English Dub Review: The Promised Neverland “Episode 5”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

It’s been some time since the Grace Field kids have left the bunker and set up camp in an abandoned demon temple, managing to conceal their scents and hide even amongst rumors of more attacks on houses. The lower class demons they walk past are only getting low quality meat and some are dying of hunger, so it’s no surprise when they catch scent of the kids somehow and start chasing them. What is a surprise is who ends up saving them: Norman, still alive and with his own band of humans.

OUR TAKE

This is the turning point for where the manga and anime break away from each other, which I only know because apparently Norman’s return comes at a different point. Yes, Norma being alive is NOT the major change here, as much as it could seem at a glance to be something that was forced in. Norman’s supposed death last season was one of its highlights to show how much of a stranglehold the farms had on the kids and how things seemed their lowest near the end, only to for Emma and Ray to still be able to turn things around with their shrewd planning. Now I guess we’ll find out exactly what happened to Norman and how he met up with all of these other humans. Much like finding out that there were demons who supported the human cause, finding out that there were other escaped humans who Emma’s group could work with isn’t necessarily a surprise, but we still need to find out how this rebellious system has been working. With their being a class discrepancy between some demons receiving little to no food and having hints that they might turn savage if they don’t get any, this might be a good way to strike at this weak spot and use it as a way to tear the whole system down.

But the thing is…this is the halfway point of this season. It was supposed to be twelve episodes, but for some reason even that got cut down to eleven since between this episode and the next was a recap. And as you might have found out by now, the story ends with this season. So, rather distressingly, we only have six episodes to wrap EVERYTHING up. We’ve gotta find a way to get the kids to the human world, have them confront Isabella again, rescue the remaining kids at Grace Field, find out what happened to Norman, bring back Mujika and Sonju…basically there’s quite a bit left on the plate and I don’t know if they have the time to pull it all off. This is very likely where a lot of the issues with this change in the adaptation come from, so I’m pretty sure we’ll be hitting some of those problems pretty soon, even without any knowledge of how the manga handled it. And I’m pretty sure Toonami will be skipping the recap as they tend to do.