I had really high expectations for the second season of this series. In fact, thanks to the peired season of the promised neverland, I started reading manga because it got me hooked. However, after reading the manga and watching the second season, I was very disappointed.
#Ruined story
Let’s start with the plot. Already in the first episodes, the second season of this anime shows us that there is something wrong with it. The complete removal of the Yuugo character and thus the whole goldy pond arc, which in my opinion is one of the best arcs in the whole series. In addition, the anime omits many threads that are really important to the story, so the anime-only watcher doesn’t know what is going on, and can quickly get lost in it all. This storyline was just boring and repetitive. The kids literally do pretty much the same thing in different episodes. Learning to fight, collecting food and so on. These elements took way too long and they could replace them with the actual manga story, but they didn’t. The meeting with Norman after time was shown literally without emotions. Compared to the manga where we have a well-built tension and simply a longer waiting time for a longer amount of plot between these events. In the anime, it looks like that:
End of Season One – Norman gone
Practically the beginning of the second, a few episodes – boom Norman back
Really 0 build up for that important and tearing moment. Peter Ratri had literally the same problem. It wasn’t mysterious, scary at all compared to the manga. He just showed up in one episode and killed himself in another. Character developement? What for? What is this? Better show kids running in the fucking woods for 15 minutes of the episode. The anime ending was so badly done it was downright funny. Virtually completely omitted MAIN THEME OF THIS ENTIRE STORY – the promise. Apart from this main thread of the promise, of course, they also omitted (manga spoiler)
#Let’s move on to the animation
Apart from the fact that the first season was animated much better, it showed better emotions of the characters, camera frames, etc. The design of the demons themselves compared to the manga is literally like comparing bloody horrors to cartoons for preschoolers. These demons are just not scary. Let’s add the weak CGI to that and voila, we get a lot of shit on the plate.
#Music
Despite all these drawbacks, I must admit that the series soundtrack is again at a very high level. Yes they used a lot of tracks from season 1, but still it is good. I especially like the ending of the series which just sounds great.
#Summary
I really don’t know how it’s even possible for anime quality to drop so significantly from season to season. In fact, Cloverworks studio had a huge slip-up, if you can call it that. They had a really huge potential for another great-selling anime season with a brilliant storyline, but for some reason they didn’t take advantage of it. After all, they could easily spread it into 2 seasons or make one season of 24 episodes … Maybe I don’t know something, I don’t understand, but I know one thing, this anime shouldn’t be made like that. I also posted this review as well as many others on my site. You can find the link to it on my profile bio :) (I'm still learing to write reviews go easy on me guys xd)
49 out of 52 users liked this review
