Warning: Spoilers Off applies to these pages. You Have Been Warned. Please proceed at your own risk.
"This manga is like a never-ending nightmare. At least in Attack on Titan they had the walls to protect them!!! Here is just a bunch of children raised to be cattle and running around in a world that's full of monsters, all out to hunt you and eat you. Truly the stuff of nightmares. Like seeing a bunch of bunnies escape from the slaughterhouse into a forest."
— An online commentary
- Emma and Norman coming across Conny's corpse and realizing that despite their peaceful life, they were essentially being raised so they can be slaughtered like animals for food.
- The scene with the demons is somehow even more terrifying than the manga. It's the way they move, and those eyes.
- Chapter 15: Emma asking Ray how many people he's sacrificed in his experiments in order to escape the farm. He admits that he had to get his hands dirty in order to get his plan to work. While Emma says she's fine with what he did in the past, she's understandably pissed when she tells him that if he tried anything like that now she would most certainly never forgive him.
- The many faces of Sister Krone.
- The double back-to-back whammies of Krone being fed to the demons in a hopeless fight, followed by Isabella showing her true colors to the main children - and breaking Emma's leg like a twig in the span of three seconds.
- Ray at the tip of insanity decides that in order to get their plan of escape started he would set himself and the house on fire. He declares that he wasn't going to become food and he would die like a human, and even Emma's face seems to be wondering how far Ray had fallen into this kind of despair.
- In order to disable the tracker and make their escape, Emma and Ray are now missing one ear. They're both extremely steeled characters, but what kind of pain did they experience when they went through with cutting off their own ear?
- Later we find out that Ray only cut out the tracker and still has both ears, but Emma actually cut off her ear.
- Isabella has to essentially raise her biological child Ray as food for the demons.
- Discovering the animal corpses in what seems to be a safe, idyllic underground grotto in the woods drives home how even the landscape is against the escapees and the world is nothing like old Earth anymore.
- In chapter 47 we finally learn what happened to the world 30 years ago: nothing. The world had belonged to the demons centuries before then, and the real story behind the plantation isn't much better. After years of war between the two species, leaders from both sides came to an agreement to end the bloodshed. The world was divided and the plantations were glorified parting gifts from the humans. Whether the parents had any say in it or not, someone had the idea to willingly give the demons children with the sole purpose of raising them as livestock.
- As of chapter 49 Emma is learning to hunt, or as she puts it, "to take a life." While the main reason was just to make it easier to get food, the fact that an eleven-year-old feels the need to learn how to kill in order to survive speaks leaps and bounds for what she might have to do in the future. Doubles as a Moment of Awesome depending how you look at it.
- Remember those flowers that would bloom in the chest of someone who was killed by the demons? Yeah, they're not just symbolic. They're used to help the meat last longer by draining the victim's blood while they're still alive.
- Chapter 50 gives the positively wonderful sight of the other plantations in the demon world. Turns out Emma, Ray, and the others were the lucky ones. Only four out of the several hundred plantations were "premium models", the rest are demonic versions of Factory Farms, and it only gets worse from there. The kids are strapped in place and food and body fluids are siphoned in and out through tubes, and its implied that they've been like that since birth. Remember when demons and humans alike refer to the collection of humans for consumption as a "harvest," a term usually used to refer to plants, not animals? The way these children were raised is closer to how you'd grow plants than raise livestock.
- It gets even worse on a psychological level. These kids don't even get the illusion of a happy childhood like our main cast did. With their entire lives literally just spent fattening up, they're barely a step above braindead. They don't know whats going on, they can't move, they can't even speak. They're just stuck in a mental limbo until they're "ripe" and get sold as cheap, mindless, livestock; the only thing they can ever really be called.
- Goldy Pond, the next area Emma believes is Minerva's location, is a secret hunting ground used by demons. Not even the farms know about it!
- What's worse is that we actually get to see them kill and eat their spoils. Thankfully the preparation part is offscreen, but it's still immensely disturbing to cut from a demon beheading a boy to a lavish "steak" dinner.
- Norman is alive and in an unknown location. He's deduced it seems to be a more complex farm, which has its own implications, but there's the fact that he passes by this.
◊. For those too squeamish, it's a room full of horrible, ugly-looking mutants; the result of the laboratory's experiments. The fact that some of the kids look like they've been lobotomized is horrific on its own.- Most of those kids don't even look HUMAN, that's how messed up they are.
- This is what the demons look like without their masks. Trypophobes and ommetaphobes beware.
- What makes it worse is how... expressive their faces are, despite being totally inhuman.
- The flashback to how Bayon started his hunts. He found human meat to be tasteless and eventually ordered a child from one of the farms to be brought to his garden so he could hunt and kill him. We see him murdering a terrified boy and then enjoying the meat afterwords. At first he limited himself to one hunt a month, but he steadily increased the rate, to twice a month, three times a month, once a week, before eventually having his hunts once every three days with his associates. And he had been doing this for hundreds of years meaning he has had hundreds of children who likely told they were going to new homes just to wind up as his prey.
- When Louvis' mask breaks, he pulls out all the stops. His thrill for the hunt turns him into a psychotic maniac, finally getting the prey he's been hunting for so long.
- You think that the kids are out of the woods? No. As it turns out, it's not only the "demons" they have to worry about anymore, but the humans who want to keep the peace between them and the "demons" and they will do so by killing everyone.
- Emma breaks down after seeing two children killed by Andrew's squad. She asks why any of this is happening, stating that all the children want is to live in peace and they have a plan to do it by making a new promise with The One. Andrew responds that is all the more incentive to kill the children. He states they never had a normal life, let alone the right to normal life in the first place. He demonstrates that he even he's human, he is just as bad the worst of the demons.
- Chapter 111. Just...wow. Not only is Andrew sent to kill the "cattle children" still alive, not only did he manage to kill three of them, but he's somehow still alive and talking despite missing a good chunk of his face and head! Talk about determined!
- Andrew was badly injured so the children he came across could have killed him, but they hesitated because he was human like them. He beat them to death for their mistake, and brags about it. The whole time he's suffering a Villainous Breakdown that makes him come off as a complete madman. All the while he's dropped any pretext to maintaining the Promise, he's just after them out of spite.
- Andrew's death in Chapter 112 is both nightmare fuel and awesome at the same time. He gets eaten by one of the feral "demons" and he's screaming the whole time.
- After reuniting with Norman he tells the group his plan the secure the future for the humans in the demon world.... and it is basically genocide. The kids are happy (its likely that they don't fully understand) but Emma less so.
- Chapter 120. We finally learn who the "demons" are and why they eat humans. They were once formless creatures that consumed the animals and plants around them, taking on their traits as they ate. Then they began eating humans and became intelligent, cultured, and gained the ability to speak. The problem? The "demons" soon discovered that if they stop eating humans, they will revert back to their savage, primitive state. Those "feral demons" the children encountered in the wild? They were the ones that didn't get enough humans to retain their intelligence. That's why the "promise" was made. To keep the demons from reverting back to their primal states.
- There is another problem. The cheap factory farm children aren't enough to increase a "demon's" intelligence and if they stop eating, they eventually revert to their primal state in just six months.
- Remember the lab Norman was in? All those deformed children just like Adam? It turns out that Lambda is a facility that performs genetic experiments on humans to make good quality meat in the mass production farms. Norman intends to use them as part of his army to take down the "demons" and destroy the farms.
- Emma wants to make a world of peace that won't involve bloodshed, but there's a slight problem. Everyone is on board the "kill all 'demons' train" and it seems the people Norman is involved with do not like her idea. They react very angrily when she shows signs that she doesn't want death on both sides of the game. Emma is afraid of these people probably even more than the "demons". Heck, she and Ray become afraid of what Norman is planning.
- Norman's reaction to Emma's revelation about Sonju and Myusica still retaining their intelligence despite not eating humans for hundreds of years. He calls the latter the girl with cursed blood and demands to know where she and Ray met them. Something's not right the way Norman practically orders her to tell him.
- Chapter 127: Norman reveals that Myusica is actually from a clan of "demons" whose blood has the unique power of giving a "demon" a permanent human form and intelligence and would never have to rely on eating humans again for the sake of preventing themselves from devolving. Moreover, those who consumed the blood gave birth to "demons" who also had permanent human intelligence. However, the "demon" royals and five regents and the Ratri family saw this as a threat to the farm systems, their money supply, their control over the "demon" world and the promise they made, so the royals and five regents devoured the cursed blood "demons" until only Myusica remained.
- While explaining her unease about killing all the demons, Emma vividly imagines what would happen to a demon village she visited earlier in the story if it was cut off from human meat - all of the inhabitants, who were so humanlike in their family structures and habits, going feral and turning on each other, eating their own children.
- Chapter 128: Whatever the experiments did to the Lambda kids causes them to have fits and very severe headaches that require them to take medicine. They seem to occur when they experience extreme anger.
- The Lambda kids are so full of hate toward the "demons" that they did to the "demons" what they did to them. In their room, there are jars full of "demon" organs and other body parts and they even keep the corpse of a feral "demon" as a practice dummy.
- Norman has become a Knight Templar, showing no regrets for his actions and is fully convinced that Emma's plan for no bloodshed will never be enough. The final page shows an image of himself as half a grim reaper and half an angel as he calls himself both a God and a Devil for the sake of saving all humanity and killing all "demonkind".
- Chapter 131: We meet the ruler of the "demon" world herself, Queen Regula Valima. You know she's trouble when all five heads of the Five Regents bow down to her as soon as she steps into the room.
- Chapter 133: Emma and Ray's hunt for the Seven Walls brings them back to Grace Field, but it's not the same place they knew. It's full of Alien Geometries that sends them all over the place. Ray runs into a hallucination of Isabella and several other kids all based on ones that were eaten, then they start turning into skeletons. Turns out it was all caused by the Demon Boss (with the unpronounceable name) "playing" with them.
- Chapter 139: It turns out Norman not only sent Don and Gilda and Aishe to go look for Musika and Song Joo, he also has the Lambda children tracking them down with the intent to kill the cursed blood "demons".
- Chapters 141-42 reveal the origin of the first promise. The war between humans and "demons" lasted for centuries until one knight, Julius Ratiri, grew tired of the human bloodshed and wanted to make a truce with the "demon" god. But when he told his fellow knights of the promise, they immediately went against it, so what does he do? He labels them the first human cattle and has the "demons" sic on them.
- The chapters also reveal that the "demon" god wants a little something in return for the promise. From the "demon" royals, he gets more human meat than they. And as for Julius, he and his descendants are forced to be the keeper of the promise, to make sure it is never broken.
- Chapter 145: It seems Norman is suffering the same ailment as the Lambda children. He has bouts of headaches and he coughs up blood. But even then, he's still determined to kill every single "demon".
- Chapter 154: It turns out Norman is dying. He suffers the same bouts of headaches like the rest of the Lambda children and it's only a matter of time before the drugs destroy his brain. It seems there is one hope: Adam.
- At the end of the chapter, despite having the top of her head sliced off and her central eye pierced, Legravalima still gets back on her feet and attempts to eat Norman. Her beauty has faded away, now she just looks like a hideous, eyeless monster with a mouth full of elongated teeth.
- Chapter 155: Norman's poison immediately begins regressing the "demons" in the capital city, transforming them into rampaging beasts. Two little "demon" children are forced to watch their parents turn into monsters before their very eyes! It's a good thing Emma and Ray's allies, including Sonju and Musica are here to use the latter's blood to cure the poison.
- The "demon" queen begins devouring the bodies of the nobles, turning into what is essentially a "demon" version of The Thing (1982). And it's not just the nobles who have become a part of this monster but also every single human that had been eaten by them, including Emma, Ray and Norman's friends that had been shipped off from the orphanage and Sister Krone! And they're still alive somehow!!!!!
- It gets even worse at the end of the chapter. The mass of flesh opens up like a cocoon and the queen comes out with a new body, her head is barren of any features. No face, no ears, no hair, nothing.
- Chapter 156: Legravalima's new body doesn't even have a mouth and yet she can somehow talk, proclaiming that she will devour all of her foes. A number of mouths appear all of her head and body as she attempts to eat Zazie, who nearly splits her in half. The two halves regenerate almost instantly.
- Chapter 157: Sonju tries to fight Legravalima and bisects her at the torso, but since he missed her core she regenerates again. Reveling how she has survived thanks to her unique trait and grow stronger, the queen's power goes to her head as she proclaims she is favored by the world and that all life, her subjects, her servants, her enemies, human lifestock, even her family is all food for her to devour and grow stronger.
- As she attempts to devour Mujika, the queen forms a massive mouth.
- Chapter 158: The Queen's body finally starts melting after all the people she devoured along with the toxins she's consumed finally starts taking a toll on her.
- Chapter 162: Peter Ratri and his men kidnap all the children at the hideout and take them all to the Grace Field Ranch. And guess who is waiting for Emma, Ray and Norman? Isabella, still alive and revealed to have been promoted to Grandmother!
- Chapter 163: Peter makes a grab for power and with allies in the capital announcing an assembled council comprised of the armies and the leadership of the premium farms. Mujika and Sonju are both blamed for the queen's death and everyone they saved in the city is rounded up, arrested, and will eventually be executed. Sonju laments that everyone's efforts have all be for nothing and the world will stay the same.
The Anime
- The first chapter and big reveal were horrifying to read but made even more so in animated form. The demons are meticulously animated to the point its unsettling to watch. You can see poor Emma and Norman struggle to hold back their terror and shake uncontrollably when they realize the truth of their home.
- You wouldn't think a shot of somebody going upstairs would be unsettling, but put it in first-person perspective... the anime staff clearly love their horror movies.
- The opening for the second season gives us the wonderful imagery of some kids (and their Mom) eating dead, whole rabbits at the dinner table. If that's not disturbing enough for you, there's also the shots of the mangled, freshly-drained child corpses sprawled onto giant dinner plates. Bon appétit!
