The Promised Neverland・Beginner Book Club・Current Reading Volume 1

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View a preview of this book on Bookwalker

Welcome to 約束のネバーランド・The Promised Neverland Book Club!

We started reading volume 1 on 28th September 2024. See the table below for the links to the weekly threads.

Introduction

The Promised Neverland is a popular manga series, originally published in Weekly Shonen Jump between 2016 and 2020. The full series is published as 20 stand alone volumes, and it also spawned an impressive anime.

It tells the story of a group of children living together at an orphanage, the apparently idyllic Gracefield House and its surrounding estate. At first life seems fun and carefree but it quickly becomes clear that all is not right. Why do the children have numbers tattooed on their necks? Why do they undertake computerised tests? Why do they never leave the estate?

The children are soon going to learn a dark secret, the consequences of which will leave them needing to work together like never before.

View the original nomination post here

How it works

We create a reading schedule, with a set number of pages to work through each week. Each week we create a new discussion thread for that week’s reading. In those threads we discuss everything from vocab and grammar to the characters and story. We try to help each other by contributing to the shared vocab list, by answering each other’s questions and by keeping each other motivated.

What to expect from the this book

This book is on the harder end of the books we have tackled in the Beginner Book Club and is rated level 27 on Natively. The main characters are children, so a lot of the dialogue is spoken by or towards children (although quite intelligent children).

There is quite a lot of kanji usage but there is full furigana throughout which will generally make word look ups easier. You are occasionally going to get to practise some of your higher level WaniKani kanji (there’s a level 60 kanji right off the bat in panel 1) but a lot of kanji used are the commoner kanji.

This manga quite regularly uses a device where a word is written in kanji, but the furigana is for a different related word, that with a subtlety different meaning. For example the word for institution (home for orphans) 施設 is read as しせつ, but may instead have the furigana ハウス (meaning “house”). This is used in quite a lot of manga but struck me as quite common in this one.

If you are a complete beginner to Japanese then this is not for you. But if you have been learning Japanese for a while and getting into reading native material for the first time, then this will be a good book to read with the support of the group.

Trigger warnings (spoilers!) - child death, murder

How do I join in?

  1. Get yourself a copy of the book (see “Where to purchase” below)
  2. Click on the participation poll below to let us know you’re planning to join in
  3. Set this thread to “watching” so you get updates on the group (go just past the last post in this thread, click on the grey box that says “normal” or “tracking” and change this to “watching”)

Where to purchase

Schedule

Date Week Chapter Start page End page Total pages
28 Sep Week 1 1 5 23 19
5 Oct Week 2 1 24 39 16
12 Oct Week 3 1 40 60 21
19 Oct Week 4-5 2 61 86 26
26 Oct Week 5-6 3 87 110 24
9 Nov Week 7 4 111 130 20
16 Nov Week 8 5 131 150 20
23 Nov Week 9 6 151 170 20
30 Nov Week 10 7 171 190 20

Vocabulary

Resources

  • Jisho is a popular online Japanese-English dictionary.
  • ichi.moe is a tool for parsing out sentences. You can type/paste in a whole sentence and it will try and break the sentence down into its individual parts.
  • Deepl will translate a sentence from Japanese to English. It’s obviously not going to be right all the time, so if you want to check your translation it’s often better to ask in the thread.

Membership

Will you be reading with us?

  • Yes
  • Yes, but I might start late
  • Maybe
  • No
0 voters

Which version will you be reading?

  • Digital
  • Physical
0 voters
8 Likes

I believe the common consensus is that it’s an impressive one season anime :stuck_out_tongue: “What season 2?”

18 Likes

I knew we were going to get into this the moment I read this sentence :rofl:.

4 Likes

Wow, I didn’t realise there was such strong feeling about season 2! I just checked the internet and see what you mean. I might have to reword that!

I was aware that season 2 deviates quite a lot from the manga and cuts some major story arcs out, which is one reason I am interested in reading past volume 1. But I can see people felt the general quality of the anime dropped significantly in season 2.

I can say that I loved the first season of the anime. Even Mrs Micki, who is not really a fan of anime, really enjoyed watching it. As far as I can see the rest of the internet largely agrees on that for season 1!

8 Likes
Anime S2

That’s an understatement. Episodes 1-4 (or 5?) of S2 still fairly faithfully adapts 90% of an entire arc but leaves out the conclusion for some reason. Anything after that feels like a poorly edited summary movie that strings key scenes from the last couple of arcs together. It doesn’t give you the feeling that you’re watching a complete story, but contains most of the major plot twists, so that you’re then spoilered for the manga, if you still want to read the full version.

Some people also hate that S2 tagged on a different (unrealistically happy) ending sequence made up entirely of like one minute of unanimated stills, but I felt the real damage was already done by that point.

4 Likes

I might have to rejoin if I can find my books again (they’re still packed from when I moved home from Japan). I’m here for emotional support though for you all~

Did you guys know there was also a movie? :eyes: Listen, I went through a weird phase after this original nomination post where it just kinda fell in love with everything. (The movie is also very close to the anime/first book at least, but there’s a lot of complaints about Emma; but I feel like that’s for all movies based off books LOL)

Cute GIF of the trio in the live action movie

🖤 Zoe 🖤: Image

7 Likes
schedule suggestion

Schedule suggestion

Pages per chapter

Chapter Pages
1 56
2 26
3 24
4 20
5 20
6 20
7 21

My suggestion is we split chapter 1 over three weeks, read chapters 2 and 3 over the next three weeks, and then a chapter a week for the rest.

That means we don’t stop neatly at the end of chapter 2 in week 5, but also read the first few pages of chapter 3. My other thought was splitting chapter 2 over two weeks and reading chapter 3 in one week - that gives two short weeks followed by one quite long week though.

Week 1 looks longer than week 2, but there are three pages with no text at the start of the chapter.

Date Week Chapter Start page End page Total pages
28 Sep 1 1 5 23 19
5 Oct 2 1 24 39 16
12 Oct 3 1 40 60 21
19 Oct 4 2 61 76 16
26 Oct 5 2 & 3 77 92 16
2 Nov 6 3 93 110 18
9 Nov 7 4 111 130 20
16 Nov 8 5 131 150 20
23 Nov 9 6 151 170 20
30 Nov 10 7 171 190 20

Any other suggestions? Can put to a poll if needed.

5 Likes

Been a while since I’ve done one of these. Time to get back on the wagon.

3 Likes

Super stoked to be a part of this! I’m trying to prioritize Japanese again - this will be a fun project as I chip away at my many hundreds of WaniKani reviews :sweat_smile:

5 Likes

Welcome back! That must have been funny to see your nomination get revived interest after a long time

@Micki the page counts per chapter are tricky for ramping up, but what you have looks good. I wonder for the threads for ch 2-3 if it would be a good idea to do them by chapter and not week. So week 4 open the ch 2 thread (labeled week 4-5) and week 5 open the ch 3 thread (labeled week 5-6). At some point in the middle of week 5 most people would join the ch 3 thread, and maybe it’s nicer overall for discussion to avoid mixing them up. I’ve seen @ChristopherFritz do something like that and it looked like a neat idea.

5 Likes

Can I get some feedback on the schedule please so we can firm it up. :smile:

Regarding the overall pace

  • I’m happy with the suggested pace
  • I think we should go faster
  • I think we should go slower
  • Something else (please comment)
0 voters

Regarding chapters 2&3

  • Option A - Read as per the schedule above, meaning week 5 covers the end of chapter 2 and the start of chapter 3. There is one thread for each week.
  • Option B - Read as per the schedule above but with one thread for each chapter. The chapter 3 thread is posted at the start of week 5. People join the chapter 3 thread when they are ready, and aim to finish chapter 3 by the end of week 6. (i.e. what Mitrac suggested above)
  • Option C - Spend a week and a half on each chapter, the chapter 3 thread gets posted halfway through week 5. There is one thread per chapter.
  • Option D - I have a better idea! (please comment)
  • Option E - I can’t be expected to make decisions like this but I’d still like to click the poll.
0 voters
1 Like

My suggestion - read all of chapter 2 in week 4, all of chapter 3 in week 5, then have a break week in week 6 allowing people to catch up from the longer chapters.

1 Like

The Promised Neverland bookclub starts in two weeks on 28 Sep! Make sure you have your copy! (Purchase of the mug is optional…)

7 Likes

And the mugicha teabags?

2 Likes

These are essential!

2 Likes

Hi all, looking forward to reading with you all! are there any issues with buying the book online from a country outside Japan? Like for example Audible has a Japanese version and non-Japanese version of the app. Does Rakuten Kobo have something similar? If I download the Rakuten Kobo app from Australian Apple IOS store, and then buy the book from the link above, are there any issues? Thanks for your help.

2 Likes

You will have to buy on the Japanese website, and you won’t be able to do that if you have an international rakuten account. However, once you have it added to your account, you should be able to log into any version of the app and download it.

2 Likes

Thank you for explaining.

How is the Rakuten website connected to the Kobo app? Do I need to use the same email to register for both?

1 Like

Rakuten shadowbanned me so I’m not really able to verify or give up to date instructions, but the short version was to create your rakuten account first, then log into kobo with your rakuten account (rather than creating a kobo account with an email address) and then your rakuten purchases would show up on kobo,

2 Likes

Just been through this and I am also in Australia.

I set up a new Amazon.jp account as all the versions I found otherwise were in English.

I then set up a Blackship account with a Japanese receiving address who forward everything to me.

I bought physical copies and have done two shipments so far. They are pretty quick. All up from ordering on Amazon.jp I have the items in my hand within 2 weeks.

This solution is quite expensive though if that is an issue.

2 Likes