Emma (Japanese: エマ, Hepburn: Ema) is the main protagonist of the manga series The Promised Neverland, created by Kaiu Shirai and Posuka Demizu. Emma is an 11-year-old girl living at Grace Field House. She consistently gets perfect scores on her daily exams. She is the life of the party and a quick learner. She is known for her ample optimism as well as her capable athleticism, but she can also be naive at times. Upon discovering the truth of the orphanage, Emma teams up with Norman and Ray to escape the house. She loves her family more than anything and her strong sense of selflessness insists that everyone escape together, even if most of their siblings are below 6 years old, an aim which Ray deems crazy and plain reckless.
Emma | |
---|---|
The Promised Neverland character | |
First appearance | Chapter 1: "Grace Field House" (GFハウス, Gurēsu Fīrudo Hausu) |
Last appearance | Chapter 181: "Beyond Destiny" (運命の向こう岸, Unmei no Mukōgishi) |
Created by | |
Portrayed by | Minami Hamabe |
Voiced by |
|
In-universe information | |
Alias | Antenna |
Species | Human |
Gender | Female |
Title | 63194 |
Relatives | |
Age | 11 |
Eye color | Green |
In the anime adaptation, she is voiced by Sumire Morohoshi in Japanese and by Erica Mendez in the English version. In the live-action film adaptation, she is portrayed by Minami Hamabe.
Emma has ranked highly in various awards and polls. She took the Best Female Character at the 41st Anime Grand Prix in 2019. She was also praised for breaking the typical mold of a Shōnen Jump protagonist.
According to Kaiu Shirai, he avoided making her too plain. Whether it is a character’s thoughts and hopes, the thrill of the story or solving the mystery. Shirai made Emma as the female protagonist because the first antagonist of the story, Isabella, is also a female, thinking that the mother-daughter relationship between the two would make the story "more interesting". She had two options, weather escape with her siblings or become a mother in Grace Field House. That breaks the Shōnen Jump mold. She is not a boy and does not have extraordinary physical abilities nor special powers. Shirai describes Emma as energetic, "like light," kind of motherly, and idealistic. She keeps the balance between Norman, who supports her, and Ray, who argues but helps anyway.[1][2]
Posuka Demizu described the creation of the character as the story of The Promised Neverland needed a different kind of main protagonist, like Emma, so she came naturally. It was not necessary for her to follow the Jump style. According to Demizu, Emma is one of the hardest characters to draw, as drawing her for every panel takes the most time to finish.[1][3]
In the anime adaptation, the character is voiced by Sumire Morohoshi in Japanese.[4] Erica Mendez voices the character in English.[5] In the live-action film adaptation, she was portrayed by Minami Hamabe.[6]
Emma was born on August 22, 2034. She has green eyes and short light orange hair that sticks up in all angles around her head with a single long lock of hair curving upwards from the right side of her head, resembling an antenna, and another smaller one from the base of her neck. Like Ray and Norman, Emma consistently gets perfect scores on her daily exams at the Grace Field House orphanage.[7] At the beginning of the story on October 12, 2045, Emma is 11-year-old, she wears the uniform of Grace Field House: a shirt, a white skirt and brown shoes. An authentication number, 63194 is tattooed on her neck. During the escape from the orphanage, she cut off her right ear to prevent Isabella from finding them, in which she wore a bandage to cover the wound the whole time. After her adventure at the demon world, she wears various outfits more suited to adventure and exploration.[8]
Emma was awarded the Best Female Character at the 41st Anime Grand Prix in 2019.[9] She was nominated for the Best Girl and Best Protagonist of the Year at the 4th Crunchyroll Anime Awards in 2020.[10][11] She was also nominated for the Girl of the Year category in the 6th Anime Trending Awards in 2020.[12] Emma achieved the 2nd place behind Norman in the Color Illustration Character Poll of the series in 2018.[13] In the popularity poll of the series in 2018, Emma is in the 1st place.[14] She also took the first place in the 2nd popularity poll of the series, with a total of 5581 votes.[15][16]
Reiichi Narima from Real Sound described Emma as "She is a girl and the main character, is the reason why The Promised Neverland is serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump, and I consider her to be a symbol. In this story, Emma is portrayed as a girl who fulfills the conditions of the hero image. But it is not just her gender that makes her look like a new hero. Emma is also reckless and daredevil, but she is not "stupid". As you can see from the setting that she is an excellent child who clears super-difficult tests every day, Emma is a brain with extraordinary physical ability. She has a naive and mood maker side, but she can see the difficulties that are far ahead from the beginning. Death that exists next to each other, a situation in which a small mistake by one person can lead to many casualties, and children who are always in danger. All the factors are in demons, and they have been portrayed as hateful things. However, as Emma learns about the world of demons, she can no longer ignore the fact that they have the same life as her. She wonders if there is a difference between her hunting and eating beasts and demons eating humans. And the story moves towards the final phase centering on Norman, who wants to annihilate the demons, and Emma, who does not want neither humans nor demons to die. The Promised Neverland has ended, but it is not too late to get addicted to this world that gave birth to a new jump hero".[17] Emma was also well received by the professor of global Japanese studies at Meiji University, Yukari Fujimoto and by manga artist Morizono Milk, which both highlighted the fact to have a female protagonist in a manga published in Weekly Shōnen Jump; with Morizonu stating "I knew that this work was serialized in shōnen Jump magazine, but I did not know that Yukari Fujimoto pointed out that this is the first manga that has a girl as the main character in this way. In that sense as well, I think the achievement of this manga, in which the main character is Emma was a big hit, it is great".[18]
Rebecca Silverman from Anime News Network praised her strong role in the storyline of the series, and stated "Emma herself stands to be a very strong figure. She has the heart needed to get things done. She is the one who refuses to leave anyone behind, the one who understands that family is important, and ultimately the person who does the most growing even over the course of just one book. To say that Emma is the ray of light in this very dark story might be understating things a bit".[19] Allen Moody of THEM Anime Reviews enjoyed the personality of Emma and describes her as "Emma, though, is the steadfast one- resolute, indomitable, yet compassionate, someone who can be bent by grief but is hard to actually break, someone whose toughness of spirit endures despite some devastating developments, a true leader and one of the most admirable characters I have come across in anime".[20] Brittany Vincent for Syfy simply described Emma as "The lead protagonist of the series, Emma, hardly looks like your typical anime character at all, thanks to her shock of reddish, blonde hair and her wide eyes".[21] Tina Marie DeLucia from the Screen Rant website describes Emma as a young and cheerful protagonist, she also said that Emma has all the qualities of a lead: a drive, a devotion to a cause or family, and the desire to better the world and herself. She offers the “promise” of new genres of protagonists.[22]
Pauline Croquet from the french newspaper Le Monde said that the design of the three main characters, including Emma, is very original and comes out of the shōnen manga typical designs; and stated "The children of Grace Field House, the oldest of whom are 11 years old, have lived since birth in an idyllic setting and are treated with love by the director, whom they call "Mom". The intelligent and resourceful Emma, Norman and Ray, will understand that they are all in danger of death. They decide to run away with their siblings, but they are completely unaware of what awaits them outside".[23] Vincent Jule of the french newspaper 20 minutes praised her role as one of a few female main character of a manga published in a shōnen magazine, describing her as "Although pre-published in the magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump, the shônen temple, The Promised Neverland is more of a dark and cruel tale, taking up and diverting the codes of survival. For a long time, manga heroines were mostly shōjo manga heroines. And if they managed to find a (secondary) place in the shônen, it was most often with masculine attributes: the badass, the fight and sometimes the sexy. It was not the norm, but the majority. That is why Emma from The Promised Neverland is doing a world of good. With her short hair, her green eyes and her small size, the little girl does not look like much, but her intelligence, her courage and her resourcefulness very quickly make her the leader of the orphans of Grace Field House".[24]
The Promised Neverland by Kaiu Shirai and Posuka Demizu | |
---|---|
Media |
|
Characters | |
Related |
|