English Dub Review: The Promised Neverland “Episode 8”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Emma and Ray set off with everyone else to look for Mujika, but Norman plans to go ahead with his attack on the demons, fueled by the terrible experiments he and the others suffered under Peter Ratri, head of the facility. Norman starts spreading the poison that reverts the demons to their savage state, but this is stopped somewhat by an older demon with Mujika’s blood, which he gives to his granddaughter, who just happens to be named Emma. In a real Dawn of Justice moment, Norman hesitates, giving the human Emma time to show up and tell him to stop.

OUR TAKE

Well well well, look who turned out to have a passion for genocide! I mean, Norman’s vengeance is coming from an understandable place. He’s been dealing with the same world that Emma and Ray have been living in and learning more about, but as we see here, there’s also all the experimentation that he’s had to deal with that has solidified his hatred for demons and wanting to get rid of them entirely. And it’s understandable why he would think that even trying to make demons less dependent on humans would not keep them from eating, which he certainly has his reasons for thinking. However, now we see that he may have reason to doubt those previous guesses. The fact that it came in the form of a demon girl ALSO named Emma is…a bit contrived, but according to what I’ve heard about episodes that are left in this season, it’s hardly going to be the worst that we see. So, at the very least, we seem to be resolving this brief issue with Norman and is group as both he and we as the audience continue to humanized the demons instead of seeing them as this unknowable savage force to be stopped.

Also previously mentioned, but we’re pretty far into this anime original storyline with only three episodes remaining, and things are getting a bit clearer about how things may end. At first I figured that it would be stretching this battle against Norman up until the very end, since at least that would give it some breathing room, but now it seems to be wrapping up pretty soon after it was first introduced only a few weeks ago. With only a three episodes left, I guess what’s left is to get everyone to that portal to the human world that’s sitting in Grace Field House, which will require both Norman and his group AND the demons they’re working with to pull off. We also need to pay off the reintroduction of Isabella and see what the heck is going on with this Peter Ratri guy. Although to be perfectly honest, it’s a little hard to get fully invested in what’s left, partly because of word of mouth but also because this season is just not very compelling, and certainly not nearly as good as the first one. But we might as well wrap this all up, so we’ll see what happens.