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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.

I was honestly expecting this to be much worse. From all that I heard about it I was genuinely expecting something along the lines of "cute, cute, cute, BAM violent twist", which would have been stupid.

This series instead establishes pretty much from the start that nothing good can come from having one's wish granted by magic, and rolls with it in a downward spiral of bad choices and even worse consequences.

Now, that taken into account, I do think the first episode is quite bad, as it establishes a cutesy atmosphere that really, will never come into play again nor work with the subversion of the ... genre. Sure, it's introducing us to the characters before the bad things start to happen... but actually it is not, as the personalities we are presented with in the first episode seem to not have much relation with how the characters are shown in later episodes (where they are naive but also very thoughtful and relatively mature)

The story is, as mentioned, a nice subversion of the magical girl genre, equiparing the "magic will solve all your problem" trope with faustians deals. Which, yeah, is a very interesting way to go about it, especially when delivered through characters who speak in flat theatrical monotone sentences while fighting dada-inspired monster which seems to have jumped straight off some Grant Morrison comic. Sadly though after some episodes of cool mystery answers have to be given (well, no they don't, but the author obviously wanted to give them to us) and that ends up soiling a bit the mystique of the whole affair.

Don't get me wrong, some reveals are actually very good, like the actual identity of the transferred student, but I would have honestly preferred that things like the identity of Kyube or the reason for Madoka's "potential" would have been left ambiguous and implied through visuals. In general I do feel that this series does do WAY too much overexplaining, ruining again, a bit of the fantastic mood it manages to set through visuals.

Overall it's quite a good series, although I feel that it could have been so much better if it didn't tried to have a "pop" appeal.

I am a sucker for media about creators making media, the artistic struggle and the pressure that producing entertainment brings, when well represented, can be pretty emotionally powerful while at the same time make for something really entertaining to watch.

I have to admit that I was a bit taken aback by Shirobako approach though. Rather than focusing on telling us a story about people making Japanese animation, it puts on the forefront the actually process itself, often completely stopping the story to show us how some particular aspect of the media is produced. Fortunately all this stuff is quite interesting, and explained in a very ... fast and snappy way (although I prefer very much scenes when we just see the character *doing* things, rather than the ones in which the two comic relief mascots just describe how something works).

Tying this "technical showcase" together there is what is actually pretty decent drama, with a large cast of characters characterized just enough to make the endless crunch time squabbles quite gripping and entertaining.

What lacks though, is a bit of cynicism, which I honestly think is quite needed when talking about industrially produced art. This is not to say that the series pulls its punches about what happens in the industry (hell one of the first thing we see is an animator fainting from the sheer amount of work she had just completed), but more simply it just doesn't really seems to acknowledge that some things it's showing us are not necessarily... good... or normal. This get touched a bit in the second season, but quickly brushed away by... basically getting the character who was posing those issues drunk (lovely...).

About the second season it is also worth to note that while the first one manages pretty well to be grounded and relatively serious, the second season has quite a bit of wackiness added to it. Not enough to really be off-putting, but still, the tone shift can be felt.

Overall I quite enjoyed this. It takes an in-depth look at how Japanese animation gets made while at the same time managing to tell a good story about crunch time, creativity and industry issues.

I keep going back and fort about this series. While on one hand it tries to experiment with structure and the subverting of watcher expectations, on the other hand most of it it's a comedy... and well, I just don't find it that funny.

Most of the characters are bland and vaguely stereotypical (and I've heard arguments for the fact that they are SO stereotypical because they are trying to subvert those archetypes, which I... well, don't really buy), and the humor itself is either playing on those characters' "quirky" personality or referencing other animes, both of which I don't find to be done in a ... particularly interesting way.

To top that I find Haruhi's character and what she turns out to be very... off-putting, as it tries in some form to subvert the manic pixie dream girl trope but somehow ends up with an even worse character by doing so.

I will assume this is a series that can be a lot more enjoyable for people who are really into the whole otaku culture thing, as they will probably will be far more receptive to the constant parodying of anime genres and situations. Personally I found it a bundle of interesting ideas brought down by its own niche appeal.