The Promised Neverland #1: "Grace Field House"
This review was comissioned by @toxinvictory
It's unfortunately very difficult to enter this work completely blind. If you've been exposed to recent-ish anime/manga discourse, you've probably had the premise spoiled for you. On the bright side, the big twist comes very early in the manga, so in the very likely event that you already know it it'll only matter for the first fifty-some pages.
Surprisingly, this manga's run (starting in 2016) was in Shonen Jump. It really feels more like a seinen series to me. Definitely marketed toward the older end of SJ's readership. The first three chapters were commissioned for this review, but as the first chapter, "Grace Field House," is longer than the other two put together, I decided ahead of time to give the former its own post and combine the latter pair into a second. So, today's post is chapter one.
As a disclaimer: in addition to the thing that almost everyone's been spoiled about, I also happened to have picked up through osmosis that The Promised Neverland eventually covers some of the same conceptual and philosophical ground as Tokyo Ghoul. It hasn't really gone there yet in the material I've now read, but it's very easy for me to see how it could go there later on.
First things first, this comic absolutely gets off on the right foot artistically, and for the most part it stays there. Illustrator Demizu Posuka was about five years older and more experienced than most other shonen manga artists I've looked at were when they started their first major works, and it shows:
Girl in front is Emma. Blond boy to the left is Norman. Black-haired boy with his back to us is Ray.
The fact that The Promised Neverland was a dual effort between artist Demizu and writer Shirai Kaiu probably also played a role here. Those notorious Suesha publishing deadlines are probably a lot easier to work with when you have allocation of labor. There are a few visual shortcuts and slip-ups here and there - incidents of Giant Forehead Syndrome etc - but they're few and far between.
The composition of that opening panel is also really good at communicating. Even before the text starts, we know that the opening setting is an isolated countryside orphanage hosting children from around age 3 to around age 12, that there's some kind of threat coming in from outside that they need to face with stoic determination, and that the older kids will have to lead the younger ones through the middle without any adult assistance. This one image makes a solid 20% of the first issue's exposition and storytelling, frankly, redundant.
Our viewpoint character is Emma, supported by her friends Norman and Ray. They're three of the oldest children at the Grace Field House orphanage, and also three of the smartest and most athletic even taking their relative ages into account. Emma is the least booksmart, and has the silliest personality, but her ability to think on her feet is unmatched, and she's also the fastest and most agile. Norman is a logic machine, making impressive deductions and predictions. Ray is sort of prickly, but he's also the most knowledgeable of the three on account of always having his nose in a book.
Early on, we see them playing a tactically sophisticated outdoor game that combines hide-and-seek with tag in which Emma, Norman, and Ray get to show their chops, even though Ray just comments and advises from the sidelines while he reads.
In addition to being well liked by the thirty-five younger children of Grace Field House, the trio are extremely close among themselves. All the orphans consider themselves family, but these three are siblings in all but blood.
Their love also extends to "mom," the woman who runs the orphanage seemingly on her own.
You'd think a ratio of 38 children to one caretaker would be hellish, but somehow their life at the orphanage seems pretty idyllic. Mom prepares high quality meals that they're never short on. They have clean, crisp white clothes to put on whenever they need a fresh set. They have all sorts of books to read, educational and otherwise, as well as a beautiful playground, garden, and forest to play in. Their education includes computerized standardized tests that seem to have taught them logic and mathematics at a relatively high level for their ages. All of them were brought here when they were too young to remember anything from before, and they only hope that their lives in the outside world post-adoption will be as happy and fulfilled as their early childhoods here.
They even each have their very own numbers tattooed on their necks, to make sure they each understand how unique and special they are!
It's just annoying that they're never allowed to leave the grounds until someone adopts them. The driveway gatehouse and the fence demarcating the edge of their territory in the surrounding forest are strictly off limits.
It's also too bad that no one ever calls or comes back to visit after being adopted, but hey, that's life.
Anyway yeah they're being raised for food. Like I said, the big twist comes pretty early, and I think most readers will have probably figured it out before then on their own.
After a game of braingenius-tag and a standardized geometry test (that the three of them all ace), a younger girl named Connie has her last dinner at the orphanage before being walked to the gate to meet the foster family that definitely exists. My compliments to the creators for making the girl just adorable enough and her departure just saccharine enough to reinforce the tragedy without laying it on too thick and straying into self-parody. It walks a very, very fine line, and at least for me I think it makes it across without falling even if it totters a little. Connie is very insistent on taking her stuffed bunny with her when she goes; Mom gave it to her for her sixth birthday, and she wants to keep practicing taking care of it so she can be a good mother herself one day.
Like I said. It teeters, but it just barely manages to keep its balance and avoid falling into the one week from retirement and engaged abyss.
Connie's always been scatterbrained, and in her excitement ends up forgetting her precious bunny when Mom escorts her off to the gatehouse. Emma and Norman decide to go have some fun and break some rules since they know they'll be adopted soon anyway (they're almost 12 years old, and everyone gets adopted by 12!) and sneak into the gatehouse to give it to her before she goes. Ray takes a raincheck on that, he's busy reading lol. So, they pick the locked back door to the orphanage's main building and slip out. I'm surprised Norman is the lock-picker, seems like that should have been Emma's job, but okay.
In the gatehouse, Emma and Norman find a delivery truck. In the back of the truck, they find Connie.
I don't know if that seed was laying dormant inside of her waiting to sprout and kill her all along, of if they just impaled her with a spear that has leaves and flowers on the back end. I think it's the former. Or maybe they killed her another way and the magic plant was installed in the corpse to season it or something, idk. Anyway she's dead. With a surprised (rather than fearful) expression that suggests she just barely had time to acknowledge something being wrong before death. At least it seems to have been quick.
Hearing inhuman voices, Emma and Norman hide under the truck, Emma still clutching the bunny they'd wanted to return to Connie. The drivers soon step out of the gatehouse office room and into view.
Now that the plant has done whatever it needs to do to the corpse they seal it in its jar of seasoned brine for delivery and sale. While grumbling about how blue-collar workers like themselves would never be able to afford top-shelf free range human child like this even as they deliver it to specialty butcher shops for rich people day after day. Fucking capitalism amirite?
Hmm. Keeping the kids happy, healthy, and comfortable makes sense, if this is the sort of super-fancy organic farm where the livestock eats better than your the average minimum wage worker. The focus being placed on their education seems off, though, and in a moment we start getting some hints about that.
Also, if you want some fridge horror; this is an expensive free-range farm. Implying that there are also other farms producing cheaper products. Wonder what those are like...
While Emma and Norman stare out from their hiding place in near-catatonic horror, a manager comes out of the office room with Mom in tow. They'd been adamantly believing that these monsters had just attacked the orphanage and Mom was possibly already dead or captured, but now they can no longer reject the logical implication.
The manager-monster also says something about how they've just been shipping off six to eight year olds lately, but they have ever more pressing orders from a superelite customer for the reeeeaaally good stuff. Those three with top marks should be ready very soon.
Implying that kids who are smarter or better at math have extra value, and that a few gifted "orphans" are groomed longer for this in particular while the others get sold off at a more tender age. Something to do with brainmeats? Or...souls? It's probably something extra horrifiying and not nearly as quick and painless, I'm guessing.
As an aside, I like the little bits of worldbuilding that get insinuated naturally into the text here.
What's a gupna ceremony? No idea, and it probably doesn't matter. It does, however, very effectively convey these monsters as both a foreign culture, and a very familiar one. They have their own little rituals and holidays that they chat about while waiting for the boss to finish the paperwork. Really just another stripe of modern working-class human, in all but appearance and diet.
The two preteens stare and mute shock until they have an opening, at which point they make like a pumpkin and get the fuck out of there. Unfortunately, in their haste and horror, they make a little mistake and don't realize it until it's too late.
They get back to the main building eager to convince themselves that it was just a horrible nightmare, wishing they could magically force Mom to be who she thought she was and their life into what they thought it was again. Everything was just taken from them. All their beliefs, all their security, and the only adult who they ever had - the only parent figure in their frame of reference - all gone in the blink of an eye. Not just taken away, but turned into a deadly enemy.
Meeting Ray and seeing his reaction to their own haunted and dishevelled appearances makes it realer for them. Especially when they have to tell him what they saw, and he with his booksmarts finally feels safe coming clean about all the contradictions in their circumstances that he didn't want to ask about for fear he was just going crazy.
The degree of what this does to them psychologically is...understated, to be honest. Maybe this is one way in which TPN shows its shonen rather than seinen conventions by softening the blow, because like...even unusually strong-willed kids are probably going to just be too destroyed by this to even be functional. Let alone start plotting escape for themselves and their younger "siblings" like these three do.
It's heartwarming, but it's understated.
Anyway, they start making plans, using the skills they've honed in their competitive playground games to try and outwit the person they thought loved and cared for them. Hopefully she doesn't know that they know; that will be a major advantage for them, if she doesn't. Unfortunately, dropping the toy rabbit means that she'll probably have guessed that *someone* knows. That's going to make this a lot harder.
Their thoughts about Mother - the loving, kindhearted organic farmer who makes sure her animals have the best lives possible and has earnest affection for them in the time before butchering - are what closes the first issue. She isn't really that hard of a character to comprehend. People like her exist. But I don't blame the kids in the slightest for not comprehending.
Strong start. We'll continue this next time.
