The Promised Neverland returns with a brand new season. Now out of Grace Field House out into the world controlled by the very being farming them Emma, Ray, and the other kids must learn to survive and adapt while trying to search for a safe haven.

The Promised Neverland is a 2019 shounen anime series, it is produced by CloverWorks, and licensed by Aniplex of America. It is currently available on home media and streaming in English. Season 2 currently airs on Hulu and Funimation in America. 

Editor’s Note: Near complete to complete spoilers for The Promised Neverland season two’s first half may be present within this review. 

Season two of The Promised Neverland covers the survival arc as the kids learn to adapt to their new surroundings from the books gathered from Grace Field House. They meet two seemingly friendly demons one of which who teaches them how to hunt through archery. The demons continue to pursue them while they search for a new home to live out their lives.

THE GOOD: Season two begins almost immediately where the first season left off. The kids have escaped Grace Field House and are now out in the open forest where they’re being pursued by demons associated with the farm. They read books the read books they took from the house which gives them knowledge on plants that store fresh water and edible animals throughout the forest. After being chased by demons they encounter two demons that are non-hostile to humans who help nurse Emma back to health having suffered from an infection & falling unconscious due to her ear injury during the chase. The demons named Mujika a kind female demon and Sonju a much more blunt & direct male demon are followers of a religion that has demons swearing off of human meat, although Sonju has ulterior motives for following the religion’s guidance. They tell them the truth about the world in which the human world is above the world they currently reside in and there’s a promise between humans and demons which allows demons to raise and eat humans in exchange for the demons not attacking the surface world. As Sonju teaches Emma survival training, they teach he and Mujika more about humans in exchange. 

They eventually part ways with the demonic duo and find a place to rest in which appears to be an abandoned Grace Field House like shelter. Using the pen Norman was able to obtain they gather information on the world and potential permanent shelter coming across a man named William Minerva who has apparently been rescuing humans. After listening to a recording from Minerva they resolve to find him, but are attacked by human soldiers working for demons. One of the head demons reenlist Isabella’s aide to find the kids in exchange for her rise in rankings of the demon world. An enormous demon kills the soldiers and the kids are able to escape. Months later the kids arrive at a demon village where they’ve been held up. The village is starving of human meat and two demons trying to save members of their family come to learn that children from Grace Field House escaped and decide to hunt the kids. While out for food in disguise of humans the kids head out to the village market but are outed by the two demons after catching wind of their scent and are chased down. Emma and the others are saved by a survived Norman and a group of humans. 

A rather disappointing caveat of season two is that the amazing horror aesthetic of the first season is no longer in play. While they try to do some horror scenery here and there it does admittedly lose some of it’s magic. In place of this though is a heavy focus on more character development and world building which is great, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss being on the edge of my seat for nearly every episode. I like how they’re expanding the roster of demons that have emotions & personalities outside of the lead demon from season one. It helps branch out the two species and sympathetic demons who want to help humans is an interesting twist.

THE BAD: If you haven’t heard already an unfortunate, misfortune has hit The Promised Neverland’s anime adaptation and it’s the skipping of the very important Goldy Pond arc and going straight to the reunion with Norman. Not only does the arc introduce a number of important characters as well as advance character growth to such a necessary degree, it also features a fan-favorite villain. Fans on social media were quick to announce their displeasure with the move and it felt reminiscent of another fan-favorite series in Tokyo Ghoul. If you remember the series skipped over the second half of the original source entirely in favor of an alternate storyline. What’s worse is mangaka Sui Ishida even wrote scripts covering those arcs, but Studio Pierrot reportedly threw them out. Pierrot would try to rectify this by covering the sequel Tokyo Ghoul:re’s canon, but the damage was already done. Cloverworks skipping over an sixty chapters leads me to believe that this wasn’t simply done in jest and it may be because they’re taking the Demon Slayer route where an entire canonical arc was made into a film. If that’s the case then it’s a smart move. People really underestimate how much manga coverage an anime can do depending on the episode count. And considering Goldy Pond’s darker moments a film adaptation kind of fits it perfectly.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: The Promised Neverland finds itself in a very conflicting situation. With the removal of the Goldy Pond arc a lot of key details from the manga have been effectively erased from the anime (at least for now). The running theory is this was done due to Goldy Pond being adapted into a film and it makes sense as it stands. However, if that’s not the case and the arc was simply skipped over due to time constraints or whatever reason it’ll leave a sour taste in viewers who are fans of the source. As it is though, season two still has some strong positives with good world building and character growth for the human and demon characters. Action being the replacement for the horror is disappointing, but considering the series is a shounen it works in a strange way. Otaku Dome gives The Promised Neverland season 2, part 1 a 75 out of 100.