Title: The Promised Neverland Vol. 3
Author: Kaiu Shirai (Story), Posuka Demizu (Art)
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
Genre: Horror, Drama
Publication Date: April 3, 2018
The Story
Volume three of The Promised Neverland continues with Ray, Norman, and Emma planning their escape. Meanwhile, Don and Gilda sneak into Isabella’s secret room and discover the radio transmitter along with all of the toys of people who were shipped out from the Grace Field House. Don and Gilda escape when Isabella returns and end up confronting the other three. That’s when they tell Don and Gilda the truth about the monsters and the orphanage being a farm.
Together, the five of them plan their escape but Sister Krone noticed everything and confronts them. She explains her entire plan to replace Isabella as the house mom and offers her allegiance with the true goal of double-crossing them and shipping them out once Isabella is ousted from her position. Norman agrees to the partnership feeling that they can manipulate Sister Krone but Isabella already saw through it and has Krone sent to Plant 4 as the new mom.
Krone tries to pull a fast one and tell the grandmother about everything but it seems that Isabella and the grandmother are already deeply rooted in working together. Isabella goes a step further and breaks off her partnership with the spy, stating that she will take it from here. Norman and Emma carry out their investigation to look over the wall but they are found out by Isabella. Ray, Don, and Gilda arrive to try and warn Norman and Emma but it’s too late. Isabella ends up either breaking or twisting Emma’s leg and informs Norman that his ship date has been set!
Wow! There were a lot of unexpected twists in this volume! I didn’t foresee Sister Krone being written out of the picture this early. Isabella is making some serious moves to cover up her mistake and as of right now, it seems like she is in perfect control. Norman is pretty clever so it’ll be interesting to see just how he plans to get out of this one. Everything was looking promising but thanks to Isabella, their entire plan was shattered before their eyes.
Characters
Before Sister Krone departed for Plant 4, she provided us with some great information about herself and Isabella. The two of them grew up in Grace Field House just like all of the other orphans. Apparently, if you are female and get perfect scores, you’re offered two paths: to become food to become a mom. Krone and Isabella chose the mom path which explains why they had identification numbers on their necks as well. Krone also talked about how the adults have chips on their hearts that will electrocute them to death if they leave the premises of the farm.
That was an interesting twist for both Isabella and Krone but we didn’t get any new information on the outside world or what the “demons” or “them (as they refer to the demons as)” truly are. Still, the information dump was enough to shed some light on the world but just enough to keep us guessing and to keep us reading.
We didn’t really get much in the way of character development with anyone else. That’s one of the odd things about The Promised Neverland. They are more concerned with fleshing out the world than they are developing the characters. The double-cross by Isabella on the spy was something to talk about but with the anime still not at that point yet, I don’t want to reveal any spoilers about that in this review. Sadly, that is the only other character development that took place.
Final Thoughts
I don’t think I’ve seen so many plot twists and big moments in a single volume of manga before. I came into this manga expecting to see the kids outwit two adults and pull off their scouting plan then the manga took a 180 and got rid of Sister Krone, it did a 450 and broke things off with the spy, and then it rearranged everything with Isabella moving up Norman’s ship date and shattering his plans. One single volume of manga managed to take a story heading in a single direction with an endpoint clearly in sight and twist it and create an entirely new atmosphere while keeping everything aligned perfectly.
That was simply incredible! There’s no other way to put it. I’ve seen decks stacked against the main characters before but with Norman’s ship date moved up, Emma’s busted leg, the ties with the spy severed, and their plans lying in ruins, I can’t even begin to imagine how they are going to overcome this. Part of me is now foreseeing a tragedy in the near future. I have a feeling that they’re not going to escape together. While I do think that they will escape since that is the overall end goal of this story, I just think it may only be one or two people that go. The rest will be sacrificed for the slaughter. That may be a bit of an extreme idea on my part but with this series throwing out curveballs left and right in its third volume, maybe some extreme thinking is warranted?
Only one way to know for sure… onward to Volume 4!z
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