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My rating for this show is based entirely on the English dub. I watched it with the sub and dub at the same time. They are as far as I can tell unrelated.

I don't know the story behind the people who dubbed this show. I like to imagine that it's a bit like Samurai Pizza Cats - if you don't know the story behind that show, its creators were given the show but not a script and had to make stuff up. In this case they probably had a translation, but the dialogue in the original version is so disjointed (read ... the summary if you want to see what I mean, it's all like that) that they decided to just throw it out and rewrite it.

And their results were delightful. They created one of the most amazing comedies I have ever seen, except for the really disturbing sex scenes that happen occasionally. It's hard to explain the exact brand of comedy that works so well here without examples - a scene where naked girls in the bath debate the relative hotness of dead physicists, a woman reminiscing on the colors of her dildos as a child, a scene where a woman just lists things she could have for breakfast for a good few minutes. If any of that sounds interesting to you, it's a must watch.

Just be sure to get it dubbed.

Shin Sekai Yori is the most tragic tale of wasted potential I have ever seen.

The setting is I think not only the most interesting setting in anime, but the most interesting idea. It has taken one simple concept : 'people can change the world with their psychic powers', and done all sorts of things with it, from the effects it's had on society to balloon dogs to Tokyo.

In the end, though, the setting serves as a backdrop. It's somewhat relevant throughout the first half of the anime, and the parts where they learn about the setting are the best parts of ... the anime despite a heavy reliance on infodumps. After all, it wouldn't have been easy to get the history of humanity across without infodumping.

But from there the story goes off in other directions, focusing on the theme of fantasy racism rather than any of the incredibly interesting questions that arise from the premise. There are some twists, but fundamentally it tells a simple story which uses the fascinating setting's elements as plot devices but does not really explore them, and the 'terrifying villain' is no scarier and has no more impact than a simple 'monster too powerful for anyone to fight' would have in any other series.

None of these problems are helped by the frankly awful cast of characters. Squealer is alright; he's interesting but his status as not-a-viewpoint-character limits how much of his depth can be shown, which would be fine if the rest of the characters held up. But they don't. Shun is competent. Maria is sorta outgoing. Mamoru is shy and weak-willed. If other people hadn't made statements about them, I would not even be able to describe a single trait that either Saki or Satoru had; occasionally someone says that 'Saki is inquisitive' but that is hardly demonstrated in the show.

The art can be interesting sometimes but is very variable in quality. One of the early episodes - I think episode 3, but I'm not sure - had a noticeable dip in overall art quality, and the character designs and art style in which the characters were drawn just weren't great overall. The backgrounds were frequently good, though.

The first ending was awesome, the second was good. I don't exactly recall the OST, but I remember liking it. Music is one of the strong points of Shin Sekai Yori.