English Dub Review: The Promised Neverland “Episode 7”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Norman explains what he’s heard about Mujika, namely that she is apparently a well known figure from after the Promise that created the current arrangement between the demons and humans, but before the creation of the farms. Her blood apparently gives demons human like form and no need to eat humans to retain intelligence, which led to the demon aristocracy to try and kill her and her followers, though Norman thought she had died back then. Emma and Ray tell him that she helped them and consider her a friend, but Norman sees her as a threat like the rest of them, as even if demons don’t need to eat humans, they likely will, so Mujika has to die for his plan too. Also, Mr. Minerva is dead and the portal to the human world that Emma is looking for is destroyed, as are most of them except for one…at Grace Field. Womp womp.

So, Norman is pretty much dead set on killing all demons, including allies like Mujika. Naturally, Emma is adamantly against that and begs for an alternative other than destroying an entire species, so she offers a deal: She’ll find Mujika and Sonju in five days and Norman will delay releasing the demon killing drug. She and Ray head out to tell the other kids, but Norman is pretty clearly just going to go ahead with his plan anyway. His escapee friends are a lot less receptive when he tells them about Emma’s plan, especially since the experiments they escaped are slowly but surely killing them, including Norman, who thinks back to when he was first shipped out.

OUR TAKE
We’re knee deep in this new anime original plot, and while things haven’t gone totally off the rails just yet, we do look to be on a collision course with Emma and the kids versus Norman and his crew. They’ve had their negotiations about how to proceed, but it looks like that was just Norman buying time to put Emma on a goose chase so that he can move forward uninterrupted, pretty much cementing him on the bad guy team. Honestly, having seen pro-demon bad guys from Isabella and the moms, and anti-demon good guys with Emma, Ray, and the kids, having anti-demon bad guys who take things too far is an expected slot to fill in on this ideological spectrum, with Emma’s idealistic optimism of letting everyone get along being clearly what the “right choice” of the series seems to be going for here. But not only does this seem like a bit cut and dry for the series that was all about its clever Death Note style chess games last season, it also seems like way too much to cram into the remaining four episodes of the season and series to properly pay off. Emma has to find Mujika, come back and find out that Norman betrayed them, beat Norman somehow, and then get everyone back to Grace Field to escape the demon realm…IN FOUR EPISODES.

As mentioned, I have not read the manga this is based on, so I’m not going into this being disappointed by all of the apparently pretty cool stuff they are inexplicably leaving out, and thus judging this series on its own merits and choices independent of the source material. However, it is becoming glaringly obvious which things they had initially taken from the manga that they are dropping like plates on the floor. Mr. Minvera, the mysterious figure hinted at last season as a possible secret ally, is apparently dead and can’t help them. All of the portals to leave that they were looking for to get out are gone, except for the one that is conveniently where the rest of their friends are. Admittedly this does give the series some symmetry by having it look like things will end where it all began, and I’m a sucker for that, but only if it sticks the landing, which it is looking less likely by the week that it will. But hey, fingers crossed.