Each of this arc’s Shinsekai Yori episodes has been difficult to write on for the same reason: Stellar world-building, excellent aesthetic sense, but it’s too wrapped up in that to evolve the characters past their one-dimensional, reactionary personalities. But when it wanted to be, Shinsekai Yori was absolutely brilliant at using its cinematography to portray [...]
I love when the show does stylistic shifts like this. The starkness of the colors is always a treat for eyes resigned to the boring, grimy darkness that the series usually has. Shinsekai Yori’s usual color pallet is so damn limited that it all runs together, but these moments, spare as they are, make sticking [...]
There are very few of humanity’s baser fears that can’t possibly be assuaged by calm, rational explanation. Darkness can be, because it’s easy to rationalize that there aren’t spindly monstrosities and murderers hiding in the darkest recesses of our collective basement. Death can be, because it’s an inevitability that most of us will have to [...]
I have never been so confused by a show before. Make no mistake, Shinsekai Yori is hardly overflowing with needless complexity. The context behind every action is fairly straightforward, and everything that can possibly be vague or perplexing is explained at the audience in a cooing, motherly tone with accompanying illustrations; the fact that it [...]
Fear and overconfidence tend to go hand in hand, over a cliff in an ignoble blaze. Not so coincidentally, both of these lead to most of the people in Shinsekai Yori succumbing to the literal blazes of the queerats’ main strategy. It’s surprisingly sobering seeing people who once regarded sentient naked mole rats as vermin [...]
Existential dread is something that’s difficult to convey in anime. With main characters guaranteed survival and with the limitations in tension that animation has, actually having the audience invested in the latest show proudly wearing the horror tag is no mean feat. Having the terrors buried within presented at the audience in a certain form, [...]
The time skip accompanying Saki’s entrancing adult voice has finally led to her dream career: Managing the minutia of sentient mole rat relations, and making sure that they don’t do so much as take a stroll in the woods before filling out their forms and waiting 5-7 business days for confirmation, all the while pining [...]
Finally, the characters are catching on to their village kind of being a fucked up place to live, and are looking for a way out, with Saki and Satoru attempting to find the runaways Mamoru and Maria. It only took several episodes and an ever-growing pile of dead bodies, but rebellion’s finally sprouting in this [...]
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