After reading The Promised Neverland, and loving every moment of it, I was shocked to see that most people disliked the manga after the escape of Grace Field. With the conclusion of the manga, I noticed that many people feel that after the Jailbreak arc, the show lost one of its most important calling cards, it’s psychology. There are spoilers from the beginning to the end of the manga, beware.
From the recognition of the dire situation that the Grace Field children were in, the drama behind scenes are extremely evident. The gore, darkness, and dread surrounding Conny’s death at the beginning of the manga is the kick-start to the series and sets a tone. From this point on, you can feel yourself trying to keep the secret that they were at the gate. The game of minds and trying to maintain a poker face is a powerful driving force in the manga and I can see why people can get attached to it. Maybe it is the character vs character aspect of this psychological thriller that leads other shows of the same genres to popularity. As readers, we are all immersed in the thoughts of our characters, and I can see this as a total plus for the intro and jailbreak arc. Chapter 31, Emptiness, at this point in the manga, the children have suffered complete and utter failure. The tone is just as the chapter name suggests, and the characters are at an all-time low. The progression and development that our characters go through along with everything that they learned from Sister Krone leads to a beautiful concluding tune of development, psychology, success, and hype.
The next arc is more so an establishment of their world, society, and the demons. Within this arc, we encounter Sonju and Mujika, seemingly nice demons. Allow me to emphasize the fact that these demons have a reason to be nice. They follow a religion that, although not fleshed out entirely, definitely foreshadows and builds up to a coherent conclusion to the manga.
Within this arc, we meet a mysterious figure known as Mister. He lives alone in the B06-32 shelter. He escaped a farm known as Glory Bell and his entire family was killed. He forces himself to believe that he is only alive because he was strong and they died because they were weak. This is to disguise the information gained in Goldy Pond where we learn that Lucas and all of the other kids sacrificed themselves so that he alone could live. He then states that companionship and friends are useless before holding Emma hostage and telling them all to leave. Emma fights back and restates her belief that family is not meaningless. The mysterious figure then has a strange inexplicable fit where he breaks down before the kids and passes out, yelling at someone named Lucas. While exploring the shelter, the kids come across a demonic scene. Poachers, help, Lucas, Andy, etc scrawled on the walls in blood. Eventually, we learn that Mister has something like PTSD where he cannot get over the thoughts of the friends he lost. Certain thoughts can trigger feelings of powerlessness, sadness, anger, hatred, and more. Mister hates Emma. In chapter 58, Emma talks to him where he states that he hates her. It’s due to the fact that she has a great family. This is paralleled to him as a kid. He was the exact same person. A leader-like figure in a group of escapees. He feels alone. “Can you even understand how one decision can ruin everything? The fear of your ideals and decisions killing your friends?” Is what Mister thinks before asking Emma is her decision the right one.
Mister, Emma, and Ray go on a journey to Goldy pond to find Mr. Minerva. Mister has been there before and he knows what is there. They all understand that his goal is to kill Ray or Emma, but they decide to never give him the chance. Before arriving at Goldy Pond, Emma and Mister have a heart to heart conversation. Mister hadn’t done anything sketchy since the first day, so they believed he would kill one of them when they arrived. Mister vehemently responds to Emma’s offer to have a heart-to-heart with anger. This conversation is the synthesis of Emma’s development, ideals, and love along with Mister’s P.T.S.D., hatred, and loss. All mental developments, revelations that we had seen through the entire show compile here to have a heartwarming moment. Chapter 64 is truly a beautiful sequence within the manga. Then the symphony of words comes to a close with a tragedy. Mister’s first sketchy attempt at killing Ray and Emma concludes on this day with Emma being captured by the previously mentioned Poachers and brought to Goldy Pond.
On chapter 65, Emma wakes up in a village reminiscent of a circus. This village houses other kids. There are three rules; Music, Monsters, and survive. Goldy Pond is a playground where demons hunt kids freely. In her first encounter with the demons, Emma almost kills one of the demons who were threatening 3 little kids. Due to this, Emma catches the attention of Duke Leuvis, the strongest demon in attendance. The duke is looking for a human that will fight back and try to kill him. Emma saves the three kids and tells them to run downwind and gives them tips to hide. This will do everything to hide the kids’ presence. This was Emma’s big mistake. The duke reads her move and catches the kids downstream. He murders them and tells one to return to Emma. This is all to enrage Emma and make her stronger.
A main aspect of this arc, ignoring the wold building and history it establishes via Mr. Minerva, is the final battle. Within the final battle, We see development from Mister. Mister, who we will soon see is named Yugo, does a full 360. His trauma, hatred, and fear are all remedied by the words and thoughts of Emma. If they are going to beat the person who murdered his entire family, then it will be with Emma’s thinking. The words of Emma in the forest, and the planning of Emma helps Yugo change for the better.
Emma also has a bit of progression in this arc. It is very slight, but we know that one of her biggest flaws are her inability to plan for the worst and her naivety. In the final battle, Emma is able to read Leuvis’ moves and react accordingly. She takes the teachings of Sister Krone, Isabella, and Norman to outsmart Levius. We also see a key character trait that will be important, rather a driving point of the plot, for the rest of the manga. Emma doesn’t want to kill Levius. The problem is that he is forcing her to. Emma typically has to take the lesser of two evils in the manga, and this is one such case of it that, in retrospect, genuinely shows Emma’s resolve and development.
This final battle is genuinely a mental roller coaster. I’m disregarding all other fights for the sake of brevity, but you can definitely see the game of minds in the other battles. Dealing with grief, approaching death head-on for the sake of others, and many more psychological aspects are especially key in those fights.
This arc is covering everything from after Goldy Pond’s destruction to the humans’ invasion.
This arc returns us to the larger cast of people and also the completed development of those in goldy pond. By this point, Yugo, the one previously known as Mister, shows a caring and parenting side that he had never shown before. The beginning phases of this arc just give depth to the world around them, gives us history, and shows Demon Societies. When a group of kids go searching for Cuvitidala, Emma has to kill a wild demon. I’m shedding light on this situation because on chapter 100 page 17, we see Emma making a dejected face after killing a demon. This will be relevant to the later philosophy within The Promised Neverland.
Skipping ahead to the Human Invasion, we see some clear cognitive bias to the way the kids act when threatened by humans versus how they act when threatened by demons.
The kids recognized that the humans made a violent entry, blowing straight into the shelter. The kids also saw two of their friends’ dead bodies fall from the sky at the hands of a human. Regardless, Emma still thought that they shared things in common. Emma thought that due to them being human, they would go along with the idea of them trying to change the world. This is where her entire worldview changes. Not all humans are good. The thought that the kids could just find humans and be safe seemed to be a pipe dream. “You’re food. Your lives never existed from the beginning.” Despite these words from Andrew, Ray still says “They’re humans. We have to kill people. Even if I could, what about Emma and the others? Most of the group couldn’t do that.” This is held in contrast to the effortless, celebratory killing of the demons. This is a consistent habit of people that we can even see in reality which is why I believe these final arcs have some of the best psychology and philosophy of the series. Before I get to the last arcs that I will touch on, I did want to shed light on Yugo as a character.
Yugo is where Emma would be had the slightest thing gone wrong. Yugo was mentally tormented. Living for thirteen years in pain and agony. These years of pain led Yugo to emotionally degenerate. He becomes selfish when he was previously sharing. Hating when he was loving. Then Emma, a ray of hope for everyone around her came along. She told Yugo that you can’t run away from the pain. You must accept it and move on. “HELP!” Emma does just this. She shows him that distracting yourself from the pain won’t remedy it. Nothing will bring his friends back. Despite this, Yugo says that because they are just the same, him and Emma, there is nothing that she can do. Emma explains to Yugo her plan and tells him to join her. This talk along with Emma being there to help him allows him to change to go back to the previously caring Yugo that escaped Glory Bell. This was the escape that Yugo needed for 13 years. Now, to think that Yugo sacrificed himself to save the kids is wild. To go even farther, the idea that friends are just a hindrance, especially when you care for them enough, leads to Yugo’s death. Yugo would not let Lucas die alone. Flashing back to when they were kids (or just drawing a connection) Yugo says, “Whether we live or die, we’re going to be together until the end.” Lucas is already dead at this point. Yugo carries Lucas on his back and kills himself to stay with Lucas until the end. In the end Yugo did what he wanted to do. Yugo’s potential death terrifies Emma. She always feared if her ideals would kill her friends. Then it would be all her fault she believes.
Yugo comes to Emma in a dream. Yugo offers Emma comforting words in her time of dread. We then see in Yugo’s flashback that the same day that Emma and the kids show up, Yugo was going to kill himself. “You and everyone will be able to change the world.”
Then, right when you think all is done, death approaches again. Emma watched 2 of the kids die tonight. She allowed Yugo and Lucas to sacrifice themselves for the kids. Yet, why? Why is Andrew, Yugo, and Lucas’ killer here? He returns in a state where he should be dead. Andrew is moments from death with a hostage. Emma is armed but slow to shoot. “Can you shoot Emma? No. You can’t.” says Andrew. Andrew points out the previous contradiction that I noted. Even at the end, Emma wasn’t the one to shoot. Oliver does. He also doesn’t shoot to kill. Oliver shoots to disarm and weaken Andrew. In the end, Ray was prepared to kill before Andrew was killed by a demon.
Honestly, I’m going to do this arc a little different because it’s hard to tell the final arcs apart because of how they are mixed together. I’m going to go through the psychological and moral aspects of this arc without taking steps since this arc is super long.
In the first chapter of this arc we see Mr. Minerva going on something like a crusade. Him alnog with a diverse crew raid a farm. This farm is nothing like what we’ve seen before. This farm is a Mass production farm. The inhabitants of the farm aren’t even capable of thinking for themselves. They are kept in awful conditions. The only thing keeping them alive is the machine that they are all connected to. This is terrible treatment. The farm is reminiscent of Mass produce farms in real life. All of the “livestock” are mere centimeters away incapable of moving and doing anything for themselves. Using the setting of the manga, there are very compelling arguments for “veganism” and even equality between demons and humans that are established here.
I’ll set up some parallels here. They both eat meat. They both hunt. Demons are actually required by health to eat humans. They are both intelligent. They both have societies and care for other members of their species. Emma realizes this when Norman explains demon biology. This leads Emma to her decision. Rather than driving the demons to extinction, she finds a solution that leads to life for both parties. This arc is a demonstration of everything that Emma has learned, her resolve, her love, charity towards everything, and her ideals. Due to this, Emma puts in so much work to save the demons when she could easily save just the kids.
The end of the manga ends with the use of the promise. All of the kids make it to the human world. No one can travel between the worlds. All of the kids arrive in New York. Everyone is panicking because Emma is nowhere to be found. Emma is in a freezing cold environment with no nearby villages or signal, just one singular person. The reward to him, the demon that gives promises was Emma’s memories. “Your past memories and future connections. Everything. I’ll take your family from your world. That’s the reward.” Emma sits alone in the cabin with the man for months. We see that she has dreams about her past. “This feels so warm. Perhaps this is heaven. How nice.” In the meantime, the kids are searching quite literally everywhere for her. They unite coincidentally at a market. Emma still doesn’t know who these people are yet. That warmth that she got in her dreams comes back. She feels like she has always wanted to see them but she doesn’t know why. The kids get back together and Emma doesn’t remember the past. The end.
Now there were a few problems with the manga despite my review saying otherwise. Why exactly did the Duke Leuvis have two cores?
HOW IN THE WORLD DID THE KIDS FIND EMMA
Ah yes transcending dimensions
Finally, for clarity’s sake, how did the kids find Emma? We see many times in the manga that demons are still capable of hunting humans. This is not an impossible task because wild demons catch escaped humans, Luce and his goons have Goldy Pond and probably many other cases like this. It seems like the promise does not make things impossible. This is why it’s possible for Emma to reunite with the kids.
The last thing is a counterargument to what I’ve seen go around. “Why didn’t Emma just die? It seems like the reward taken from her was less than others” This is literally just people wanting a bitter ending lmao. By the way, worded the way Emma did, it would make less sense for him to kill either of the kids if they are going to Earth.
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