The Promised Neverland was an extremely well-received manga that grew in popularity over time to become a sales and critical powerhouse. This resulted in a 2019 anime adaptation that, at least in its first season, was well-received by fans old and new. Unfortunately, the same cannot be true for its second season.
Season 2 of The Promised Neverland failed miserably to measure up to the potential of its first season or its source material for a variety of reasons. Season 2’s issues included skipping or rewriting large sections of the manga, timing what was utilized poorly, and making a terrible ending even worse.
One of the worst mistakes you could probably commit when animating a manga is skipping most of its parts, and the directors of The Promised Neverland Season 2 decided it was a good day to omit big chunks of the manga and write their own story, which of course, disappointed A LOT of the fans.
Here are some of the reactions of the fans on twitter:
One example of said omission of manga plotlines was the Royal Family, who were the genuine antagonists of the manga story. Their discovery was significant in and of itself, but so was their eventual fate at the hands of Norman. This was an important event for Norman’s character development moving ahead, yet it’s completely missing from the anime.
Another issue was the decision to make Vincent the group’s traitor. Many people predicted this from the outset, reducing the impact of the potentially dramatic change. To make matters worse, Vincent didn’t even receive much screen time, making it much less effective. Another manga premise that was left out of the anime was the actual awful reality of the Factory Farms. In theory, alterations to the source text weren’t always a bad thing, but none of them were nearly as successful in the anime.
The Promised Neverland manga, even as a non-reader, actually had such an amazing plot that tackled the entity of the story and the issue in a way that would awe the readers. The fact that the anime was not able to keep up with the reputation was such a downer for many of the supporters of the series.
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