Shin Sekai Yori

Masterpieces come once in a blue moon. If you're lucky you'll get a handful in a given year. If not, you'll only get one. In fact, only one reached the latter this year, and that was Shin Sekai Yori. With an award-winning source material, Shin Sekai Yori was a series that came in with high expectations and still managed to exceed them. It was just that good, mixing ambition and a bit of controversy to form a captivating story that showcased the potential of anime as a storytelling medium. Powered by plot twists that often left viewers in shock and a great cast of characters that made you fear for their lives, this was a great example of superb content meeting perfect execution. To top things off, it did all of this with a limited budget– that's how risky its ideas were–making Shin Sekai Yori a series that really beat the odds in terms of being animated in the first place. It's just a pity it didn't have any commercial success, because this was exactly the kind of series anime needs more of.

This show was pretty weird, and considering most animes are weird by default, that's saying something. I did like it, but it was kinda slow.

It's set 1000 yrs in the future and mankind has evolved psychic and telekinetic powers called 'cantus'. Saki and her friends are adolescents who are just learning about their cantus powers. They live in a seemingly peaceful and idyllic society. Yet children from their school occasionally go missing, and everyone forgets about them really quickly. Saki and her friends go on an excursion and meet an interesting creature that reveals secrets about mankind's past. From then on, Saki and friends become targetted as troublemakers since they now know things that were meant to stay secret.

While this show is long and can be slow, it's not boring, and has a constant sense of menace, where you don't know what's going to happen next, but you get a feeling it's going to be something bad. The animation is different to most of the shows I've seen lately, maybe lower budget, yet it's still decent. The characters are well developed and you really care about their predicaments.

I say watch it if you're looking for something dark and different.

Despite his really slow rythm, it is indubitably worth it. The ending is simply the wisest of all, allowing us to make senseful parallels with our society. Plus the drawings are really enjoyable.

I'll be honest, the first few episodes didn't exactly captivate me. Their purpose was to set the stage for the characters and their psychokinetic powers. DO NOT LET THIS KEEP YOU FROM FINISHING THE SHOW. Around episode 3 or 4 the main driving force of the show begins as the children are able to capture a mysterious creature which holds libraries worth of information about past and present events. What they discover leads them down a path filled with adventure, action, romance, horror, mystery, death, peril and ultimate understanding of what kind of world they truly live in.

What really makes this show shine is it's complete originality. I would be lying if I said I have seen anything like it before. The basic synopsis of the setting; Jump a thousand years forward after a devastating war destroyed much of the world following an evolutionary event which began giving people the power of telekinesis. The entire human race now has telekinesis, including the village in which the protagonist group lives. As the story progresses these five characters begin uncovering many dark secrets and mysteries that lie behind this seemly happy and peaceful village of theirs.

Aside from the show's originality, Shin Sekai Yori's strongest point is it's immersion and atmosphere. This atmosphere is complimented by a beautiful yet unsettling soundtrack and sometimes very peaceful art design. You feel completely sucked into the world, giving the sense of danger the characters feel and the uncertainty that lies around every corner. You can never be certain what will happen next, and I love that about this show. The anxiousness and fear that envelopes you is such a spectacular feat for the show's creators. You are given several characters to follow throughout the course of the story but are never given certainty that all of them, or any of them, will survive. Lets just say people die in this show... a lot of people.

Other then the beginning being a little slow moving at times, the negatives of this show are small but still noticeable. Out of the five main characters not all of them get enough time to develop since most of the screen time goes to the main main characters Saki and Satoru. At times the show can pace a little awkwardly as well, due to the story writers dedicating their time to the most important portions of the show and sometimes wanting to focus very heavily on certain scenes. If you are truly invested in Shin Sekai Yori however, this shouldn't bother you at all.

Shin Sekai Yori is a roller coaster ride through a mysterious and fascinating new world with very deep moral questions and though provoking themes. If you want an anime you can invest yourself in, then look no further!

Okay, my 2nd review. This anime takes place in a new world where some people has kind of telekinetic powers, and it will focus on a group of childrens. The first episodes will provide information about their lives and the way they relate to eachother. That´s all i can say without spoiling.

My philosophy: you can always find something in an anime that you´ve never seen before, and for me that´s enough to make it a worthy watch (which is why i´d never tell anyone not to watch an anime). However, there are some things you need to know before you watch. This anime is very complex to analyze so i will just focus on what i considered the weakest and strongest points.

The strongest point is not the storyline but the way it was developed. We know nothing from the beggining and the more we watch, the more we learn and understand about what´s going on. That was masterfully done. There was never plot holes and everything was well timelly explained. The character decisions made perfect sense along the way; you may never experience the feeling of "why the heck did this happened?" as it happened to me with other anime. However, it felt like the story had some waisted potential. I would consider the weakest point as the absence of a climax. Even in much worse anime series you may find a moment that blows your mind away. That didn´t happen to me with Shin Sekai Yori.

The love scenes and character relationships are hard to describe and even understand. I would have liked a more conventional aproach but i´m not disappointed. Character development isn´t great but it´s good enough to make sense and escort the storyline. The soundtrack is not remarkable either (considering there is no intro), but it complishes it´s task of mixing on with what´s happening at the moment. The ending is extremelly thought provoking and well presented, and it´s the final touch to produce an almost perfectly writen story.

It´s a 7/10 for me because i didn´t quite love the way the writers decided to focus the story (even tho the execution was excellent, as i previously pointed out). Having said that, give it a try. It´s a very worth watching anime.