This review will be less about what facets of the anime I feel are excellent or flawed, and more about how my lifetime has led me to interact with the human process of storytelling.
I have been watching anime since I was a child, from sneaking out of bed to catch each week's Detective Conan on Adult Swim, the mature and shonen animes on old Toonami, to having a computer of my own in my teenage years and relentlessly consuming all kinds of anime. At 21, I have invested in thousands of stories, shows, and books. I understand when I enjoy an anime for being a guilty pleasure, for being overpopular but underrated in quality, I've had my phases of Death Note and Code Geass and arthouse projects like Genius Party and Serial Experiments Lain. I appreciated NGE, I've appreciated a lot of stories.
For music, for anime, for anything, I have never been a person to have a favorite. It seems impossible for my mind to weigh the emotional reactions stories have gotten out of me and rank them. I can accept that I had a stronger connection to characters but noticed flaws in screenplay or motivations. I can accept many of the flaws in every show and suspend disbelief to enjoy or analyze the message that is being communicated to me by a work. I have not discriminated against any anime that used fluff to hook viewers while trying to tell an incredible story. I have not favored greatly any anime that had a poor or rehashed story but still drew me, particularly, in. I have seen nearly everything, so even shows that surprise me even still do not qualify as remarkable qualities for a favorite, because I will be surprised again, and surprises by nature do not mean much.
I did not know what kind of show I would be getting with Shinsekai Yori, but I did eventually realize I was following a dystopian setting and its characters along. I noticed along the way that these characters were being portrayed very honestly, and the story was being told in such a way that I would have to appreciate worldbuilding, I would have to appreciate character growth, and I would get to enjoy a few twists and reveals. All elements that capture attention.
On the path to all this, it is hard to put an anime on a pedestal simply for following what are good steps for a great story. It is hard to justify putting an anime on a pedestal for going beyond that and reaching me emotionally with its great story. But something here, about the entirety of this show is remarkably praiseworthy. I can't say that on almost everything it was executed perfectly, and I can't guarantee that the experience I had watching it was the same powerful experience everyone will have, given the context of their lives or what things they may notice in the show that will tug at the ego and create a critical frown.
I can only tell you that for someone who has lived a life swallowed up in stories that I do not live and never will, who enjoys being drawn into fantasy and being consumed whole by it, Shinsekai Yori is the most incredible thing that this medium has ever delivered. I look at Cowboy Bebop, I look at the Studio Ghibli classics, any other top title you may have seen and after having watched this decide that was better, I understand. Many shows have an irreplaceable, unique charm, and a fresh take that may resonate strongly with people. I cannot pick a favorite, I will tell you that Shinsekai Yori has its own unique charm. It has created its own fresh take, it has not managed to disillusion me with any of its characters or its storytelling devices.
I do not feel as if Shinsekai Yori is pushing agenda or narcissism onto me, in a very innocent way it is simply delivering many messages that are up to you to prioritize. It does not seem to come from an imagination that has motives or takes sides. It possesses the honest delivery of people, places, and events that are required to tell a story. It is unfailingly impressive at provoking deep emotions, and it is uniquely impressive at provoking questions that can be very hurtful, circumstances that can be so gruesomely true when translated into philosophical questions that you may desire to think on it quickly and move on to watching the following events on screen out of fear that these questions will penetrate too deeply. It has that ability.
This anime will be my favorite anime from now until the end of the medium. I was not planning on deciding anything like this before I watched it or even getting close to the climax. But when I thought of what I liked and what I did not like, it was so muddled to me how to rank this show that I think if there is anything that can be called a favorite it must be the most unique thing you have ever encountered.
Following that philosophy, I might run into another problem that I have absolutely ran into before when trying and failing to pick a favorite. There are many unique shows out there. But often I cannot convince myself that the show, although breaking new ground, will not just inspire another show of a similar genre with more honest characters, or a more vibrant story, or even with just better production. With Shinsekai Yori, for some reason, I cannot imagine a case where this show is simply the flagship for a new lineage of story. It fits into these genres - sci-fi, dystopian, horror, drama, but these labels seem to me for once as only attempts to model or explain what I've just experienced after the fact, rather than a mold for what I should expect or what lines this story has to follow along to be included in these categories.
At many moments the show had the opportunity to pull a punch, and it didn't. At many moments it should have, and it did. At many moments it set the stage for development, but it took its time or it assumed on the part of its viewer that these developments were part of the all-encompassing world built within the show, and that because I acknowledged them, they were there, and it proceeded to deliver its messages with cool disregard for leaving me behind or catching me up.
On every single level Shinsekai Yori is a masterpiece, not of one genre, but a masterpiece in the sense that intelligent human life on this planet is a rare miracle. Stories are the species' way of celebrating that miracle, a species lonely that they are the only ones who will care to appreciate what their own lives meant in this humming corner of the empty universe. Stories are a celebration of us, people who live for a handful of generations and die to the indifference of all matter around us except those who remember us, who will too have their stories forgotten. Shinsekai Yori cries out to that lonely instinct to appreciate human sacrifice, desires, and growth, hoping that others will carry on even a whisper of who you were and what you dreamed hundreds of years after you are gone.
