Shinsekai yori (From the New World)

In the town of Kamisu 66, 12-year-old Saki Watanabe has just awakened to her psychic powers and is relieved to rejoin her friends—the mischievous Satoru Asahina, the shy Mamoru Itou, the cheerful Maria Akizuki, and Shun Aonuma, a mysterious boy whom Saki admires—at Sage Academy, a special school for psychics. However, unease looms as Saki begins to question the fate of those unable to awaken to their powers, and the children begin to get involved with secretive matters such as the rumored Tainted Cats said to abduct children.

Shinsekai yori tells the unique coming-of-age story of Saki and her friends as they journey to grow into their roles in the supposed utopia. Accepting these roles, however, might not come easy when faced with the dark and shocking truths of society, and the impending havoc born from the new world.

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Yajima, Akiko
Japanese

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Ochikoshi, Tomonori

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Kinoshita, Tetsuya

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Oomatsu, Yutaka

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Ishihama, Masashi

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard, Animation Director

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Opening Theme

"Yuki ni Saku Hana (雪に咲く花)" by Maria Akizuki (Kana Hanazawa) (eps 16)

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Ending Theme

	1: "Wareta Ringo (割れたリンゴ)" by Saki Watanabe (Risa Taneda) (eps 1-16)
	2: "Yuki ni Saku Hana (雪に咲く花)" by Maria Akizuki (Kana Hanazawa) (eps 17-24)

Reviews

Feb 21, 2014

Decoys

Recommended

Rewind back to the dawn of fall 2012, you are looking at the fall 2012 anime chart, and you pick probably 5-7 anime you are going to watch. But I can promise that the majority of you, as did I, most likely did not have Shinsekai Yori as a pick. During midst of 2013 I looked at Shinsekai Yori, the promotional picture did not catch my eye and the premises did not spark my interests. However, I did give it a shot and after finishing the anime I can promise that it is truly a spectacle, a diamond in the ruff.

The story takes place in ... Japan a thousand years from the present in a utopia where a portion of the population retain a special power called psychokinesis. From the beginning we follow a group of five children as they grow up in the anime and see how they develop within a community bounded by strict rules, and deal with the decisions they make that alter the course of their lives and the entire society they live in. The plot of the show flows very nicely from episode to episode and just as we approach the climax, there’s a plot twist and the storyline from that point just flips upside down in a way you would never expect it to.

The characters in this anime are just something else, with Saki as it’s shining star. The main characters start off as children and by the end of the anime they are adults, with proper illustration of character development. There are a couple of anime who have attempted this children to adulthood metamorphosis motif within one season but they do not pull it off as well as Shinsekai Yori. With an anime that has twenty-five episodes, you would think it would not be enough time for proper character development from children to adults. However, Shinsekai Yori pulls this off very smoothly, which is evidently seen with Saki and Satoru, which even applies to the supporting characters as well. You will not see one character behaving as such and then the next episode they are being the polar opposite, everything is explained and shown very well.

The sound is one of the areas this anime excels in. Every sound that you would not even care for is implemented in every episode and added in the appropriate places, at the appropriate times; the echoing of the voices in a dim room, the rippling of water flowing from a stream. Not to mention soundtrack produced in this amine, which is amazing. Just youtube the battle theme, even if you have not watched the anime yet, it will entice your interests in this anime.

The quality of the art and the animation is what you would expect of any anime standards that are out there today: clear, crisp and pleasing to the eye. The characters and the environment in each of the scenes are drawn to a level of detail, not too simple, yet not to far in detail as well, just in the middle. The quality of art really makes you focus on the message the anime is trying to radiate to the viewer; more than focusing of the wow factor on how amazing the art is.

In terms of the enjoyment, this is not an anime that starts off on a high note and continues as such from there. The first two or three episodes really butters you up, but once you hit the fourth or fifth episode, I promise you, you will be hooked and you will just watch one episode after another. Even if you are more into romance, comedy, action or any genre that is not related to Shinsekai Yori, this anime is definitely worth watching and will probably open the doors to other anime series you never bothered to watch.

Overall I really enjoyed this anime, people should give it a try (unexpectedly, it even became one of my favourites). It did not look appealing to me at first, hence “diamond in the ruff”, but once I started and things picked up, I just wrapped myself in a blanket and marathon’d the whole show. Just looking back at the anime, I will say that one of the highlights of this show is it's ability to take the morals and values of the world we live in and put it into perspective from watching what the characters do to each other and the outcomes that blossom from their decisions. Give Shinsekai Yori a try and you will see what I mean!

I hope you enjoyed my seemingly short review, I would not mind any feedback and if you enjoyed this series or feel enticed to watch it after reading this, feel free to leave a comment !

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Feb 8, 2014

GonzoLewd

Mixed Feelings

There's often a point in one's life to acknowledge the possibility of another worldly phenomenon outside of our collective conscience from where we live that is in contrast with our ideals. This philosophical problem has always been a subject of discussion since Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," which chronicles how our limited understanding of the reality we perceive may not be what it seems since we're so entrenched in our society. Many works of fiction have dabbled this subject matter numerous times, with some succeeding and others failing. Unfortunately for Shinsekai Yori, it falls into the latter, but not entirely.

To start, the basic idea of ... how Shinsekai Yori's story pans out is that it's a coming-of-age story focusing on five different characters. Their journey in discovering the history of human civilization eventually transpired into pure dystopia. It starts exceptionally well with building up these characters that are all very unique and distinguishable from each other. There's never a moment where I couldn't remember who a specific person was, and it's not just their appearances but their well-written personalities and backgrounds. Their childhood arc paces itself nicely in giving an atmosphere for us to take in that's mysterious and puzzling in a minimal understanding of what the world is actually like because that's how the childish mindset would be like in this scenario. However, once that arc was finished and we got our first-time skip, it didn't get too extraordinary as one would hope.

One thing that makes the time skips off-putting is how there's hardly any build-up on how these characters' personalities matured over time. For instance, one of the most controversial things about the show was the relationship between kids of the same sex. It's not so much the relationships themselves that I have a problem with. It's how it comes out of nowhere with hardly any development behind it. In this sense, it feels as though there was more to their relationships, but they had to rush it so it won't feel dragged out for time constraints. Because of this, one might feel inclined to give it a pass. But for me, the time skips cannot forgive. Given the context, this show brings to the table wanting to be this grand epic that ultimately feels lazy from a writing perspective. The best romantic development in the entire show was between Saki and Satoru because of how long we've followed these two together and how strong their bond was in helping each other through the numerous challenging obstacles. Alas, the rest of the relationships thrown out didn't make a massive impression because of how weak and lazy they implemented them into the story; if they had anything of value for us to see how they got to that point, it would've been for the best.

While the story itself isn't something we've seen before, it is still a mysterious and suspenseful drama that manages to pull off some great twists through the narrative. That is until the realization comes to mind when the pacing of it all fails to make it a masterpiece in the writing department. Like I said before about the time skips, they dumb down the pacing because of how they rush some of the arcs that could've been more effective had it been done with better intentions, such as at least showing us a montage of them overtime. That shouldn't mean that time skips are unnecessary in any situation, but it takes a lot of care and precise handling to make them work. Time skips aside. The other pacing issues mostly happen in the middle part of the show, where scenes lack clarity in their exposition, giving us a clear, concise way of what has happened or what will happen to the characters or future events. Too fast to even comprehend the overarching conflicts that arise from the protagonist feeling messy and disorganized for us to piece together what will transpire. This could come into play with the fact that the show skips over essential details in the novel, but for reviewing the show itself, there's no need to go over that aspect.

How Shinsekai Yori handles its world-building through expository dialogue receives a mixed response from me. It works like a pattern where one or all of our heroes are journeying or trying to find answers. Eventually, they'll talk to someone who will explain everything to them in no more than ten minutes, either the dark history of Japan and how it ultimately became a grim dystopia or what the ethics counsel is really like underneath. The narrative is thought-provoking at times that bring into question human nature and how society structures itself into chaos. However, I can't help but feel that it could've been done more better with less redundancy and not feel like a lazy attempt at being profound.

It's not just the writing that feels off, but the technical side of the show feels very limited and looks shoddy in the process. That's not to say all of it looks bad, there are a lot of beautiful set pieces drawn into the backgrounds, and the character designs look unique and fit well with the tone of the show. However, there are a lot of problems with the designs of the monsters that inhabit Shinsekai Yori, where they don't look well-drawn, and their animations look as if the director hired a low-budget studio to animate them. There's even one episode where the animation took a complete nose-dive where the queen of the queerats looks like a giant blob that the animators didn't draw fully of what it was initially supposed to look like. I'm not saying that all shows have to look highly high-budget to be called good art/animation, but it doesn't strike my fancy when there's nothing significant to gaze at.

With all of the negativity I've had for Shinsekai Yori, there are still several good things worth noting. It is without question that the amount of suspense and heart-pounding tension that Shinsekai Yori offers is astonishing. The first three minutes of the first episode alone garners some needed praise for its well-directed atmosphere, right down to the music and editing of all of the events in present-day Tokyo. Its tone is not pretty, and it will nonetheless make a lot of people feel uncomfortable to sit through in some instances, but that should warrant a lot of credit to the show in giving us a very mature tone that comes in full swing. What makes the suspense amazingly good and imposing is the amount of mystery that we are provided through the children's perspective and how we can never see how the adults know the situation in the world. Often you don't see stories handle mystery this way and make for an intense experience. The first-person narrative through Saki gives a distinct feel to how we see her grow into this person who is fully aware in later life that feels undeniably human to me.

As many have told me about the story, the ending makes up for it despite its faults. It provides the level with a satisfying conclusion. There were no predictable outcomes present at the narrative's end. That guarantees Shinsekai Yori some much-needed acclaim for at least not giving us a story that isn't inherently generic in a predictable way. No Hollywood gimmick severely tarnishes the gritty tone. It handles itself in a very realistic fashion that feels very satisfying to see first-hand.

Musically, it mainly consists of really bombastic chanting music that is very haunting and intimidating from the style of tone it tries to set. There are very few questionable choices of songs that Shinsekai Yori has that feel out of place in any scene. Intense orchestration also borrows from some minimalist influence in some ambiance tone it gives with light electronically ambient mixes in-between settings that are inherently quiet and simple.

Ambitious though it may be, Shinsekai Yori just doesn't cut it entirely as a supreme masterpiece that has come out in recent years. The problems it possesses in giving us a poorly-paced story that can't provide a concise narrative that's hard to get around. Character development feels good in some areas, but their relationships felt contrived with inconsistent expository problems due to the poorly put time skips. I wouldn't classify this show as completely bad. The amount of suspenseful tension makes for an intense experience to behold in showing us the one significant development of Saki into a fully realized character. After all, a worthwhile experience with many faults in its technical aspects is at least more tolerable than a show with great technical prowess with no added value to the experience whatsoever.

Grade: B-

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Nov 3, 2015

Eingya

Not Recommended

Shinsekai Yori, or From The New World, is a teen-oriented piece of dystopic speculative fiction, the latest addition in this new wave of teen fiction to which the success of Hunger Games has opened the doors.

The series follows the adventures of five kids, from their childhood to their adulthood, in a medieval-ish post apocalyptic setting, where the only human left are the one possessing a special psychic ability called "Cantus".

While the first episode is quite good, establishing the setting and the mysteries behind it ("what's the government hiding?", "how did the world get like this?"), the series pretty much falls downwards after that, with episode ... 2 weirdly shifting the tone to high-school hi-jinx (admittedly it is foreshadowing but, as it happens many times in the series, in order to deliver us world details it suddenly changes tone, making for a very disjointed and uninteresting episode) and episode 3 basically killing any mystery with a long exposition sequence.

With almost everything resolved, the story stumbles aimlessly for ten or so episodes, as... things... start to happen. We get to see lots of short story arcs that, while again foreshadowing small story details, don't really feel connected to each other and don't offer any particularly gripping narrative. The series even pushes the reset button a couple of times, making the character forget, and having to re-learn, story details that we already know... riveting...

The story does pick up a bit with the last story arc, putting together all the awkward foreshadowing it did until that point and finally having a long story arc that feels significant to the world in which it is set.

While I feel that the first batch of episodes was intended to be about establishing and exploring the main characters before letting them loose in the final arc, in the practice it doesn't really work that well. First of all, I'm sorry, but the characters are just not that interesting, as most of them are pretty one note, secondly the main conflict of that part of the series is basically kids vs shady government... which would be fine, except that the government in question is... just not that shady, as again we learn all of their motivations in the third episode... and... they make quite a lot of sense.

Also this series has a serious problem with beating us over the head with things that have already been explained over and over again.

So... with an interesting setting that gets squandered, likable but ultimately flat characters, big problems with tone and pacing, and the trivialization of any mystery element the series could have had... is there anything good in Shinsekai Yori?

Well there is that one amazing musical theme we get to listen at the beginning of some episodes, and the series direction is quite good and can set a very eerie mood when it wants to (and when the characters shut up). Most than anything though I like how it engages with sexual themes, working as an interesting allegory for the sexual confusion of puberty and adolescence.

To be honest I quite like how Shinsekai Yori approaches youth and puberty as a whole. and how it manages to translate those themes into a post apocalyptic coming to age story. Sadly though, while the ideas behind it are solid, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The fact that it is a 25 episode slog doesn't really help, as it does feel that with a few episodes cut down the series would flow a lot better and generally be far more enjoyable.

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