A Look into the Macabre: What makes something scary? · 3:53am Mar 8th, 2019
This isn't a guide so much as it is me gushing over this show I started watching because holy shitballs is it good.
"The Promised Neverland," AKA, "oh my god what the fuck," is easily the best thriller anime I've seen in a very long time.
Without spoiling too much, here's the synopsis for the story:
Set in the year 2045, Emma is an 11-year-old orphan living in Grace Field House, a small orphanage housing her and her 37 siblings. Life had never been better; with food that tasted gourmet, plush beds, snow-white uniforms, and the love of their "Mother" (the caretaker) Isabella, as well the litany of daily exams that Emma always aced with her two best friends Ray and Norman.
Grace Field House is where children without parents are taken in. An irreplaceable home for the 38 children who live happily every day. Until suddenly, their lives are completely changed forever.
Not too much too go off of, but plenty of mystery hidden in there, right? This is why thriller novels and the like are usually filled to the brim with mystery, that fear of the unknown, it's universal within us humans.
Then they chuck most of that mystery out the window with a cliffhanger in the first episode that makes you go "Jesus Christ, what the f--"
Getting ahead of myself here, back to the point I'm attempting to make.
"The Promised Neverland" is filled with many things that make it tense 24/7: from the dynamic camera angles, the near-omnipresent antagonists, and the ever-looming mystery that hangs over their heads regarding the outside world.
The story is mysterious enough to keep you wondering, and every step the protagonists make is like trying to navigate through a minefield of danger. There's no gore, only the very real chance that one wrong move and the protagonists could easily die. There's next to no gore throughout the series, and yet you feel a sense of danger at all times throughout.
That's the kind of perspective you want to place your readers in when writing horror, thriller, or anything suspenseful, really. You need your audience to think that the protagonist(s) of your story have a semblance of chance versus seemingly immeasurable odds. Make them care for the characters you create and in turn, your audience will be in their place instead.
That's why so often a horror movie fails because gore is not a tool that makes something scary, it only adds on to an already tense situation if anything.
So yeah, go watch this anime, it's good shit. Or don't, I don't really care. I just wanted a reason to talk about this show.
https://www.crunchyroll.com/the-promised-neverland/episode-1-121045-781147
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No, there are spoilers there!
Damn this sounds good
Huh...
It's funny, because I despise the anime. I feel it fundamentally misunderstands many things that made the manga great. Main amongst which was its handling of suspense, which I felt was botchered in the anime. I had to drop it at episode four because I couldn't take it anymore.
Have you, by any chance, read the manga?
I suddenly don't want to watch The Promised Neverland...
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I highly recommend it