Title: The Promised Neverland Vol. 2
Author: Kaiu Shirai (Story), Posuka Demizu (Art)
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
Genre: Horror, Drama
Publication Date: February 6, 2018
The Story
Volume two of The Promised Neverland dedicates itself to formulating the plan to escape the farm. Emma, Ray, and Norman begin training all of the other orphans on how to escape by masking the training as a game of tag. Norman gives them some tips on how to be better taggers but, in reality, it’s all a way for them to mask their trail as they make their escape. Everything is going well in their plan and they even devise a way to get everyone out by forming teams. To do this, they’re going to need more team leaders than just the three of them so they decide to enlist Don and Gilda’s help but Norman has a suspicion that there is someone amongst the orphans that could be a spy leaking information to Isabelle.
In order to see if Gilda or Don are the spy, Norman plants false information with both of them, telling them the location of the rope they will use to escape. At the same time, they tell them a pseudo-truth about the house to see if Isabelle learns any conflicting information. The information that Norman gives to Don is that the rope is hidden behind his bed and, sure enough, the rope went missing; however, Don wasn’t the spy!
I won’t say anymore since it ventures into spoiler territory. The rest of the volume begins to refine the escape plan after Norman discovers the true identity of the spy and strikes a deal with them. Emma also discovers something herself. Emma says that the author of the books they have in their library, William Minerva, was putting secret messages into all of his books. In doing so, Emma believes that the key to surviving in the outside world would be to find and locate him. Emma also discovered that Isabelle has a secret room in the house but it’s too dangerous to check it out. Our volume comes to a close when Don pickpockets Isabelle and steals her master key, convincing Gilda to check out the secret room with him.
Wow, Don. You’re an idiot.
That aside, the mental chess game continued here in volume two. You would think with an information-heavy volume that the pacing would slow down but it felt the same, if not, faster than the first volume. The twist mid-way through the book in relation to Isabelle’s spy wasn’t too shocking but still interesting nevertheless. The fact that the spy became their ultimate trump card is also interesting but I think there’s some double-crossing within the double-crossing happening here… either that or I’m just thinking about it too deeply.
Characters
Outside of learning about the spy, we didn’t really get much in the way of character development in this volume as it mainly focused on the strategy and execution of the escape plan.
Krone is still trying to position herself as the new mother of the farm and is attempting to get Gilda on her side but it isn’t exactly working out that way. Krone is being too open about the harvest and leaking that information, though. She’s going to make a mistake and it’s all going to come back and bite her in the rear, mark my words.
As for Isabelle, thanks to her spy, she knows that Norman, Emma, and Ray know about the harvest and Conny’s fate. Still, she knows that all she has to do is protect those three until it’s time to ship them out and she wins. It really shows just how cautious, yet, calculated she truly is. After all, once all three are shipped out, she longer has to worry about the higher-ups learning about her mistake. At that point, Krone loses at her goals as well.
Final Thoughts
Incredible follow-up to volume one! I still don’t trust the spy. There’s just something about their story that makes me not fully trust them. Then again, as I said before, I could be reading into it too much. Ray is still hell-bent on having them and them alone escape, which is just part of the realist in him. You know that Ray has good intentions but he’s still very brash and straight-forward with his thoughts. It’s easy for him to rub people the wrong way.
Volume two was an oddity because while a lot happened, a lot didn’t happen at the same time. I like how the plan to escape is coming together and that Norman wants to execute it sooner rather than later but there are just too many x-factors that they haven’t worked out. I can’t see this plan working out the way they intend it to. Especially with it being this early in the series. Something is going to happen unless the rest of this series takes place outside of the walls, thus opening up an entirely new world. That would actually be kind of interesting, to be honest.
Guess I’ll find out in volume three. Until then, if you’re not watching the anime and/or reading the manga, I suggest you start. This has the makings of a tremendous series!
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