A World Unlike Any Other
I've been on a bit of a CrunchyRoll binge ever since first watching FMA: Brotherhood on Netflix Instant. A medium I had previously considered reserved for childhood entertainment, anime, was suddenly opened up to me by the mature plot and characters of a show I would've previously blown off. In the months following that last episode, I've been running through shows trying to find more serious anime to delve into, wading through seas of shows that quite frankly further stereotypes rather than attempt to break them. In this sea, at the suggestion of several posters with thousands of hours of experience more than me, I found Shinsekai Yori, or in English, From The New World.
The promotional poster for Shinsekai Yori: From The New World.
SSY certainly starts with a bang. The viewer is dropped into the lives of five children living in what seems to be Feudal Japan: Saki, Shun, Satoru, Maria and Mamoru. This seems to be a normal world, until you learn that every human has latent psychokinetic abilities, referred to as Cantus. The five children attend Unified Academy to learn how to control their Cantus, but as the years go on, they begin to notice that things are not what they appear. Impure Cats haunt the night, mystic barriers surround the town, and the students are constantly warned to be wary of what is only referred to as "an Ogre". As the episodes move on, the characters deal with some of the most heart-wrenching tragedy I've seen in a show in a long while, all to attempt to uncover what has been hidden for so long. The fact that SSY is an adaptation of a popular novel shows; the writing is top-notch, and each scene has a deliberate and fluid pacing. No word is wasted, and no filler is used to elongate the series.
The storytelling in SSY is incredible. A mixture of historical flashbacks, timeskips, and heavy emphasis on cinematography and style lead to a wonderfully rich world that seeks to continually draw you in with beauty and mystery. Anyone who enjoyed the Ender series or Lost would feel right at home with this series; a mixture of sci-fi and fantasy surrounds themes of class dispute, xenophobia, natural selection, and the relativity of ethics.
The conclusion of the story is nothing short of breathtaking, and it's rare that a series can evoke such emotion with only 26 episodes.
A mysterious figure speaks to Saki in a hallucination.
The art is amazing, although in certain episodes animation can occasionally take a noticeable dip. This isn't a terrible thing, but it's likely you'll notice it around episode 6 or 7. The music is fantastic, and the composer does a wonderful job of capturing the mood of this twisted world. Also, a side note: while I don't always hate openings, I loved that SSY doesn't have one. It means you can jump right into the story without sitting or skipping through a minute and a half of pointless animation with music behind it. The ending song for the first half of the series is also quite good, and several times I caught myself simply watching the ending and listening to the music instead of jumping right on ahead to the next episode.
The verdict? If you've ever wanted to try an anime but have been turned off by the childish or just plain weird aspects of it, Shinsekai Yori is for you. Mystery, dark themes and brilliant dialogue push this series up past the muck and make it easily some of the best 2012 had to offer. Now to just wait for the novel to be fully translated... 9/10
