English Dub Review: The Promised Neverland “031145”

Gone Too Soon.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

As Emma’s leg recovers, she and Ray try to plan against Norman’s departure, much to his protests. They hope that Norman can escape the next day and hide out in the woods, making the adults think he’s escaped while the kids resume their planning for the real escape day, when Norman will rejoin them. When he rejects this, they suggest breaking more limbs in order to delay their own shipments, as well as getting sick, just to get more time for Norman to survive so they can all escape together. Ray also gives Norman a taser he made with parts from the gifts he got for his spying, which he says will deactivate the tracking device. He’ll then climb the wall and scout it out before they increase security.

Lastly, Ray reveals that he knows about these things about the demons because he never lost his memories from his infancy. He knows that all the farms are in the same place, including headquarters, but security is still pretty thin where they need it to be. The announcement of Norman’s departure is made (much to the despair of many of the girls, guess Norman was quite the heart-breaker), but with his newly reclaimed confidence, Norman makes his escape, using a new rope to scale the wall and gaze over the other side to his freedom!

…but to everyone but Isabella’s shock, he returns soon after, explaining what he saw that made him turn back: past the wall isn’t a forest, but a cliff.

OUR TAKE

WOW. This show certainly knows how to keep your hope alive right until the last possible second. After the end of last episode, I had all but given up any possibility of Norman getting out of there without being sent to the slaughterhouse, but Emma and Ray just HAD to keep pulling me out into the long shot, one in a million, no possible way of working but might with the power of friendship kind of hopes that he might make it out okay. And to their credit, all the plans they did come up with in that short time did make some sort of sense…from the perspective of a child anyway. You’re not gonna want your meat to come in with a broken arm or feeling sick, so it would track that deliberately harming yourself or infecting yourself would have an impact on your market price. These kids are pretty dang smart is what I’m saying.

But then, it’s that one big emotional punch to the gut when Norman finally gets his strength to carry on…only to find that cliff, which not only keeps him from escaping, it also tells us that all of their planning was futile from the start. If they had waited until their intended day to escape and not known about this, they would have been stopped dead in their tracks and likely all been shipped out at once. With this, all of Norman’s hope is dead and his fate is all but sealed, so next episode will see the first real casualty on the kids’ side of this war.

And yet…this also gives us some hope as well. Norman is most definitely going to die, but with this new bit of info, it might not be too late for Emma and Ray. Going by the fact that the episode titles are dates, it looks like next week will see an at least two month jump ahead, giving the remaining kids in the know more time to modify the plan before Ray’s own shipping out date. And small hints in this and last episode seem to be hinting that they aren’t the only ones in the group that are aware of what’s going on, as a couple of the boys (who don’t seem to have names at the moment) react to certain events in peculiar ways that might indicate they have their own knowledge to share. Either way, we move onto the final three episodes of the season.