The Promised Neverland Episode 2 Review: 131045

Just two episodes into The Promised Neverland and I already know this show won’t be good for my heart. Tension, shocks, and heartache seem to be the recipe for this seasonal anime. Following last week’s twist ending, we join Norman and Emma as they begin to hatch their escape plan, but can this dynamic duo escape the ever-watchful eye of Big Mother? Let’s jump into Episode 2 of The Promised Neverland!

Plot

After the revelations in the last episode, Norman and Emma have to keep their cool in front of Mother and the other children. Emma struggles with this in particular, angry at Mother’s blasé attitude, but forces a smile on her face. While maintaining their cover, the duo also begins working on the beginnings of an escape plan. But the deeper they look into their lives and the world built around them, the more they realise how much surveillance they are under. A game of wits begins as Mother’s suspicions arise, so let the mind games start between the captor and the captives!

Episode Highlights

Mind Games: With enough intrigue and suspicion to rival a spy film, Episode 2 was filled with moments of ‘chicken’ and masked smiling faces. I’m really impressed by the maturity of Norman and Emma to keep their wits about them, but also at times I just wanted to grab them and tell them to stop doing what they’re doing. Especially that moment when Emma starts talking about Conny – talk about walking a tightrope!

To Protect that Smile: Norman’s declaration that he would stand by Emma’s decision because he loved her, was a surprising one to say the least. It seems he’s willing to sacrifice anything and everything as long as Emma is happy and this may prove to be quite treacherous in later episodes.

Hush Little Baby: The introduction of a new addition to the family spells trouble for the escape plan. Escape plans are hard enough without having to care for an infant which just goes to show exactly how cunning Mother really is – she knows that Emma would never leave the baby behind, and also knows escape is impossible with the baby.

Themes & Trivia

Love, Love, and more Love: It’s really interesting to see the different ways love has been represented in this series, from Emma’s familial love and Norman’s romantic to Mother’s fake. It’ll be interesting if ‘true’ love triumphs in this series or whether it just becomes a liability.

Boat of Mud: As Ray tells Emma and Norman, their plan is like ‘a boat made of mud’. He’s essentially telling them that their plan will never work. But, Norman quickly counters by telling him that, ‘if you bake mud, it’ll become a vessel’: put anyone under enough pressure and they can achieve anything.

Dates: This week’s episode was set the day after the first episode. It’ll be interesting to see in future episodes if there are time skips, as the characters will need to escape within two months.

Comments

As I said at the beginning of this article, this series won’t be good for my heart. I absolutely adore our three main characters and their trust and care for one another. But what has really stood out in this episode was their bravery. No one could blame Emma and Norman for bursting into tears at the sight of Mother, but they, somehow, managed to keep it together. Emma in particular had a great show of strength, even hugging Mother and telling her that she loved her – what an incredible scene that was! I’m really looking forward to how these interesting and smart characters will be developed.

But, as smart as these kids are, they really aren’t good at sneaking around. I’m not sure if this was on purpose or just a design flaw, but their sneaking just wasn’t very realistic nor sensible. In one scene Emma and Norman are in a corridor conspiring in the middle of the night, and they don’t even whisper, I was so worried someone would pop their head out of a room! In another scene, the two of them sneak into a storage room, but one of them should have stood guard outside in case Mother shows up randomly. Worse of all is that after knowing that Mother has a tracking device, they continue to hang out at the wall. There’s just gotta be a smarter way to go about all of this!

Let’s Get Planning!

Promised Neverland is shaping up to be a show with great characters, tension, and pacing. There’s not much else you can ask for, and I’m very impressed with the way this anime is progressing. I do hope in future that some of the sneaking around is shown a bit more realistically, mainly if the characters don’t loudly chat about escaping in the middle of the night!! But for now, let’s hope that Norman, Ray, and Emma have a decent enough plan to begin making their boat out of mud.

During the wait for next week’s episode make sure to check out the MANGA.TOKYO team’s other episodic reviews for Winter 2019! You can find the full list of them over here.