I want to start off by saying that when I first began reading this manga, I was instantly hooked. This manga was damn good. After just a few chapters in, I was convinced that this manga would become an instant classic alongside the likes of FullMetal Alchemist, One Piece, and Death Note. However, to say I jumped the gun would be a massive understatement. Sadly, the story hit a sharp decline after the escape arc, and was plagued with too many problems and bad story writing to continue to be enjoyable to read. Although it’s taken me some time, I have begrudgingly read through all 181 chapters of this dumpster fire of a manga, and will now do a deeper analysis of what happened throughout the story that took this manga from masterpiece status to a regrettable waste of potential.
1.) The manga essentially changed from a suspenseful mystery/thriller manga, full of twists and turns, to a run-of-the-mill action/adventure manga.
The escape arc at the start of the manga had it all; It was suspenseful, fear inducing, shocking, and kept the reader’s adrenaline through the roof. The intense mental game between the children and Mama was so enthralling and executed masterfully. The way the manga lures you into a false sense of security by showcasing the wholesome family life at Grace Field, and later reveals it to be an intricate facade to cover up the harvesting of orphans for demon consumption, created one of the most shocking and horrifying experiences I’ve ever had while reading a manga. It left me in complete awe. The first arc of this manga is what I would consider a masterpiece. Unfortunately, the arcs that followed lacked the qualities that made the escape arc so great and as a result, they never measured up.
The manga loses most of its mystery factor when the mysteries of the world are explained too early on. This made the revelations rather anticlimactic. The demons (who were introduced as the villains) start off as horrifying overlords, but lose all of their fear factor when the manga goes on to paint them as lowly laborers with feelings, who are victims of the ruling demon elites just as much as the cattle children. The demons become even less scary when the Lambda kids are introduced and they kill every demon that crosses their path with such ease. Once the children are given guns and other weapons to fight with, the psychological aspects of their battles are overshadowed. The Grace Field kids went from approaching their battles in a tactical/covert way to just spraying their enemies full of bullets Rambo style. Seriously, the differences between the escape arc and Goldy Pond arc are like night and day. They seem like they are from two different mangas. This complete shift in the manga’s atmosphere is massively disappointing considering it was the thriller, mystery, and horror aspects that made it stand out from other shonen manga and contributed to its mass popularity.
2.) Too many characters were introduced just to be ignored later on.
This manga already started off with more characters than most manga with there being 30ish children in total living in Grace Field, but things got worse when more kids are introduced during the Goldy Pond arc, and then even more kids are introduced when Norman reveals himself as William Minerva. This became a problem because as new characters were introduced, few of the characters had enough focus on them and were never fully fleshed out. As a result, many characters had little impact on the story and were forgotten. Why keep introducing more and more characters to the story when most of the Grace Field orphans got shafted immediately after the escape arc and became irrelevant? A perfect example of this is how Phil was built up so much but ended up not playing a key role in the story at all. He shows up at the very end as everyone is about to go to the human world and does nothing; That’s it. And don’t even get me started on how Ray was diminished to nothing more than a side character immediately following the escape arc. This is probably the single most disappointing thing about the manga, especially when you consider the impact he had on the escape arc. He was arguably the most interesting and important character at that time but became completely useless afterward. In the end, there were just too many names, and too many faces not unique enough or fleshed out enough for the reader to give a damn about them.
3.) Emma went from a naive, overly optimistic but likeable character to an insufferable, idealistic, idiotic Mary Sue.
In the beginning, I gave Emma a pass for some of the foolish and unrealistic desires she expressed because I figured it was not far fetched considering she was 11 at the time. Also, she would often consider Ray and Norman’s ideas when decision making which sometimes made her think more realistically. However, as time goes on, Emma doesn’t grow and evolve as a character at all. She does what she wants without any input or opposition from anyone. Characters who initially disagree with her ideas simply change their minds after a brief exchange of words. The only exception to this is Peter Ratri which doesn’t really matter because he ends up killing himself after Emma’s naive, preachy, blabber failed to convince him. A perfect example of this happens right after Norman and the Lambda kids kill all the royal demon rulers. Norman, who up to this point was built up as a godlike revolutionary dead set on exterminating all demons, easily and with zero resistance rejoins Emma’s side after Emma says she doesn’t want him fighting anymore. One moment Norman is saying that he’s come too far to stop and tells Emma to stay out of his way, and in the next moment he’s on his knees crying saying “Help me”? This moment basically destroyed any and all character development for Norman. What made this moment even more lame and lackluster is how Norman’s Lambda soldiers, who utterly despised the demons and longed for their extinction, blindly followed Norman when he rejoined Emma’s side. They didn’t say a single word of opposition. The whole thing came off as major plot armor. Throughout the whole manga it’s pretty much what Emma wants, Emma gets. It doesn’t matter how unrealistic it may be, how plot armorish it may be, it will or will not happen if Emma simply wants it to. This leads me to my next point.
4.) Everything goes Emma’s and the Grace Field children’s way without any major pitfalls, deaths, or sacrifice.
Despite being born into such a dark and oppressive world, everything sure as hell seems to magically work out in the children’s favor. Norman’s only option is to sacrifice himself for the sake of the rest of the Grace Field orphans? No, he shows up later completely unharmed and conveniently in a position of great power, ready at Emma’s disposal. Ray burned himself alive in order to give everyone else a chance to escape? Sike! It was a complete fluke and he didn’t even have to cut his ear off for the whole escape to go off without a hitch. Not a single life was lost during the Goldy Pond arc despite multiple children suffering great bodily injury, and despite the fact that Lewis was able to wipe out all of Yuugo and Lucas’s comrades just 13 years ago without breaking a sweat. There is a pattern throughout this manga of no significant characters dying even though realistically, casualties would’ve been inevitable in multiple situations in the manga. The only exceptions to this were Yuugo, Lucas, and Isabella who chose to sacrifice themselves. And Isabella’s death seemed to happen out of nowhere with no rhyme or reason. It had no impact on the story and to me seemed like the mangaka just threw it in there to try to convince the audience they weren’t afraid to kill off characters. Her death was also immediately glossed over in the following chapter.
The best (or shall I say worst) example of Emma always getting her way is near the end of the manga when Lewis shows up after being presumed dead, and by the power of plot armor, does a complete 180 and says the consumption of human meat must stop. Let me remind you, this is the same Lewis from the Goldy Pond arc who not only enjoyed eating human meat, he took great pleasure in hunting, torturing, and killing humans. It makes zero sense for his disposition to change so drastically. However, it was necessary for Lewis to return because if he hadn’t, things would have not gone Emma's way and we can’t allow that! If Lewis didn’t return, Sonju and Musica would’ve been killed, Peter Ratri would remain in power in the demon world, and demons would continue to eat humans and run meat farms. There would be nothing to stop all of these things from happening which would completely ruin the vision of the future Emma wanted. However, these things were prevented from happening because Lewis miraculously cheated death via a second core (even though this was supposed to be an extremely rare trait passed down from the royal family which his sister had already been born with) and on top of that, his apparent fetish for killing and eating humans all but vanished. I’m sorry, but that is the definition of plot armor. There is one more major example of Emma and the children getting exactly what they want with no repercussions, but I’m going to cover it in my next and final point.
5.) The ending was rushed, unsatisfying, and downright terrible.
So we finally reach the end of the manga and we finally get to know what Emma had to give as a reward to forge a new promise. After so many chapters of buildup and teasing, it’s revealed that Emma has to give up… NOTHING! She had to give up absolutely nothing in order for her and everyone else to cross over to the human world and live happily ever after. Demons and humans no longer have to be enemies and kill each other, all the cattle children are free, and both worlds are full of happiness, rainbows, and puppy dogs! All the events leading up to this point went smoothly and perfectly according to Emma’s plan with no sacrifice whatsoever! Isn’t that just great? Hold up, I know what you’re thinking. Didn’t Emma have to have her memories erased and be separated from her family for the promise to be forged? While this is true, it ended up not mattering at all because Emma’s family were quickly able to locate her and they decided to live together anyway as if nothing separated them in the first place.
Everything about the promise and Emma’s “sacrifice” pissed me the fuck off because Emma’s reason for agreeing to have her memories erased was so that everyone would be happy and she’d be the only one suffering, but the ones that truly suffered the most were her family. You can’t lose what you never had, and due to her memories and identity being completely erased, Emma never had a family to lose in the first place. For two whole years Emma was happy and healthy without a care in the world while the rest of the children were frantically searching for her and wondering if they’d ever find her at all. Honestly, the whole situation made me hate Emma. She spewed so much crap to Norman and Ray about not sacrificing themselves so that they can live together smiling and laughing, only for her to turn around and do something so fucking hypocritical and reckless. Her dumbass decision did everything but make her family smile and laugh. Sorry Emma, but you made yourself look like a massive piece of shit.
When the children do arrive in the human world and it’s revealed as a utopia with no war, no borders, and no pollution, it was so unrealistic to the point of cringe. The kids wondered for most of the manga whether or not they’d be accepted into the human world, if the humans knew about the farms and if they cared, and then they completely lucked out (once again) because the human world is apparently fantasy fucking island. What a huge cop-out. The information revealed about the human world was rather vague and created more questions than answers. We didn’t even get to see what everyone’s lives were like now living in the human world. I guess the mangaka couldn’t be bothered to reveal more details about the human world because that would require actual good story writing/world building.The fact that the human world wasn’t explored at all really frustrated me because it was the ultimate goal of the Grace Field children from the beginning of the manga. The human world was a complete mystery and could have been so much more interesting than it turned out to be. In the end, the human world turned out to be another thing that worked out perfectly in the children’s favor. They were instantly accepted into the utopian human world because “there is no concept of immigrants”, they are given everything they need via Mike Ratri, the Lambda kids who suffered with chronic health issues are magically cured, and they reunite with Emma and live just as they did before. They were faced with zero struggles and didn’t have to make any sacrifices or compromise anything to achieve everything they wanted. Overall, everything about the ending was lackluster and a complete letdown.
For the most part, I think I’ve covered every problem I found that ruined the potential the manga had after the first arc. There were a few minor issues I wanted to discuss, like there being a lack of a true villain and the pacing being off, but I’ve already rambled enough and don’t want to make this post a novel. I truly was a huge fan of this manga when I first started reading it and wanted it to remain consistently good to the end, which is why it pained me so much to see the story gradually go down the toilet. If you disagree with anything I’ve said regarding this manga, that's fine. Feel free to dislike or whatever. I refuse to accept mediocrity, and the story told in this manga is full of it.
if you spend this much of your time in your life writing your opinion so it selfishly engulfs the other persons opinion, you need to get a better hobby. if you genuinely spent ages writing out your hatred for this manga when people can easily scroll by it, like me, you need to do something else with your life because GODDAMN are you sad.
your opinion is valid yes, but you legit just could of said ‘it’s shit. 1 star’ and you would get your message across to many more people because you aren’t pissing them off with huge paragraphs.
I don't usually spend time writing long comments on this site, but I had a lot to say about this particular manga and I've been laid off due to covid, so I had ample time. I don't see how that makes me "sad", but whatever.
I don't get how me posting my opinion is selfish. The comment section is for everyone to post whatever they want and it doesn't matter how short or long their comment is. There are no rules saying my comment can only be so long. Sorry, but you don't get to police what other people post. Like you said, people can simply scroll past my comment if they don't want to read it. Obviously you didn't because you seem pretty mad about something. You're calling me sad, but you're the one triggered as fuck over a comment you don't like, and making assumptions about me when you don't even know me. I think you should take your own advice and find a better hobby if you spend time playing comment section police.
Yes, I could have said "It's shit. 1 star" but not only is that comment stupid, it gives no context as to why I didn't like the manga. I wanted to go into detail about all the problems I found within the manga so people could see for themselves that I wasn't blindly hating it. My message will get across the people who decide to read it and that's good enough for me. If my paragraphs piss people off, I literally don't give a fuck. I know it pissed you off, so you're welcome :)
nah man it didn’t piss me off. i literally forgot your existence the second i sent my comment. do smth better with your ample time during this pandemic
Could've fooled me. I'll do what I want.
Honestly, if you hated the damn story so much, why continue to read it and to be honest some of your points made no sense. You say Emma gave up nothing when she gave up everything. She forgot who she was, who are family was and was left all alone. Loosing your memories is scary and hard. Memories are what make you you ! Yes they can be replaced but the ones from before will always have a special meaning and you can never get that back. I understand your opinion, but I feel like you just hated the story for every little thing. At that point, you should have stopped reading it and moved on instead a dragging a pretty good story.
I already explained how Emma really didn't have to give up anything in the end, but I'll reiterate it so maybe you will understand my point of view better. Yes Emma lost her memories, but it caused her zero pain because she had no recollection of what she had before. She wasn't alone because the old man became her family and she was very happy. In the end, she was reunited with her family, therefore she didn't have to sacrifice anything for the promise. It sucks that her old memories are gone, but that affects her family more than it does her.
I didn't hate the story for every little thing, I hated it for the subpar story writing, use of plot armor, and dip in overall quality. If I was going to nitpick every little thing in the story, my initial post probably would've been twice as long. Believe it or not, there were some things I really did enjoy about this manga, but if I wrote a post full of nothing but praise, that'd be unnecessary and redundant because 99 percent of the comments on this manga already do that. The lack of criticism of (in my opinion) a manga with such glaring issues is what compelled me to analyze all the issues I stumbled upon while reading it.
The only reason I continued to read this manga is because I remained hopeful that the ending would be very good and make up for all the other bad parts, but I was let down once again. I wanted to give it a fair chance by seeing it through to the end. If you did like the story, I'm fine with that. I don't wish to change your mind. I just wanted to get my thoughts out there because there is like no criticism of this manga at all which I find crazy.
I just finished reading this and I feel like my time was wasted. This series started off so strong but holy shit did the story take a nose dive after the escape arc. I've never been this disappointed with an anime or manga in my life. There are so many problems with this manga I don't even know where to begin. I'll probably be writing a full blown dissertation detailing all the problems with this manga at a later time. At the moment I'm too dumbstruck by the absolutely dreadful ending I just witnessed.
I would love to read your opinions as to why you found it disappointing. I personally loved it, sure wished a few things were diff. the ending being one of them. They really didn't have to hurt us like that.
woah,personally I really love this,id love to also hear your opinions why you thought this was wasted
Just posted a lengthy post containing most of my criticisms. It's probably the longest post I'll ever write on this site lol.
I guarantee most of the people in the comments talking about how much they hate kids are still in middle school
I really hope things work out for these two. They are a perfect example of opposites attract and I think their personalities balance each other out. I never hated Chowon and felt immense pity for him after seeing how horribly neglected he was by his ex husband. I just want him to find true happiness.
Chowon was basically a psychopath who wanted to control his partner at all times. He also never had any feelings for his husband, but just the will to control and dominate. I don't know why are people suddenly sympathizing with him.
Bro, Dojun himself said that he married Chowon even though he never had any romantic feelings for him. He admitted that Chowon started acting out because Dojun made him feel lonely and abandoned and he just let him do what he wanted out of guilt. He told Heesoo he was a horrible husband. Chowon was used by Dojun and stuck in a one sided relationship which is why people sympathize with him. Chowon did love Dojun but Dojun didn't reciprocate that same love. No one is condoning Chowon's terrible actions, they're just giving him a chance to grow and better himself. God forbid we give people second chances.
Nahh. If this were to happen irl, I'd never forgive someone who kidnapped a person and paid for that person to be raped. But hey, this is fiction, so sure let's.
I agree. Second chances don't apply to everyone. But if people are still claiming that Choowon's the only one at fault in the marriage then you're obviously used to third-rate romances where the villain is a villain without reason. Two-dimensional characters don't exist in this story. Hyesung is an example of that.
Dojun shouldn't have gotten married in the first place if he wasn't even ready. He clearly saw how much Choowon loved him but instead of being frank and leaving the marriage he goes with the flow and allowed Choowon to self-destruct. He's at fault for Choowon's behavior as well as letting Choowon get away with that behavior. But at the same time, Choowon really was messed up in the head and yet he still chose to attempt getting back with Dojun despite knowing how much it hurt him. They both hurt each other. You don't have to measure how much.
This side story's purpose is to show that everyone deserves happiness. They should repent their flaws, but they still have a right to be happy.
Niina's wife is a massive selfish cunt and I'm glad she's getting a taste of her own medicine. Not only does she give Niina half-assed excuses for not having sex with him, she doesn't give him any other forms of love and affection. She claims to appreciate him, but she never shows it. She treats him like a fucking doormat and expects him to just lie down and take it. If she won't have sex with him, she could at least give him a blowjob or something but she can't even do that. I feel like some of ya'll give her passes for her shitty behavior because she's a woman, but fuck that. I'm gonna criticize her just like I did Michi's trashcan of a husband because I'm unbiased. I don't think Niina's wife is as terrible as Michi's husband but she is still a selfish and neglectful spouse. I want to believe she will change but I think it's too little too late. Niina is fed up with her bullshit at this point and I don't blame him.
I agree. I see comments saying that she isn't in the wrong because she's just trying to be a successful woman. I get that it's good because she's a career woman, like kudos to you girl, but the fact that she doesn't even look at her husband when speaking shows that her personality is just garbage. Like how hard is it to look at someone when they're talking to you lol
For real. She has shown no affection towards Nina at all. None. Forget blowjobs because she doesn’t even seem to initiate any intimacy at all, not even a hug or a small peck on the cheek or whatever. She has been neglectful for too long. I also swear there was this one scene where Nina tried to hug our hold her or something and she brushed him off. I hope all the couples here get divorced and the ones who deserve it will get karma.
Gross. I never liked bitch ass Minhyuk from the beginning but now I have more reason to hate him.
Finally! Someone who didn't liked him
He gave me a bad vibe right from the get go. I thought his baby face was deceiving.
Same! I sensed a suspicious aura around him from the beginning too. I knew he was good for nothing smh
What? Is this really ending soon? I feel like it's too soon. This story has so much potential ╥﹏╥
All the bitches who clapped like a bunch of seals when Seunho did the bare minimum to not appear like a complete asshole and cheered for his "character development" are quiet af right now.