Title: The Promised Neverland Vol. 6
Author: Kaiu Shirai (Story), Posuka Demizu (Art)
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 200
Genre: Horror, Drama
Publication Date: October 2, 2018
The Story
Volume six of The Promised Neverland picks up with Ray evading the pursuers. Things are looking grim as they end up cutting off his path each and every time. It isn’t until a cloaked rider on a demonic horse saves him. Ray is brought back to an underground cave where he is reunited with Emma. Turns out there were two cloaked people which threw my theory of the one at the end of volume five being Norman out the window.
The two people are revealed to be a girl named Mukija and a man named Sonju. They ended up rescuing and treating Emma and the others. Ray and Emma were suspicious about them from the start and then they noticed something that the two of them tried to keep hidden. Mujika and Sonju are demons! However, there is nothing to fear as due to their religion, they don’t eat humans.
It is here that we get some huge lore about the world. Everything they were told at Grace Field House was a lie (I know, big shock, huh?) The world didn’t change 30 years ago as it was suggested. The world has been like this over 1,000 years. While we didn’t get the origin of the demons, we did get to know that humans and demons exist in the world and were at war with each other for a long time. After years of senseless killing, the humans formed a pact with the demons and the world itself was divided in two. The Promise stated that demons and humans cannot cross over in each other’s worlds. Instead, demons began to mass produce humans as a source of food. There are many mass production plants where there are humans who have no emotions, free will, nor ability to speak or understand anything. They are simply just grown to be eaten and that’s it. Other plants, like Grace Field, are very rare. There are only four total plants in the demon world with Grace being the highest quality plant.
Mujika and Sonju tell Emma and Ray about the outside world and teach them how to survive in it. They even tell them how to get to the coordinates that they have been trying to reach. After they leave, the group makes it to the coordinates in the middle of a wasteland but find nothing. Ray decides to try the pen again and it reveals a map with a hidden entrance. They find an underground shelter along with a human living inside of it!
This was a nice twist! I honestly thought the cloaked people were humans living in the world but I also had my suspicions about them being demons. I actually began to wonder if not all demons were alike as would be the case with our very own society. Turns out I was wrong and right at the same time… more on that in the characters section. Still, it seems like the story is moving along pretty quickly now. It seems Emma and Ray are getting closer and closer to their actual destination but with the discovery of the underground shelter, I feel the next volume is going to pump the brakes a bit and gives us a massive information dump. We’ll see, though.
Characters
We have two brand-new characters to talk about in Mujika and Sonju. Both of them are pleasant on the outside but Sonju has a different motive behind his kindness. Mujika, on the other hand, I found to be a lovable character. She was merely curious about humans as she had never seen a live one outside of a farm before. This was her first time getting the chance to actually talk to a live human and she seemed to enjoy the interaction.
Sonju, on the other hand, was very kind and even taught Emma and the others how to cook, prepare food, what herbs to use, and even about the Gupna flowers and why we saw them stuck inside of Conny and Sister Krone. After leading the group to the wasteland, Sonju reveals his true reasons for helping them to Mujika. He hopes that the children cross worlds and end up breaking the promise between the humans and the demons. This would cause the war between both sides to begin again, giving Sonju the excuse to hunt humans til his heartfelt content. His hidden goal is to be able to hunt and eat as many humans as he wants but until that day comes, he is willing to do anything to help Emma and Ray break that promise. He’s even kind enough to go back and kill all of the demons that were pursuing the children.
Sonju is an interesting character. He wants to help humans to later hunt them. I guess his demonic urges are still alive whereas Mujika is a lot tamer. She really doesn’t have a desire to eat humans but it’s hinted at by Sonju that she never really ate them before which is why her instincts don’t ever really kick in. I’m sure we’ll get to see more of these two in the future… in fact, I hope we do. They were really interesting characters.
Final Thoughts
This volume of The Promised Neverland took a break from the action and did a fantastic job with building up the world the story exists in. We got to learn a bit about the history of the world, the fact that even the demons have different thoughts giving their society some diversity, and we learned more about the demon side of the world, specifically the wasteland. An interesting tidbit was that the demons that were pursuing the kids didn’t know about the forest they were in. That raises the question of how they wouldn’t know about the land surrounding the headquarters. Were they so isolated that they simply only knew about the farms they got their food from? It makes you wonder.
I can’t wait to see what happens in volume seven with the discovering of the underground shelter. I have a feeling we’re going to learn much more about the world but there are still pressing questions that have yet to be answered such as where the demons actually came from and how has it been this way for over 1,000 years? Something doesn’t really add up here but I have a feeling that will end up being the big reveal of this series. This story keeps getting more and more intriguing with each volume!
Follow me on Twitter @TheAnimePulse
You can also check out other The Outerhaven reviews on your favorite social media networks:
Subscribe to us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/theouterhaven
Subscribe to us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheOuterHaven
Subscribe to us on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/theouterhavennet
This item was purchased for review.
