English Dub Review: The Promised Neverland “Episode 11”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Emma tries to offer Peter Ratri a hand in peace, but he kills himself out of stubbornness and one last dig at his brother, who became William Minerva. Most of the kids and adults, including Isabella, find the portal to the human world and go through, though Emma, Ray, Norman, and a few others decide to stay behind and help with the changes in the demon world. But years later, they are able to reunite with all their friends. Their long fight with the demons has finally come to an end.

OUR TAKE

Like with last week, this episode has no credited writer, and possibly for the same reasons. It’s no secret by now that this series was not very well received, thanks in so small part to how much it removed from adapting for no apparent reason. We might never know exactly what the reasoning was behind taking these drastic moves, but it seems the consequences of those choices have come home to roost, leading to this finale that has over a quarter of it not actually animated. It’s not so noticeable at first during Ratri’s flashbacks, but once you get to the epilogue that (as it turns out) is a bunch of panning still frames of more interesting scenes from the manga that they just never planned on really giving a proper adaptation, it starts to pile up. From what I’ve heard about the concepts and ideas that could have been covered within this and future seasons, we could have very well had a really great story on our hands. That story is at least still preserved in the manga if anyone wants to read that, but for anime only viewers like myself, we’re left with this incredibly compromised version.

And that’s just keeping in mind how it’s being adapted. As a story on its own, it’s probably more clear than ever how rushed it is. I’ve barely mentioned Peter Ratri since he first showed up a few episodes ago, but that’s only because he has had next to ZERO presence in the story up until that point, and only really felt like a key player and antagonist within this and the last episode. You might as well have not included him at all and made Isabella or Norman the final opponent to face, considering they at least have some thematic connection to the beginning of the series and choosing them would feel at least somewhat earned. Either option would still have their own respective issues, but at least it would feel like something instead of next to nothing like is done here. Everything feels so hollow and empty, only making it more obvious that so much more was meant to go into this story than what we got. But now that it’s all out in the open, perhaps there’s a way of understanding where everything went wrong along the way if we look back on the whole thing in a season review.