Shinsekai yori

In the year 2011, a small percentage of humans began manifesting psychokinetic abilities known as "Cantus." Over a millennium later, in the small town of Kamisu 66, Saki Watanabe is the last of her friends to awaken her powers and join the Sage Academy, a school for psychics like her. Although everyone at the institution has Cantus, they are not all equal; shortly after Saki enrolls, one of her classmates who is regarded as being weaker than the others suddenly disappears.

Walking home one day with her friends—the determined Maria Akzuki, the intelligent Shun Aonuma, the observant Satoru Asahina, and the timid Mamoru Itou—she comes across two unfamiliar creatures known as "Monster Rats." These beings resemble moles and worship those with Cantus as gods. As a result, when Saki uses her abilities to save one from trouble, she is met with exceptional gratitude.

Now unsure about the Monster Rats' place in society, Saki and her friends find out about another disappearance. As time passes, they slowly look for answers to the mysteries that surround them and begin to realize that this seemingly "perfect" new world masks humanity's dark past.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Watanabe, Saki Main

Endou, Aya Japanese

Akizuki, Maria Main

Hanazawa, Kana Japanese

Aonuma, Shun Main

Toudou, Mai Japanese

Asahina, Satoru Main

Kaji, Yuuki Japanese

Itou, Mamoru Main

Kudou, Haruka Japanese

Squealer Supporting

Namikawa, Daisuke Japanese

Kiroumaru Supporting

Hirata, Hiroaki Japanese

Asahina, Tomiko Supporting

Sakakibara, Yoshiko Japanese

Kaburagi, Shisei Supporting

Hoshino, Takanori Japanese

Akki Supporting

Uechi, Aki Japanese

Ochikoshi, Tomonori Producer

Kinoshita, Tetsuya Producer

Oomatsu, Yutaka Producer

Hosokawa, Osamu Producer

Reviews

Oct 31, 2024

Lemon_Brisket

Recommended

What makes a person? People say it takes a village to raise a child and in the case of this anime it very much rings true. What intrinsic details and elements go into making a person who they are and how they deal with their life? How we grow up, how we are raised. You know what it's like to be a child, to be a teenager.

This is easily one of the densest stories I've experienced. From the powers to the customs to the very fabric of the world they live in is very reminiscent of some elaborate social studies thought experiment. I won't ... lie by saying this is a casual watch, because it's anything but that. Your power of intuition and speculation will be put to the test.

This is a story that makes you think, the animation is mediocre at times (very reminiscent of a stock standard 2010's series) due to the somewhat psychoactive elements of the show but I personally feel that it's enough to convey the kind of scenes they are going for.

This series has the making of a cult classic, (dealing with timeless yet ever relevant topics) unfortunately there is no English version of the original novel available for purchase. Which gives me hope for possible anime in the future.

If you love unraveling totalitarian mysteries focusing on humanities resolute need to survive with a darker tone and psychic powers thrown in, I cannot suggest this series enough

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Jul 15, 2024

0004_1

Mixed Feelings

Art - 6/10 Some clear Dips in Visual quality during the season, the character designs look pretty good but the inconsistent animation and lack of innovation lead to a 6.

Characters - 7/10 There is alot of characters, Soo many that names are hard to remember even though i finished this a few days ago, and alot of the characters are just there for one certain thing to happen, Saki is pretty cool!

Story - 6/10 The ending was very satisfying and the last 5 episodes were by far the best of the show, but the middle drags soo much just for an expected but good twist ... at the end. From episode 3 - 18 it is really really boring and repetitive.

OST/Sound Design - 8/10 Just for the first ending, I think the first ending is genuinely amazing so im definitely bias towards it! but the rest of the sound is pretty good.

Overall - 6/10 Way too inconsistent and confusing, and the whole concept of the people acting as monkeys doesnt make sense to me at all.... (iykyk) Ending saves the story.!

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Aug 5, 2022

sliceofpi

Not Recommended

As a lover of psychological/philosophical/mystery anime, this is NOT one I recommend. Shinsekai Yori fails terribly to hold any interesting substance, wether it be within its stories or its characters. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I truly do not understand how someone could see this as a good anime, so I will explain my thoughts with lots of details so you may figure out if the problems would disrupt your viewing experience as well.

(spoiler free)

Story - 4
The IDEA for the story is brilliant and had so much potential, which is clear throughout the first quarter of the anime. But it is poorly ... executed most of the time.

First of all, this anime thinks you are stupid. The only way this anime gets information across is through info dumps, or from Saki repeating the same revelation she’s had 4 times, which really takes away from the shock effect. There are basically entire episodes dedicated to just giving a massive info dump. This is annoying because it takes the fun out of the chase for our characters. They don’t really have to fight much to get useful information, instead it’s just told to them pretty easily. Additionally, it’s better to have a story continue to unfold throughout the anime to keep viewers engaged. Instead, this anime will go a couple episodes with us learning nothing, and then INFO EPISODE! Then more episode learning nothing, and then INFO EPISODE! Again and again. It’s so bad that there are creatures in this show whose SOLE PURPOSE is to provide info dumps. Like a literal library-esque device that just spits out info whenever the main characters ask for it. Seriously, these characters don’t have to try at all to learn anything, like how did nobody else discover this stuff before them when it seems so easy?

The next problem with the story is the time skips. Time skips can make or break an anime in my opinion. I see them hindering this anime in the same way they hurt Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom, however it’s even worse in Shinsekai Yori. The time skips happen pretty randomly which disrupts the flow of the story. We don’t really get to see character development, but I will talk more about that in the character section. It also hurts the pacing of this anime, which is already very off. It’s too slow.

Finally the story is ruined from the stupid random plot points. The romance for starters is out of nowhere. You DON’T want romance to be something the viewers completely didn’t expect, because that means that the chemistry was not well developed at all. And this is the problem. No chemistry is shown through the characters at all. The main cast is friends. Wow! Honestly from watching I don’t know if you could even say they are that great of friends from the first couple episodes, but then later on it seems like they are the most important people to each other, even though they did not seem to have some great bond early on.

Saki’s actions also seem to be pretty random at times which I really dislike. One second she is not okay letting someone die to kill a threat. The next second she’s asking someone to sacrifice themselves to help kill the threat... where is the logic. This is also a problem with the characters but I think it is a pretty lazy way to move the story forward.

Art - 3
I am not too picky with art styles but I didn’t care for this one. Sometimes people will review an anime and say that the art looks cheap and poor in certain scenes, and I won’t have even noticed. But for this anime, I really noticed how cheap some scenes looked. Also, there are practically no bright colors. It’s all so dark and grayish.

Sound - 3
The OST is way too small in my opinion. There isn’t really an opening which is disappointing. It feels as if the creators thought this anime was too dark for an opening, but what I like about openings is how they make you excited for the show wether it is a super light-hearted comedy or a very dark psychological piece - yes it’s challenging to make one that won’t ruin the mood for the latter, but it shouldn’t just be skipped. The first ending is okay, the second ending is bad.

There was only one piece on the soundtrack that I kind of liked, otherwise they don’t stand out much. They are overused so much though, it seemed like the same two tracks were being played at least once per episode.

Characters - 2
The characters in this anime are unbelievably bland. I really cannot separate anyone from the main group of friends apart from each other. They are all nice and like each other and curious. That’s it. There is nothing defining about them when comparing them to characters from other anime, let alone when comparing them to each other. This makes it very boring to watch the show and destroys any emotional scenes because I just did not care about any of the characters.

The time skips made the character situation even worse because character development isn’t shown. Honestly it was kind of surprising how even though there were multiple time skips in the anime, I still see absolutely zero changes in any of the characters. They all stay the same.

The characters outside of the main friend group exist just to help the story continue and then they die. They have no memorable personality traits. I don’t even remember any of their names.

Now the only exception to this is Squealer. Squealer actually had traits (omg! a character that isn’t a blank slate in shisekai yori!) which included good and bad. This is revolutionary for this anime. Every other character is either a simple kind person who doesn’t want bad stuff to happen, or a simple person who also doesn’t want bad stuff to happen, but is framed as an evil person because they have a different idea.

Oh, and then of course we have the characters that serve solely for info dumps. I’m not really sure if these count as characters.

Enjoyment - 3
Every once in a while tensions were a little high and I was wondering what was going to happen next, so I guess that’s good! Some excitement put into the thrilling scenes, though these are far and few.

I enjoyed thinking about the philosophical concepts brought up. However the anime didn’t really aid with this because they bring up some philosophical questions but then completely abandon them.

Overall - 3
This anime was overall very boring to watch and didn’t have a well connected story line. Worst of all, the characters served no purpose to the story and didn’t have any personality. I found myself waiting for the episodes to end and excited when I was going to finally finish this anime. It was like a chore.

Shinsekai Yori has a great concept but it is very poorly executed.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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	Poll: Shinsekai yori Episode 25 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Mar 22, 2013	1,328 replies	by Ryan_the_Bread »» Today, 12:08 AM
	I deeply empathize with Squeelor and the outcome of his arc was enraging (warning: spoilers) IAmSovereign - May 10, 2022	33 replies	by Ara78 »» Nov 18, 6:43 AM
	Poll: Shinsekai yori Episode 8 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Nov 16, 2012	703 replies	by BlueMelon28 »» Oct 30, 7:25 AM
	Poll: Shinsekai yori Episode 10 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Nov 30, 2012	304 replies	by dspr »» Oct 7, 6:17 PM
	Poll: Shinsekai yori Episode 9 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ) Stark700 - Nov 23, 2012	207 replies	by dspr »» Oct 7, 5:52 PM

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