Why You Should: The Promised Neverland Manga

The Promised Neverland manga is some of the most compelling new manga to come out within the last few years and anyone who still insists on sleeping on it is severely missing out, a flop, and hates good things. Seriously, it's really good and is just the sort of biting social critique through an unconventional lens that seems to be gaining in popularity, especially in the United States. The best content to come out of this year in fact, acknowledges how dark our world is and then guides the audience through digesting that darkness through it's style and structure. A perfect example of this is HBO's "Euphoria", a show that finally captures how toxic, dangerous, and confusing the American high school is, while also accurately framing this chaos as commonplace and ordinary, almost banal. The sort of normalcy which, if you've been in any high school in the last 5 years, you know is the standard.  This also makes for powerful storytelling as up until now, it seems like there has been a hesitation to dive this deep into the abyss and if the Promised Neverland is any indication, this is where our media is heading so you can expect a lot of gems to surface in the next few years.

The Promised Neverland, like Euphoria, is an exercise in the digestion of darkness, although instead of high school, the manga tackles our relationship with food and what it means to be someone that eats. Without giving too much away, the story follows with several young and gifted children and their lives as orphans on an idyllic farm with a sweet and caring mother. The three most gifted children, Emma, Ray, and Norman, are respected and loved by the other children and in such a supportive environment, thrive and blossom as young geniuses. As is normal for the children of the farm, ever so often a child is adopted and leaves the farm to go off into what is likely a life of love and bliss, never to be heard from again. This is the same for Conny, another child on the farm as Conny inadvertently ends up being the catalyst for the entire story. After Conny has left, Emma and Norman discover Conny has left her favorite stuffed animal and they rush to the gate to return it to Conny, even though they were instructed never to go to the gate. What they find at the gate unleashes the true darkness of the show. They find out the true nature of their world and realize their status as consumable goods, with the panic and tension of them trying to not only reconcile this truth but escape it taking control of the entire manga. Girlies, this is GENIUS okay! It's jarring, it's terrifying, it's unsettling and it doesn't shy away from that and in a world like ours if you are ever going to tackle anything with some damn impact, that is the way to do it. And it's not overkill either, you never watch the children suffer just to suffer. Their suffering is always essential to the progression of the story and that line is never crossed. Without going on and on gushing over the genius writing and spoiling half the damn series, I urge you to go and check it out. The manga can be found on viz.com and for only $1.99 a month, you have access to the entire published series and even though it isn't finished, as of right now there are over 140 published chapters with at least 15 pages per chapter. That is PLENTY for you to read through, and it's a better use of your time at your desk trust me this is more valuable than making your 50th pinterest board consisting of nothing but bathroom curtains. So please, start reading now and when you discover how amazing it is come back and thank me.