{"id":213,"date":"2021-12-07T04:09:50","date_gmt":"2021-12-07T04:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terry-torres.com\/plays\/?p=213"},"modified":"2023-09-07T15:43:43","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T15:43:43","slug":"the-promised-neverland-was-lame-from-the-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/2021\/12\/07\/the-promised-neverland-was-lame-from-the-start\/","title":{"rendered":"The Promised Neverland was lame from the start"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In episode 1, Norman and Emma find Conny’s plush toy, Little Bunny\u2122. It appears Conny had forgotten it while she was whisked away from the orphanage to her new adoptive family. Conny might still be at the tunnel that acts as the only exit from the property they live on, so Norman and Emma rush to deliver the toy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They discover Conny’s corpse inauspiciously splayed out in the bed of a truck. I had the thought, “If I were trafficking children for secret and nefarious means, I might make a point of murdering them after the gate they had just passed through had been closed shut to prevent witnesses or escape. But maybe I’m overthinking this.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Norman and Emma hear someone approaching and hide under the truck. Soon, the orphanage caretaker appears, along with a set of demons, who discuss the details of raising and killing children with the intent of feeding them to demons of high status. They take Conny’s body off of the truck and put it in a special container of blue liquid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had the thought, “Why do the steps of this process appear to be killing the child, putting them onto a truck, and then taking them off of the truck to put into a special container, only to put them back onto the truck again? Why not complete the entire process in one of the smaller rooms connected to this tunnel? But maybe I’m overthinking this.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the demons seems to smell something \u2013 apparently the rich scent of edible children \u2013 and slowly moves toward the truck. On peeking beneath it, the demon finds nothing. Cut to: Norman and Emma running out into the field between the exit tunnel and the orphanage, catching their breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had the thought, “If I were one of four tall creatures in the midst of completing a secret transaction, I feel I would be easily able to see and hear anyone leaving the immediate area, especially if it’s a tunnel with only a single viable exit. But maybe I’m overthinking it. Moreover, maybe this just isn’t a story that focuses on the logistics of this fictional world and the specific consequences of which character performs what action in which location. Maybe it’s more about thematic exploration of the pains of growing up, and the moment-to-moment emotional conflict between characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A moment later, Mom, the caretaker of the orphanage, is shown having found Little Bunny\u2122, meaning she knows that there were witnesses to the demonic child food transaction. I had the thought, “Oh. I guess this is a story that focuses on the logistics of the world and the specific consequences of characters’ actions. But only when they’re leaving behind stuffed animals, not when they’re escaping demons from closed quarters and their life is in immediate danger.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To the show’s credit, I wanted to keep watching even as I saw the cracks in the foundation. It has the attractive quality of many mediocre anime: the anticipation of seeing a unique world presented visually with as much detail as you could conjure in your own imagination. Many anime have been viewed to completion with the faint hope that they could possibly live up to the expectations of their high concept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much as Mom successfully mimics a caring mother, Neverland’s imitations of a genuine thriller are often effective. The immediate challenges the children are presented with \u2013 having to devise an escape while their enemy is closing in on them \u2013 offer tantalizing opportunities for dramatic, high-stakes situations that could lead to trauma and death for any of the children. Soon after, the orphanage welcomes another child \u2013 reminding us that the orphanage has a schedule that will soon claim yet another life \u2013 as well as another devious adult, doubling the threat to their secret plans. It’s a perfect opportunity for the viewer and the children to start on the same page and begin strategizing an escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, the subsequent pages become by turns less scrutable and more pedantic. Our heroes quickly discover the tall wall around their property and decide climbing it is the best method of escape. They cleverly decide that the best way to train their friends to run and climb the wall is to play Tag competitively. This in turns lead to the new adult, Sister, participating in the game and showing the sheer power an adult can have over even the quickest children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But alongside the training, the focus of our heroes’ investigation are often strange or unfounded. An inordinate amount of time is spent on divining the logistics of the tracking devices implanted into each child, where they are, and how they can be removed or deactivated. In real life, this would be an important consideration for an escape, but it’s a strange focus within a constructed narrative. Ray reveals that he has a plan to deactivate these trackers. Norman and Emma do not push for more information, and then he fails to elaborate for multiple episodes. The existence of tracking devices are neither the most illuminating bit of world-building nor the most obvious obstacle to the escape plan. They haven’t actually made sure they can even escape, but they’ve jumped ahead to what may happen if they do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another cul de sac for the investigation involves the discovery of “property of” labels inside various books that have been donated to the orphanage’s library. These labels have secret Morse code messages. When decoded, random nouns are revealed: farm, monster, promise. They seem to have been donated for the expressed purpose of letting the children know that they have an ally on the outside \u2013 only actually useful if the children have already discovered the orphanage’s secret for themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While watching these scenes play out, I began the work of thinking like a character living in this world. For example, if I’m a caretaker of a demonic orphanage, why would I have any books from the outside world at all? Aside from being an obvious method of distributing messages from the outside world, it provides the children with expectations of future lives they can plan for. Books are needless vectors for instilling hope. Any child that was given dreams for their own future by reading these books might become radicalized if they were to stumble upon the truth in the open back of my delivery truck, and then plan an escape, threatening my livelihood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I did need a demonic library in my child farm, I would only stock it with demonic propaganda. In fact, I wouldn’t keep anything secret at all. I would raise the children from birth to be extremely excited to grow up and be a wonderful offering to the great Demon King. I would frame their entire existence as a journey toward becoming the happiest and smartest little child any demon has ever eaten. I might even give fake history lessons every day to make this fantasy more believable and palatable. My whole strategy would be devoted to making sure they never even dream of escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Curiously, Mom is never seen giving school lessons to the children. It could be that their education is more experimental and self-guided. I would think that, except that their education seems entirely devoted to taking standardized tests. These tests are taken on digital apparatuses, requiring the children to interact with screens, headphones, and barcode readers. This is the only modern technology the children are ever seen using, making the testing process extremely strange and conspicuous. The children’s entire worth is based on their test scores. The greatest indicator that a child’s life is soon coming to an end is their test score.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A perfectly natural question occurred to me: What is up with these tests? What is in them? What do they measure? How can they be used as a tool by our heroes to divine what demons think is important about children? I anticipated the next scene in which the children would take their test. I wanted to see how our heroes would react differently during a tense testing session now that they knew the truth of their purpose, or if any clues were discovered in the test questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was extremely hung up on these tests because they seemed like such an obvious avenue for social commentary. A standardized test deciding how soon a child will be discarded from society or consumed by it? Perfect. It’s just the edge a story like this needs. Otherwise, what is this story about? It can’t just be, “Wouldn’t it be fucked up if an orphanage was actually a farm for demon food?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We never see the children take the tests again. It truly seems the presence of these standardized tests are meant to make one thing certain: our main characters are geniuses. They have the documentation to prove it. This story, in fact, holds that standardized tests, demonic or not, are an efficient way to measure one’s intelligence, their juicy brains, and their value by extension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A genius mind is indeed highly valued in this world, and is also the most common trait in our main cast. Norman and Ray continually pursue even the most inane line of thinking as close to its conclusion as possible, easily filling in gaps with wisdom received from reading books far beyond their age level, casually dismissing plans or hypotheses they deem improbable. Norman is a genius who attempts to be kind. Ray is a genius who is intensely cynical. Emma is mostly just naive, and exists for the others to explain things too \u2013 or she should, but her absence doesn’t stop them from explaining things to each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A story set in an orphanage where children grow up close together begs for a colorful ensemble, but even the main three characters come up sepia, with barely enough personality to split between them. Their conversations mostly have two rhythms: Ray and Norman consider a plan, and then one of them just does it; or, Ray and Norman consider a plan, Ray introduces an inhumane or misanthropic option, Emma rejects it, and Norman convinces Ray to go with the humane option. Up until the end, no one is forced to change the way they think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can imagine then how the rest of the cast fares. Most of the children aren’t named, and many of them don’t have enough funds to stay on model. The main trio do induct two other members to their team, Don & Gilda. They each have one personality trait, one being brash and one being timid, but ironically they are a welcome presence in the cast because their childish faults contrast so much with the mature genius of our heroes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story seems to hold their normal-ness against them, as scenes often refuse Don & Gilda’s presence. On more than one occasion they just sort of excuse themselves from a room so the three mains can mope about something. On more than one occasion, our heroes devise a plan that involve splitting into two groups: Ray, Norman, and Emma in one group, Don and Gilda in the other. In another ensemble show, opportunities might be taken to pair together different characters with different personalities in different situations and show how they each might influence the other’s values and view of the world, to challenge their assumptions and grow their relationship, or ignite emotional conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time and again, Neverland proves that it’s not interested in emotional conflict, or really any conflict, as much as stuff happening, or the hypothetical threat that stuff may happen. It’s less a story about how people suffer consequences from their behavior, and more about how actions have reactions. Less about how a decision might lead to regret, and more about how a ball will roll if you nudge it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What will happen if one of the adults joins a game of Tag with the children? Well, they’ll mostly just end up playing Tag. What will happen if a spy is discovered in the group? Well, the spy will agree to work with them. What will happen if Mom corners them in her secret lair? Well, they’ll just escape during a cutaway. And what will happen if Mom sneaks up on them in the woods while they’re holding the rope they spent so long gathering the fabric to make? Well, they’ll just chuck it deeper into the woods. The children never really suffer setbacks to their plans, just brief interruptions. Neverland does attempt to mimic a true consequence in a classically dumb way, by giving two of our heroes battle scars, but dramatic tension goes slack when it becomes immediately apparent that at least half of those wounds were completely gratuitous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neverland spends so much time avoiding emotional growth and grappling with each character’s ideologies so it can instead just set up some dominoes with the intent of knocking them over. And even after including so much prattling about hypothetical scenarios from alienating wunderkinds, genius is almost never a vital component to the action. It doesn’t take an Einstein to lie about the location of a bag of rope, or to hide that bag in a bush. To be clear, in the end, their final escape plan is to 1) light a fire and 2) run away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This scheming goes from disappointing to just pointless when you step back and realize just how incredibly lazy their antagonist is. As a reminder, Mom is assigned as the caretaker of the single most valuable child farm in the demonic world. And this is not a part-time gig. Rearing and containing these children is her sole responsibility. She has a child tracking monitor on her person at all times. The children never think to steal it or replace it with something else, because the fact that she simply forgets to look at it for long periods of time is basically the key to their entire plan. She routinely avoids checking it when our heroes are surveying the perimeter wall. She routinely avoids checking it (or apparently just looking out the window) when the children’s training escalates from games of Tag to explicitly building and using zip-lines to cross a great distance. She correctly surmises that her temporary assistant, Sister, is attempting to betray her, but rather than manipulate her with a promise of a promotion (something easily within her power), she plots her death, and then fails to hire a replacement, giving up her greatest advantage. Again: all while knowing that an escape plan is being devised. The children are also responsible for cooking and cleaning apparently, so what the hell does Mom do all day? Aside from act as a perfect distillation of the incompetence of the managerial class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Really, why kill Sister at all? Sister believes she can expose Mom’s failure to adhere to protocol and steal the prestigious position of caretaker for herself. However, Grandma, the head honcho, conspires with Mom to kill Sister. So if Mom is already a star employee and Grandma is on Mom’s side, Sister has no leverage over Mom. So how is Sister a threat? How is she more valuable dead than alive? Her death makes more sense as a shocking moment in the middle of the season to stave accusations that nothing important is happening.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite being very stupid, Mom is close to being the most interesting character because of her background, at first strongly hinted at and then outright presented, as a potential child meal herself who was then steered toward a leadership training course that ultimately led to her position as a caretaker. We see how she was incentivized to uphold this cruel system for her own safety, and eventually as a misguided way to give the children happiness prior to their deaths. We are finally, finally shown a long-lasting consequence of living in this fictional world that poses the uncomfortable yet relatable question of what it is that we force others to sacrifice for our own comfort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, accept that we already saw this same backstory when Sister died. Once again, Mom is too slow to make a difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, it’s unclear what the point of it all is. The innate spark of hope in all children is the best tool for survival in a cruel world? No, all the children who act like children are just led around by mature super geniuses who make a point of not thinking or speaking like children. Childish innocence must be shed to survive in a cruel world? No, their first plan to escape death with all of their friends was framed as naive, but then that’s exactly what they did. That it would be fucked up if an orphanage was a child farm for demons?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well… not even that, really. After the very beginning, threats to the children fade to the background. The children learn everything they need to escape in their own library, and they constantly break curfew and get into screaming matches and no one ever cares. One lesson you can take away from Neverland is that it’s good to have a stunning intellect or great athleticism, but it’s even better to retain all of your memories from when you were a fetus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you like the threat of death hanging over childhood friends as they seek to understand and escape a strange and cruel world, instead consider:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attack on Titan<\/a>
From the New World<\/a>
Made in Abyss<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In episode 1, Norman and Emma find Conny’s plush toy, Little Bunny\u2122. It appears Conny had forgotten it while she was whisked away from the orphanage to her new adoptive family. Conny might still be at the tunnel that acts as the only exit from the property they live on, so Norman and Emma rush… Continue reading The Promised Neverland was lame from the start<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[17,19,21,18,16],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions\/257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}