The anime adaptation of
Promised Neverland
has taken a vastly different direction than the manga has, which has left fans with a lot of questions. These different choices will have huge implications to the overall story that could make its ending completely different from the manga's.
Changing a story from its source material isn't always a bad thing
, and can create a much more digestible experience for the reader, but diverting completely from the overall plot is even more questionable. Anime fans also probably felt the shift and have questions themselves that manga viewers have the answers to.
Why Does Norman's Return Feel Anticlimactic?
Norman makes an appearance in episode 5 of season 2 which is very quick compared to how events turn out in the manga. Readers of the manga know what happened to Norman during this time and how long it was before the main characters actually reunited with him, but the anime takes that wait out of the series entirely.
The anime has Norman off-screen for 7 episodes, opposed to the 44 chapters in the manga. T
his move was probably made to get to the end of the series quicker,
but it's possible that the reason why will be made clear later on in the series.
What Will Isabella Do When She Reunites With The Kids?
This is one of the biggest changes to date between the manga and the anime. Portraying Isabella's mission to retrieve her children to make up for her mistakes is not a bad change, but a fundamental one. Her role in the manga is that she never stopped loving her children and envied their ability to fight for freedom.
Towards the end of the series, she rallies her other mother candidates to fight back against the demons and the human farms. This could still happen in the anime as a double-cross sequence, but it will have to play out much differently than the manga.
What's Up With The Pacing?
For anime fans, a lot of noticed the pacing of season 2 is much different from the first. The first season follows
a very specific period of time that leads to an ultimate goal
that must be completed during that time frame. The goal is to escape before the next child has a birthday to be taken off the farm for consumption. This made the information very easy to follow.
Season 2 however splits itself up into small goals with no real time frame or concepts to link them all together which makes it feel like the viewer gets whiplash between arcs. The time skip is a great example of this because it comes out of nowhere and leads to a reveal that fans weren't exactly ready for since it wasn't foreshadowed.
So, What Happened During The Time Skip?
During the time skip in the anime, the manga delivers heaps of essential information and character development to progress the plot naturally. This all takes place during an arc called Goldy Pond which establishes a goal for the characters to work towards, foreshadows Norman's return, contextualizes the demon hierarchy for the reader and so much more.
This information was all skipped over by the anime, along with the introduction and deaths of important characters which could not have been the right choice. Anime fans and manga fans alike are confused by this change because they either lack the information to understand why there was a time skip, or they had to miss out on arguably the best arc being animated.
What Was Life Like On Other Farms?
The anime mentions that there're other farms that cultivated children in the demon world and that there might be kids who escaped from them before. Just mentioning this raises a lot of questions for anime fans like, "where are the other kids?" or "how long has this farming been going on?" Answering these questions doesn't seem to be the anime's priority, but the manga does a great job of explaining.
Emma and the gang come across kids bought by aristocrats who like to hunt children for sport instead of eating them from farms. These kids also consisted of escapees from other farms. On top of that, they meet a character named Yugo, who is an adult that grew up after escaping a farm, but gave up on freeing his fellow captives when his friends died tragically.
Why Is It Called "Promised Neverland"?
In the manga, there's a solid goal highlighted by the original Minerva, a man from the past who fought for the freedom of the children from the farms. He mentioned a supernatural being who could make a "promise" that would bind every living thing to it. The promise at the current time is that the human world and demon world remain separate as long as demons can farm humans, and humans don't interfere.
This promise gets rewritten by Emma in the manga, and that's how the title comes to be. Her promise saves every human child from having to be eaten and restructures the demon's world to not rely on human meat, so they can grow. It's going to be interesting to see how the anime ties in the title to the plot since there's been no hint of the promise as it is in the manga.