The focus of this week’s episode happened to mainly do with the identity of the traitor in the farm and how our main trio plans to deal with that. As such it was a bit of a slower episode and acted more as a planning session on when and how they tiro where going to escape. Letting two more kids in on the nature of the farm while still keeping the aspect that they are food a secret was a good move on Norman’s part but Ray’s reaction is somewhat justified as eventually these kids are going to find out the truth and what’s more, it looks like Sister Krone is looking to using that lie to her advantage.
Something that has come up before but I feel the need to bring up again as it’s starting to become a problem is the show don’t tell principle of the series. Normally this should be something that anime strives to do as many don’t make use of the visual medium in other to aid the storytelling, instead just opting to translate manga to anime wholesale. However here we once again have the problem where characters could really benefit from inner monologues. Krones abrashed shouting of her plans along with one of the kids shouting about how Mom totally isn’t selling them off and now how the series goes out of its way to make the supposed traitor look even more guilty. One moment I find baffling is that before going to sister Krone in order to tell her that she wouldn’t work with her, this girl gives Emma a look of disdain upon leaving the bedroom.
Now at the time that look suggested she was a traitor but it’s later revealed that she isn’t a traitor and has decided to trust Emma. However if that is the case, why that look? There is no reason as to why she would look at Emma like that and the look honestly just feels like a narrative ploy to fool the watcher, not a logical thing within the story itself. Again like Krone it is like a extra action put in place for the viewers benefit, almost as if the characters were aware of the audience and took extra action to include them. It’s an immersion breaker for sure and one I hope is solved in later episodes as right now it’s Neverlands major failing.The viewer needs to make lots of concessions in order to believe in the story being shown and it’s getting to the point that suspension of disbelief is getting pushed too far.
Our ending hook this week was Norman pointing out Ray as the traitor as it appears his rope ruse that he told Ray about wasn’t there to catch out the two kids, it was there to catch out Ray. From the looks of things Norman has suspected Ray and I find it rather interesting that he came to Emma to ask a obtuse question as to how to deal with him. From the looks of things, Norman uses Emma as his moral compass and I wonder whether there is true emotion behind that smile of his. Considering how Norman is going by Emmas feelings rather than his own mindset and how Emma made it clear that she wants to save everyone, even the traitor then I would think that Norman is going to try and convince Ray to his side. But with a traitor in the plan that would mean that whatever these kids cook up will always have someone who can rat them out.
When I saw this come up in the season previews, I was interested, and I ended up binging the entire manga up to its current point.
I think that because Neverland has an unconventional plot structure, the author uses characterization in odd ways to keep things interesting. That sounds bad, but it’s not a criticism. Sister Krone is an interesting addition to the cast because she’s a foil for Mama. While Mama is cold, calculating, and wears the most careful of masks, Krone is emotional, spontaneous, and hardly bothers to hide her intentions from children. The kids have spent their entire lives knowing only one adult. Now they must suddenly adapt to an entirely new kind of adult, one with motives they don’t understand, in addition to navigating around twice the number of enemies.
Neverland is, at its heart, a true shonen series. It does often require a hearty suspension of disbelief. It doesn’t exactly go in for realism. The joy for me is in the convictions of the characters, and the lengths they go to for their ideals.
Both in the manga and anime, I think sister Krone and this reveal should have been more shocking. It seems the tension isn’t as dense as in the beginning.
In regards to the anime, it seems to try to look how to condense the conversations of the manga. Still I do like the lighting in the anime. Do to the manga being black and white it accentuates things with high contrast, but in the anime there’s a constant dark atmosphere in the interior of the house.