No, it is not a show about boys / girls with super powers saving the earth with bare hands, needing nothing but their bravery.
Challenged by many thoughts, but I finally took the courage and time (maybe also with a little effort) to put them all down here, just so one day I can probably read this again. Or maybe give someone else a hint about Shinsekai yori - "From the other world"
This is a review containing some spoilers here and there to record my -personal- feelings toward the show, and thus it might or might not give you a biased view when you watch the show. If you are reading this, I'd recommend you to stop, go watch the show and then read the rest (if you are still interested). You have been warned!
From the very first start, the show strikes me as a weird show. Children? That sure is fine. Supenatural? God, I hope this is not another one of those type. But contradicted to my expectation, the show gave me something ... similar. A strikingly sensation, if I may add, for I've encountered this feeling many time before - a feeling of walking in a world full of imagination, almost, but yet not the same as reading a book.
And no, it is not a show full of red, yellow, green and the other four colours of the rainbow either.
But to say Shinsekai yori is a colourful book is of no exaggeration. The art is vividly beautiful (except on some episodes the art suddenly took a very weird turn, thanks god the style turned back to "normal" on the very next episode before I could get used to it). Funny enough, now that I think back and even watched some of the episodes again, it is not elaborating at all. In fact the art style is simple, yet they serve their purposes just right, and with colours. I'd say, they are colourful animated sentences from a book even.
A book about feelings of love, of lost, of trust, and of fear.
So, what makes it worth spending roundly 7 hours, give or take, to watch this entire show rather than reading a good book or two? Talking about questions, it seems farfetched that an anime show would give you foreshadowing questions with sophisticated ideas, would it not? Apparently not so, for Shinsekai yori, and that is why I spent my time enjoying the show.
So, where does this "wonderful" story starts and ends? It's quite simple as a matter of fact, it starts with a group of children at sunset where their faces are shadowed by the bright light, and it ends with the same group. With less number. Shadows of five kids, and who've thought, that very same blurry image flashed back to me at the end of the show. Throughout the story, I have become acquainted and come to love their characters.
Except the part that our main protagonist seems to shred tears very easily. Spoiler?
Starting from daily school life to a camping week, the flow of the story goes, peacefully. For sure, what would be fearful for young spirits with supernatural powers in the wilderness?
And the first question came to me after our energetic and lovable characters met the old archive of the old civilization. Ultimately, under what category does Psychokinetic users fall under? The ones who rule above others? The scientists? Or the stray groups trying to survive on their own methods?
It still gives me goosebumps whenever I think back about that question at the end of the show, for you have also forgot another question - assuming their village is one of them, then where did the other two go?
But there were no time to dwell onto it, as the show is actually quite fast paced. Contradicting to the type of the show, or the type I would think it is, it is packed with enough actions to even compete with other shounen animes out there. And from these, many events were unfolded. Our lovable protagonists also learned many things, but of course with prices.
I am not going to talk about how the show has two girls / two boys kissing each other. No I am not, but I have to, since it it with great fear and through painful memories that they built up such bonds, together they would be able to stand against anything.
And amidst these events, a very strong feeling of regret came to me. Shun, the kid who's the smartest, calmest and collected, departed the living realm while leaving a "curse" onto Saki. "I've always loved you" - said him, a brief moment before he eradicated his very own existence. Ironically, it was an existence he knew, for he was chosen to read its definition for his classmates and teachers.
Had enough? Not yet, for that was certainly not the end of the tragedy that was about to unfold. One by one, Saki found herself losing her loved and trusted friends, the people who define her very world, and thus her very existence. Her world, Saki's world, shrunk even more after two more of the people in Group One left - Mamoru and Maria. Not once, but on twice occasions that her love abandoned her.
Shinsekai yori is a great, a truly amazing show, for it not only entertained but also scared me. What is fear? How it is to tremble in the middle of the night trying to survive? And how it is that when you think back, what you kill feel the very same way?
Such questions is everywhere in Shinsekai yori, a colourful show about a post-cataclysm world where psychokinetic is a natural ability to "human". For who, or what is "human", I'd leave that question to you.
