LogFAQs > #915934201

the long awaited

the much requested

Yakusoku no Neverland

for my main man @TexasZea aka TEX aka zeaimo

EPISODE 1

wow first thing I literally remember noitaminA being a thing when I used to actually watch anime, many decades ago, when I was still a young 40 year old virgin. speaking of growing up I can say I basically hated the art style of them as little kids. I'm really glad that was only for the first minute and they aged the main characters up quickly. still not a huge fan of the style that the characters of the show are drawn in but it was much better.

so I sort of knew a bit about the premise of this going in. I'm not sure exactly where I absorbed that information and I don't think I was directly spoiled, but after a few minutes of watching the show it kinda clicked in my brain what people had been talking about before, and that this is the show that was being discussed. I definitely felt unnerved when the kids were all hanging out near the fence as a result, in the middle of the second game of tag, but honestly this effect might have worked even if I didn't know that something was up with the orphanage. they did an overall pretty good job with the tone.

the show has some unique ideas but some very predictable execution patterns. I absolutely knew almost instantly that conny was going to be the one who was marked for death, just because they always kill the most young and cute child character. sadly it didn't invoke any kind of emotional reaction from me, mainly because first episode deaths of poorly developed characters aren't that great for breaking the cold shell of a jaded piece of shit like me. the overall concept feels a lot more western than japanese so I'm kinda interested to see how it will develop from here.

if everything is actually done in a smart way, and revolves around strategy, they sort of set up an interesting end to the first episode; the characters have ALREADY lost the first move and they aren't even aware of it yet. the teacher knows they were there, but they don't seem to know that the teacher knows. I like Norman and Ray so far. the female main character is like whatever. it's funny that they gave all three of them top tier stats across the board with only slight differences between them. I guess that is needed for them to have a realistic chance of doing anything. it seems like Ray had already figured stuff out and knows what is going on. but maybe not? kinda unsatisfying to me that he'd be fine allowing all of this to happen if he knew, but it's also cool if he was able to figure it out. so I guess I'm ambivalent.

edit: sadly I feel like things will probably not be all that smart and strategic. it's gonna be more like code geass where we are told the characters are smart and sometimes get to see them do cool things. the main reason I believe this is because when the monsters smelled them hiding under the truck they were somehow able to disappear despite having no route they could have used to escape... but were also dumb enough to leave evidence behind that they had been there...
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