Who fucking knows anymore), none of the children die or get injured, Isabella made all the other moms agree to betray Ratri, and now wants to be free of the system but still claims it is not because she actually cares for these kids, not one fucking child questions how Norman is still alive, Emma gives yet another hollow speech about freedom and tells Ratri to live together, it is all very much a damned tragedy. Neither the studio nor whoever participated in this monstrosity cared enough about making a decent or at least average show.

Season two of The Promised Neverland is worse than Ex-arm in my book and I wish I was fucking kidding, but I am not. The thing with a show like Ex-arm, is that once I realized it was that shitty anime in the trailer Crunchyroll dropped back in December, I lost any expectations of the show being anything other than garbage. The Promised Neverland, however, had a shit ton of promising ideas and characters who were fairly likable but decided to set itself up in flames hotter than the Sahara desert and deliver a story with no build-up, no world, and make its cast dumber than your usual sitcom character. Truly one of the worst shows that came out this season.