The Promised Neverland Releases Special ‘We Were Born’ Chapter

The Promised Neverland has released a special new chapter, “We Were Born.” Although Kaiu Shirai and Posuka Demizu’s The Promised Neverland came to an end last year, the franchise has been living on through special new releases. Not only is the franchise expanding with a new anime season, live-action film, and new live-action TV series with Amazon, but Shirai and Demizu have been returning to the franchise with a series of special chapter releases filling in some of the blanks left during the main run of the series. But this newest special chapter release is something completely different.

Different in that “We Were Born” is actually the one-shot first produced by Shirai and Demizu before it eventually became The Promised Neverland series that we know and love today. With a whole new set of characters and world, you can see some of the seeds that would eventually form the ground work of the main series. If you want to check it out for yourself, you can do so completely for free with Viz Media’s Shonen Jump digital library at the link here.

One of the things you’ll come to know and love about being a manga fan is seeing how certain series first started out. Often times the original pitch for a series is completely different from what would eventually release in the pages of Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump, and that’s a result of editors and other contributors at Shueisha helping to fine tune the ideas until you get the awesome results later.

This one-shot has many of the same core themes, however, with the war-torn world, distinct factions, and untrustworthy adults, and yet it’s still a far cry from the demonic battles that would eventually arrive in the main series. But it’s always fun to see how a series became the version we all know today!

What did you think of The Promised Neverland’s special one-shot? Which elements would you want to see from the creators in the future? What connections can you make to the official series? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or you can even reach out to me directly about all things animated and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!