The Promised Neverland, the show that almost lost me in two episodes

Spoilers ahead, including the big reveal in the first episode.

The Promised Neverland almost lost me in its first two episodes. I really don’t like violence or gore or blood, and least of all when it’s kids getting killed. That’s exactly where this show opens, and I came very close to turning it off and never coming back. I’m glad I didn’t.

Rest in peace, Conny

I want to take a second here. Rest in peace, Conny. She was the linchpin of the whole thing. She’s one of the little ones at the house, and she leaves clutching her stuffed rabbit, off to her “new family.” Then the main character finds her body at the gate, the rabbit left behind, and learns what these kids are actually being raised for: food for demons.

That was the moment the floodgates opened. I still remember crying right along with the children. They couldn’t say anything out loud, not yet, so they had to walk back to the field carrying it. And I can still hear Emma, the main character, sick with what she just saw, screaming her friend’s name over and over. Conny. Conny. It wrecked me. It’s a genuinely messed-up thing to put on screen, and it works because it earns it.

What it’s actually about

The setup is the part I love most, the same trick a lot of my favorite stories use: it starts you in the middle of something that looks normal and slowly shows you the machine underneath. A house full of happy, well-fed, well-loved orphans. A kind “Mom” who reads to them and tucks them in. Kids get adopted and leave, one by one.

Except none of it is what it looks like. The kids are livestock. The mothers are running a farm. And once you know that, the questions stack up fast. Who are these women? Where did they come from? What could possibly make a person raise children just to hand them over to be eaten? The best part of the season is watching it answer those questions instead of leaving them as vague mystery.

Isabella and Ray

Isabella, the Mom, turns out to be the most interesting person in it. The real gut-punch is Ray. He’s one of the three oldest kids, and at some point you learn he’s Isabella’s biological son, which neither of them lets on. She’s been quietly coaching him the whole time: this is how you survive, this is how you last as long as possible, this is how you don’t get shipped out. A mother keeping her own child alive inside the same system she runs for everyone else. That’s a mindfuck on its own, and the show lets it sit there without over-explaining it. Norman, the other one of the three, isn’t so lucky. His turn at the gate is coming, and everyone knows it.

Sister Krone

The funniest and then saddest beat is when Isabella comes under suspicion from the higher-ups and a second mother gets sent in to keep an eye on things. That’s Sister Krone, this wild-haired, theatrical woman who reads as completely unhinged the second she walks in. You think, okay, this one’s just crazy.

Then her arc finishes and you feel awful for ever thinking it. The reveal is that Isabella is the one holding it all in. She’s been the stable one this whole time because she’s learned to bury everything. Krone never got that armor. She’s what the system does to a person when they can’t keep it down, a product of her environment, half-broken by what she’s seen and what these things have asked of her. By the end you’re not laughing at her. You’re just sitting there thinking, good lord, no wonder she’s like this.

The theme song

The biggest win in the whole series, for me, is the music. There’s a recurring melody that threads through every important moment, Isabella’s Lullaby, and it got completely stuck in my head. It’s soft and a little eerie and it’s doing a lot of the emotional work the show leans on.

I wanted this post to stand on its own, so that if it ever gets archived somewhere it can speak for itself. So here’s the song, not just a name:

The season they didn’t need

The big climax of the first season is the one everything builds toward: the kids go over the wall. They leave the only place they’ve ever known to find out what the world they live in actually is, and to find Norman. As a single arc, it’s about as good as anime gets.

There is a second season. They’ve escaped, the story keeps going, and it gets wild, multiple versions of these kids, a lot of plot. It’s mildly interesting and not very memorable, and honestly I don’t think it needed to exist. I’d have been happy if they’d left it on a cliffhanger and let me wonder forever what happens to those kids after they’re out. But the first season stands completely on its own, and it’s a great one.