- Apr 16, 2019
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I'll put a SPOILER ALERT!!!! here, because there will be SPOILER MATERIAL IN THIS POST!!! So consider yourself warned, if you haven't already watched season 1 of this series.
2019 has not been around long, but in movies there has been quite a bit of controversy over one subject: the strong female lead character. This controversy has centered around two films released early this year, Alita: Battle Angel and Captain Marvel. But while these two movies and their fans have been setting the internet on fire, a certain anime series, The Promised Neverland, was slowly giving us a notable look at the character development of a young female character into the series' leading role.
Right from the start, The Promised Neverland tells us that it has three main characters: Emma, Ray, and Norman. But even among these three, it's quickly established that Norman is the leader; he's the one who listens to and balances Ray's conniving intelligence and Emma's concern for all the children of Grace Field House, and is the center around which their plan for escape comes together.
Then things start going very bad for the kids, and never more so than when Norman is taken away. And with their leader gone, Ray and Emma seem to react in predictable ways, falling into despair and giving up.
The last two episodes show us how neither Ray nor Emma had truly given up, but they also show how their personalities played into their plans. Ray is a loner, he's kept many things secret for a long time, and he's made his plans on his own while assuming that Emma has not given up. Emma, on the other hand, has been secretly telling the other older kids how to train for their escape while acting as if she's lost the will to fight, thus keeping their overseer's eyes on her and allowing the others to train behind Momma's back. And in this way, Emma has taken over Norman's role as the leader of the escape.
But this is done in a way that does not denigrate either Norman or Ray. Norman had given Emma the rough plan for the escape right before he was taken away, and without trying to excuse Ray's plan to kill himself we can still understand his desire to keep his dignity as a human. But if the plan is Norman's, Emma is the one who has put the plan into action; and if Ray is right to want to keep his human dignity, he's wrong to give in to despair, and Emma is right to slap some sense into him.
One of the signs of Emma's growth is that she has to question her own resolve to get all the kid's out right now; instead, she accepts that the older children need to leave now, but the very young ones are not in any immediate danger.
Emma's character development from a capable lieutenant to the leader of the escape is well done, showing her own intelligence (she gets perfect scores on the kid's tests, along with Ray and Norman), and more strikingly the sacrifices she's willing to make for this escape to succeed. Her final words to Momma are quietly powerful; no long-winded speech, no screeching denunciations, but only a calm good-bye tinged with sadness, then she slides away before Momma has a chance to dissuade her from escaping.
A Mary Sue character who wins without much struggle is easy to create, but is not very compelling to watch or read about; a character who struggles and grows, who fails and learns, who is wounded and overcomes, can be a character that people may agonize with and cheer for. This is why Emma leading the escape seems like a reasonable development and not something forced and contrived.
2019 has not been around long, but in movies there has been quite a bit of controversy over one subject: the strong female lead character. This controversy has centered around two films released early this year, Alita: Battle Angel and Captain Marvel. But while these two movies and their fans have been setting the internet on fire, a certain anime series, The Promised Neverland, was slowly giving us a notable look at the character development of a young female character into the series' leading role.
Right from the start, The Promised Neverland tells us that it has three main characters: Emma, Ray, and Norman. But even among these three, it's quickly established that Norman is the leader; he's the one who listens to and balances Ray's conniving intelligence and Emma's concern for all the children of Grace Field House, and is the center around which their plan for escape comes together.
Then things start going very bad for the kids, and never more so than when Norman is taken away. And with their leader gone, Ray and Emma seem to react in predictable ways, falling into despair and giving up.
The last two episodes show us how neither Ray nor Emma had truly given up, but they also show how their personalities played into their plans. Ray is a loner, he's kept many things secret for a long time, and he's made his plans on his own while assuming that Emma has not given up. Emma, on the other hand, has been secretly telling the other older kids how to train for their escape while acting as if she's lost the will to fight, thus keeping their overseer's eyes on her and allowing the others to train behind Momma's back. And in this way, Emma has taken over Norman's role as the leader of the escape.
But this is done in a way that does not denigrate either Norman or Ray. Norman had given Emma the rough plan for the escape right before he was taken away, and without trying to excuse Ray's plan to kill himself we can still understand his desire to keep his dignity as a human. But if the plan is Norman's, Emma is the one who has put the plan into action; and if Ray is right to want to keep his human dignity, he's wrong to give in to despair, and Emma is right to slap some sense into him.
One of the signs of Emma's growth is that she has to question her own resolve to get all the kid's out right now; instead, she accepts that the older children need to leave now, but the very young ones are not in any immediate danger.
Emma's character development from a capable lieutenant to the leader of the escape is well done, showing her own intelligence (she gets perfect scores on the kid's tests, along with Ray and Norman), and more strikingly the sacrifices she's willing to make for this escape to succeed. Her final words to Momma are quietly powerful; no long-winded speech, no screeching denunciations, but only a calm good-bye tinged with sadness, then she slides away before Momma has a chance to dissuade her from escaping.
A Mary Sue character who wins without much struggle is easy to create, but is not very compelling to watch or read about; a character who struggles and grows, who fails and learns, who is wounded and overcomes, can be a character that people may agonize with and cheer for. This is why Emma leading the escape seems like a reasonable development and not something forced and contrived.
