This video contains spoilers for the first season of The Promised Neverland.
If you haven't seen it yet, pause the video and go binge it right now on Crunchyroll,
who are by the way also this video's sponsors.
And if you can, watch it with some friends or loved ones,
because the social experience of everyone on a couch,
simultaneously shouting "oh shit, what?!"
is not something that you want to miss.
With that said, I'm basing this discussion solely on
what has happened in the anime so far, not on the manga.
So if you're an anime-only fan who's just finished binging the series?
You're safe here. Though I make no such promises about the comments section.
The Promised Neverland has been hands-down my favorite new show of the winter season.
Narratively speaking, it feels almost like a spiritual successor
to the information warfare and fraught tension of Death Note,
which really makes it stand out amid the new wave of mostly battle-focused Shonen Jump anime.
It's nice to have a new slate of meticulously crafted mind games and mysteries to enjoy,
and doubly so to see so much love poured into the adaptation of that story.
Veteran director Mamoru Kanbe and his team put a lot into the show's character animation
and especially into its camerawork.
The anime is packed to bursting with evocative beautiful shot compositions
and the eerie soundscape crafted by Shimizu Katsunori
lends Grace Field House and the surrounding wilderness a palpable oppressive atmosphere.
It's not easy to make an anime thriller that's light on action feel, visceral and immersive,
and the team at CloverWorks truly deserves to be commended for pulling it off.
This anime excels in far too many areas to sum up in just one video,
but if there's one part that most deserves praise,
it's the writing of the season's central villain - 'Mama' Isabela,
a remarkably compelling antagonist, who stands out both for the lengths that the series goes to
in order to help us understand her motivations
and for how terrifyingly insidious her particular brand of evil really is.
Before we get into her character development though, I'd like to talk briefly about how Mama is presented.
She does a bang-up job of intimidating the kids dominating every frame she's in.
But even when she's in the background, she has a way of looming,
constantly reminding you of the threat she poses.
She adds a constant sense of tension to the anime, which is vital to a thriller,
and a lot of that comes down to her performance, both vocal and animated.
When she's meant to be scary, she is SCARY.
The mixture of cold rage and subdued panic on her face as she stares down at Connie's bunny
at the end of episode one, is absolutely chilling
and sticks with you long after the credits roll.
So is the way that she looks at Emma when she's sizing her up in episode 2
like a piece of meat or a disobedient animal.
But she's almost creepier when she's pretending to be nice.
Around the other kids even her warmest looking fake smiles have an air of smug condescension to them.
Only the self-satisfied smirk that she wears when things are going to plan looks authentic on her.
That was true of her appearance in the manga as well,
and I'm glad that the character animators took pains to carry over that subtle detail to her performance in the show.
It ensures that every shot she's in leaves you feeling at a bare minimum uneasy,
and that goes a long way to maintaining tension in the series even when things seem to be going the kids way.
The show also feeds us constant reminders both subtle and not of just how capable and dangerous she really is.
She's almost always got an eye on the kids, even when something else has her attention,
and as the kids point out when discussing her behavior,
she makes a point of holding one of the young children whenever she can,
dangling it in front of them almost like a hostage.
When Sister Crone makes a show of joining the kids' game of hide-and-seek,
utterly destroying them with her strength speed and intellect,
it clarifies just how big a threat she and Isabella really are.
Norman, Ray and Emma are the smartest, most athletic all-around second best after fill kids in their house,
but so were their wardens back in the day, and they've only gotten fitter and smarter as they've aged.
Plus they have the advantage of knowing how they used to think when they were kids.
You're left to wonder how any child, no matter how gifted, could possibly outwit and outmaneuver
opponents who are in EVERY way their superiors,
and who have a ton of technological advantages on top of that.
And with each twist and turn the story takes, it becomes increasingly clear that
every out you might think the heroes have, is actually a dead end.
It takes a total paradigm shift in their way of thinking to break out of that trap, but we'll get back to that later.
Each reveal and cliffhanger only builds upon the threat posed by Isabella.
She somehow manages to become more frightening by sending away her own backup to die.
But there's one reveal in particular that really defines her as a villain.
She's definitely an intimidating force throughout the series,
but it's in episode 8 that she becomes truly terrifying.
In part, that's because it's when we learned the full scope of everything she knows:
Sister Crone's plotting, Ray's betrayal, Don and Gilda's involvement - almost every detail of the escape plan.
A revelation that instantly sets our heroes a million steps further back than we thought they were,
and that leads, in short order, to Norman's graduation - the first loss in the story
that we as the audience really feel.
Those shifts in the show's narrative balance are certainly worrying enough,
but the really scary thing is how the episode sheds light on Isabella's true nature.
When she's with the kids, we always see her with a fake smile and when she's alone, she's cold and calculating.
In confronting Emma and Norman directly though,
she drops the facade for the first time and shows us what really makes her tick.
Love, a twisted and horrible, but in her mind, 100% genuine love for the children in her care
that drives her to hurt and manipulate and lie to them, because it's what's best for them.
The kind of love that leads her to cradle Emma with a broken leg tenderly in her arms
showering her with affection as though she didn't just shatter her shin with her own hands.
Like it was just an accident, an unfortunate, unavoidable fate in this world.
To me, that mindset is a hell of a lot scarier than Crone's self-serving scheming
or the sociopathic, almost robotic evil that I'd assumed was Isabella's true nature.
Because that conflation of control and violence with love, is textbook abusive psychology.
Isabella is not the kind of villain that could only exist in the dystopian nightmare world.
Far from it, she's a breed of monster that is all too common in our own world -
I've known people who think like that, and they too terrify me.
It also makes perfect sense how she'd end up the way she is.
Abusiveness is, to an extent, learned behavior.
People who grow up in abusive environments often become abusers themselves
We know that Isabella spent her childhood under a mama not unlike herself,
and her teenage years in a demonic boot camp. The kind of love that she shows to the kids
may well be the only form of love she really knows.
In spite of the monstrous things she does and the monstrous way she thinks,
Isabella is a sympathetic figure in this story.
We understand how she became what she is, why she decided to submit to the demons,
and what drove her to become the best mama she could be.
Beyond simply wanting to survive for her own sake, it seems that she finds a real purpose
in nurturing kids, even ones that have no actual future,
and it's frighteningly easy to see yourself making similar choices to her under similar circumstances
When you learn that Ray is her biological son and that they both know it, it doesn't just clarify
why [???] might be a bit of a blind spot for her.
It makes it all but impossible not to feel sorry for her,
especially considering the tragic backstory of the song that Ray was singing that gave it away.
If you're not paying attention, you might even convince yourself
that she's just a good person making the most of a horrible situation,
except for one thing - the demons need her and she knows it.
The Grace Field Plantations produce the Wagyu beef equivalent of human brain meat
and the key to its quality is allowing the children to live happy, idyllic lives oblivious to their fates,
which isn't exactly feasible if the caretakers are hideous hulking monstrosity.
Without humans complicit in their plans, the demon simply have no way of harvesting premium children.
Isabella and every other girl who makes the selfish decision to prolong their own survival
at the expense of the other children, is consciously perpetuating the cycle of suffering,
all to gain just a sliver of power for herself.
She is a victim, but she's far from blameless. To be fair, she is ruled primarily by fear of her captors
not self-interest. And it is completely understandable that she would take the lifeline
that they offer her given her circumstances
From slave plantations to prisons, history is full of countless real examples of
downtrodden and oppressed individuals selling out their own people in order to slightly better their lot in life.
Isabella reasons that there's no way she could possibly destroy the system
or escape it, so living a long life and caring for lots of kids is her next best option.
The season's ending kind of definitively proves her wrong though,
Emma, Ray, Don and Gilda don't just manage to escape against all odds and raise nay-saying,
they take half their dang family with them and they plan to return to liberate the rest in a year's time.
Obviously the system is not invincible or inescapable,
it just feels that way to Isabella because she's facing it alone.
In direct opposition to what the story conditions us to believe,
the key to the kids' escape is not Emma, Ray and Norman's exceptional abilities,
but rather Emma's faith in her fellow man, her willingness to see her family not as potential burdens
as Ray does, but as allies who can help their cause. By telling everyone what's going on
and trusting them to do their part, they all managed to overcome obstacles together
that she, Ray and Norman could never have conquered on their own.
By contrast, Isabella never tells any of her fellow kids what she knows about the house
and never even thinks to coordinate with her fellow sisters to undermine the demons.
After all they're her competition for the coveted position of mama.
She is trapped by the twin lies that ignorant is bliss and that in this harsh world, it's every woman for herself.
The latter idea having been enforced in her mind since birth by the daily IQ test
that ranked her against her family.
This is, I believe, a subtle way for the demons to discourage cooperation that might lead to their downfall,
and prevent their prey from understand the truth
that information, even horrifying information, is power that should be shared
and that the group is exponentially stronger than the individual.
That collectivist ideal seems to be the underlying ethos of The Promised Neverland,
and I think Isabella makes for such a compelling first villain because her villainous motivations
spring from a fundamental failure to grasp it.
Yes she does have incredible screen presences that coupled with her uncanny ability to gather information
and manipulate others, heightens the tension of the series immensely.
But those things just make her an effective antagonist.
It's her status as a foil for Emma, a reflection of what she could have been,
that makes her such an engaging character.
And I really hope we'll get to see the series play on its established themes in order to
create more memorable villains like her down the line.
I also hope to see Isabella return at some point, because it seems as though she might have learned something
from the kids escape. I mean besides how to prevent it from happening again.
She's smart enough to understand that her pessimistic view of the plantation system
has been proven at least somewhat wrong and, to her credit,
she cares enough about the kids to be genuinely glad to see them escape in the final moments of the season.
I'm interested to see how these events will change her, and I really hope that she's not written out of the story,
because it would be a waste to relegate such a great villain and such a great character
to only appearing in the opening act. Well, those are my thoughts, but I'll turn it over to you guys.
Let me know in the comments below which anime villains you consider to be the all-time best
and how you think Isabella stacks up against them
and while you're down there I highly recommend clicking the link in the [???] to check out
Crunchyroll Fan Chronicles, a series of mini documentaries about how anime can inspire people
and change their lives for the better. The stories told in these little mini docs are something really special,
I found them to be moving and inspiring and assuming that you're a big weed like me
which I think is a pretty safe bet if you're watching this video,
there's a good chance you'll find something in them that really resonates with you too.
If you'd prefer not to watch them on YouTube, they're also available on Crunchyroll itself
along with hundreds of anime series new and old with new episodes added as they air in Japan.
If you're not on Crunchyroll yet. You can sign up for a 14-day free trial at crunchyroll.com/Basement
to see for yourself why they're THE premiere anime streaming service in the West.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to working on
absolutely nothing, for April 1st.
I'm Geoff Thew, professional shitbags, signing out from my Mother's Basement.