3 out of 5

This is definitely a good sign.  Last volume felt like writer Kaiu Shirai stalled a bit while trying to set the tone for our orphans / survivors, though, as usual, he wound things up with a fantastic cliffhanger.  The followup to that feels a tad wishy-washy – sort of cool, sort of a letdown because the explanation feels somewhat half-assed – but it does open up the ability to drop a whole bunch of background info regarding the world.  And it’s good.  It’s not mind-blowing, but it’s definitely more than I was worriedly expecting, and shows some good foresight on how this was all fitting together.  Timing-wise, it’s also smart: The Promised Neverland has been true to its own internal ticking clock, not withholding info for longer than necessary, and this was the right time to pull back the curtains a bit.  What’s really promising, though, is the hint of some actual moral complexity.  Emma and gang are all gung-ho escape, black and white, and here we see some shades of grey…  Shirai doesn’t truly get into it too much, so time will tell if those hints will amount to anything, but it’s an exciting possibility.

Posuka Demizu‘s work continues to improve, book by book – more focused, better acting – though, in general, I’d say he works better when not doing splash pages of McFarlane-sized demons.  I lost a sense of space in scale on those pages – which were last book – and I appreciated the somewhat more relaxed pace of this collection.

And… of course, another great cliffhanger.