Shinsekai Yori
Alternate Titles:
From the New World
Shin Sekai Yori
Plot:
Five students with supernatural powers live in a world that is set in the far distant future. They come to realize that the world is not as it seems and begin to slowly learn the chilling truths about their village, the greater world around them, and each other that will change their lives forever.
General Info:
25 Episodes
22 Minutes/Episode
Release Date – Fall 2012
Source:
Shinsekai Yori is based off a novel by Yusuke Kishi of the same name.
Staff:
The director has been involved in a lot, but this seemed to be his directorial debut as the primary director for a series.
About four or five episodes in there was a small shift in the visuals. That was due to a change in the episode director for that particular episode.
Animation:
The visuals are simple, yet stunning. It balances the right amount of details, and colors. Using extreme imagery when needed to really emphasize an important points.
I’ve read it had a relatively low budget but they made it work really well.
Music:
The music is amazing in this series and always fits exactly what the anime needs at that moment.
Fun fact, the name is the Japanese translation of Antonin Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony, From the new World, and the piece makes an appearance in the series.
Review:
This is very likely one of the best series that has come out in the past year that no one gave a damn about.
It took me some time to get around to this review because I wanted to sludge through a lot of crap in my backlog and really give it the attention that I knew a year ago in the first three or four episodes that it deserved. And I’m glad I did.
Shinsekai Yori is an intense, mature, psychological series that questions many aspects of life such as: good and evil, the nature of humanity, mortality, and more. This is a show that is steeped in lore and has some of the best storytelling that is out there in anime. And yes, it starts off with five twelve year olds with superpowers going to school.
A lot of this review as a result will be me convincing you to make the right decision that is watching this anime. In doing so I’ll likely be mentioning things here and there that you may have heard that may be keeping you from watching it.
Shinsekai Yori starts off as what I have heard some describe as “slow.” While I personally did not experience this I think a lot of this negative feeling comes from the fact that it does star out as sounding horribly cliche. There’s even a ball-rolling contest in the second or third episode. But, what these episodes function as is intense world-building that is essential for a series of this length. Right off the bat you begin to get the uneasy feeling – and some foreshadowing – that there is something far darker surrounding these children. All of this is somewhat put together around episodes four and five when they meet a “library” creature with all the data that led up to the fall of humanity – did I mention yet that this story is set in the far future? No? Well it’s set in the far future.
The information dump isn’t so severe that you’re shockingly overwhelmed, but gives you enough to start to make sense of what you’ve seen until now and begin to piece things together going forward. It also introduces some things that will become relevant later in the series. Foreshadowing? Paced details? These all sound like great examples of storytelling. Yep, they are.
The next four or five episodes focus around a war of some animal-esque tribes. One of which is a spider clan and let me express that I watched icky spiders for you all. I HATE spiders. And that just shows how worth it this show was. I could stomach the spiders.
At one point in the series there’s even a what would be the start of a sex scene between two twelve-year olds. Which just saying that makes this series sound cheap, cliche, or one that’s worth putting down by virtue of that lone. But the way in which it is presented and what it means to the series is rather integral. The scene is not fan-service or self-serving. But in all it’s tastefully done glory it serves as an example of humans – Saeki – overcoming what is engraved in them to do.
Anyways, spiders aside and awkward potential sex, shortly after we come to the first time skip at episode 9. Time skips are something that occur throughout this series but not in such a way that it feels like we’re jumping away from the characters. This first time skip is actually substantial in that it does a great job of illustrating the changes that occur between the ages of 12-14. One of the things that I’m not sure I like about where this series went with things was the illustration of the sex-drive and romance. I understand it’s an important part of the series about sex and what it means for society. But some of it still felt contrived. Maybe it’s just me…
Come halfway through the series if you’re not completely sucked in there is a huge shock, or it was for me, that really changes things for our characters.
The second half of the anime takes more time really explaining the world and fleshing out things that you came to understand, or maybe not really understand, in the first half. What I really liked about Shinsekai Yori was that they tied up everything neatly in a bow. Any assumptions you made on what things meant in the first half, any questions on how the world worked, were fleshed out and explained in the second. But, it does so in such a way that you can still draw your own conclusions about the real questions of what the show is asking: the nature of humanity and human society.
The characters are a driving force of this anime. Watching them navigate through this almost painful to experience world is something that instantly pulls you to them. At times you want to punch them for their willingness to just conform. Or throttle them for their acceptance of injustices as ‘they are the way things are.’ But, because of these things they are so deeply human that I think part of the anger comes from an introspective look on ourselves as we watch. Because of this, when characters do break the mold watching them do so is as intriguing as it can be torturous.
There is a necessary painfulness to watching this anime. Each chilling moment will captivate you only if you let yourself be drawn into this world. I don’t see how it can’t happen, since the world is so unbelievably engaging but I understand that it could be seen as slower in the first half. It’s an anime that deserves to be watched, and that deserves to be respected.