Shin Sekai Yori: Series Review

Shin Sekai Yori (or From the New World) is about a girl named Saki growing up in a small town called Kamisu 66 where people all have “Power” or “PK.” * It takes place 1000 years in the future, but doesn’t seem futuristic; if anything, technology seems to have regressed. At Saki’s school, students in each class are divided into groups of about six, and Saki has close, lasting relationship with all of the people in her group. From the beginning of the show, it’s clear that something in the town isn’t quite right. Children suddenly disappear and are never spoken of again. Rumors circulate about dangerous creatures like “Trickster Cats,” and although the adults deny their existence, the mention of them leaves Saki’s parents arguing late in the night. Everyone in town is taught how dangerous the world is outside the town’s Sacred Barrier, that somewhere out there are horrific monsters like ogres (akki) and karmic demons (gouma).

All of that is just the beginning of Shin Sekai Yori. The show follows Saki and her friends as they grow older, and the show grows more complex as they learn more about their world. Under the jump, there’s a spoiler-free review followed by an analysis that I would only recommend reading if you’ve watched the show.

You might like Shin Sekai Yori if:

• You like shows that are creepy, but not necessarily horror. (There is some blood and violence, but that’s the exception rather than the rule.)
• You are interested in moral grey areas where the line between heroes and villains is nebulous at best.
• You like complex plots that develop gradually.

*PK is short for psychokinesis (the ability to move things with your mind), but their psychic abilities actually extend beyond that. They are shown as being capable of creating fire, making mirrors out of the air, putting broken objects back together, and so on. The limits of their abilities are never very clearly defined.

Review

When I first started watching this show, one thing that bothered me was that it was so slow-paced. I felt like very little was happening in each episode, and I was impatient for them to get on with the plot. In retrospect, though, everything that happened was necessary for the plot later on. Although the show starts with Saki as a child and follows her through adulthood, everything that happened in the beginning was connected to plot points at the end. The fact that the plot is constructed this way also makes the show’s tone more in synch with the characters, because the story is simpler and more mysterious when the characters are young children and more grows more intricate as they grow.

The plot is very well put-together, and the themes are fantastic. Shin Sekai Yori displays a society that is deeply flawed and uses it to discuss issues in the real world. I don’t want to spoil anything, so suffice to say that there is no black and white morality here: everything is a shade of grey. Once you get deeper into the show, you’ll find that if you take any character’s side, you’ll be siding with someone who has either committed or supported horrific acts. Everyone has reasons for their actions that make sense from their perspective, but that doesn't lessen the harm that they cause.

Aesthetically, this is a gorgeous show. There is plenty of incredible artwork, and the animation is detailed enough that small character movements are capable of conveying a lot. There are several strange creatures that have very creative designs, and the environmental art is stunning. The music isn’t really anything special, although there are a few tracks (like this one) that were memorable.

Shin Sekai Yori does take some patience to get into it since it develops slowly, so it’s not really a show with universal appeal. There are also some characters that were less interesting than others, but the most important characters were pretty solidly written. Overall, Shin Sekai Yori is a great show that I would definitely recommend for anyone who’s looking for a plot-driven show that’s a bit creepy and that takes a bit of thought.

Analysis (spoilers)

Social Issues

The world in which Shin Sekai Yori takes place is deeply flawed, and many of its problems are magnified versions of real-world issues. The most clearly stated issue that the show addresses is that of the older generation fearing the young, an idea that I believe is more prominent in Japan than in Western culture (see Battle Royale for another, more famous example of this idea in popular media). Because of their PK powers, anyone underage stands a chance of becoming an ogre or a karmic demon and killing countless people, intentionally or otherwise. The only solution the adults come up with is to kill any child who shows signs of becoming such a creature, and in their fear, they end up killing far more children than is necessary. As the main characters learn more about this, some of them become scared and angry enough to leave the town entirely, which ultimately leads to far more unnecessary deaths. Thus, the point seems to be that adults being overly suspicious of the youth causes more fear and resentment for the young people on the receiving end of that suspicion, creating a feedback loop that causes problems to grow.

Another prominent social issue discussed in the show is privileged groups working and creating systems designed to keep an underprivileged group down. This becomes more relevant towards the end of the show, but the issue is present from the beginning. The second episode opens with a scene 500 years in the future (500 years before the events in Shin Sekai Yori take place) that shows the coronation of an emperor, and as a “celebration,” the first hundred people who stop applauding for him are killed as sacrifices. It’s implied that the common people in the audience are people without PK abilities, which becomes an important plot point later on in the show. The end of that same episode introduces the Monster Rats (bakenezumi), a species of naked mole rat-like people who worship people with PK powers as gods. The Monster Rats remain an important group throughout all of Shin Sekai Yori; over the course of the show, it slowly becomes evident that their intelligence is equivalent to humans’, and that humans use a variety of tactics to keep them subordinate (ranging from encouraging them to view humans as gods to massacring entire colonies of Monster Rats for flimsy reasons). The climax of the show has a group of Monster Rats rebelling in an attempt to overtake humanity, and although Saki and company are fighting against them, it’s obvious that the Monster Rats have good reasons for their actions. When the leader of the Monster Rat rebellion is punished by the townspeople, Saki clearly has conflicting feelings about it, and her uncertainty becomes justified when she discovers that the Monster Rats are actually humans without PK powers who were genetically modified sometime in their history. The modification was done specifically to prevent powers-less people from fighting against PK powered-people so that the latter group could remain the hegemon. In this way, Shin Sekai Yori makes it clear that discrimination is a system that is built into society. Even ostensibly “good” people like Saki aren’t exempt from it influences, as she works for the governmental department that deals directly with Monster Rats and, in my view, treated them as subhuman until she found out that they actually were descended from humans.

Interestingly, the show doesn’t suggest any solution for any of the problems it presents. The immediate issue of warfare is resolved, but the society’s flaws are never really solved. Instead, the show ends with Saki writing an account of the events in Shin Sekai Yori, which she concludes by saying that she’s going to work to improve the society she lives in. I’ve read some reviews of the show saying that this was an excellent ending and that it indicates hope for the future, but personally, I felt like it was a cop-out. The societal issues examined were the main focus of the show, and by failing to show any real change in them, it feels like the show is incomplete.

That said, I need to take a moment to talk about a really clever narrative device that was used to discuss the second of the two societal issues I mentioned: the “Death of Shame,” also translated as “death feedback.” Humans were genetically modified and hypnotized so that, if they kill another human,  their body undergoes so much stress that the killer dies as well. However, humans can still kill Monster Rats without suffering any consequences. This is how the warfare at the end of the show is ultimately resolved: a human who was raised by Monster Rats was used as a weapon to kill immense numbers of people, and she was able to do so because she considered the Monster Rats to be her peers rather than humans. This was a very effective way to demonstrate that the difference between the humans and the Monster Rats is only a matter of perception; it showed that the two groups aren’t actually entirely different and emphasized their equality. The concept of  the Death of Shame was a powerful way of showing how easy it is to hurt someone who is perceived as “other.”

Sexuality

The aforementioned “Death of Shame” was one way that the population was controlled so as to eliminate incidences of PK power-related violence; another way was through the use of sexuality. It was determined that humans needed to become a “society of love,” inspired by bonobos, so as to use sex to resolve problems rather than violence. (As a side note, if you haven’t read about bonobos, I’d recommend looking them up as soon as you have a chance. They are pretty damn interesting.) As a result, the characters of Shin Sekai Yori are much more sexually open than you might expect. It seems that nearly everyone in the town engages in same-sex relationships at some point in their life, and the main characters have sort of polyamorous relationships as well. However, it seems that most people in the town enter into monogamous heterosexual relationships as adults, and because of that, it would be fair to accuse the show of queerbaiting. All the same, this is an aspect of the show I rather enjoyed, because all of the sexual/romantic relationships in the show felt very genuine. It really felt that all of the characters had deep feelings for each other, and even if they wound up in monogamous heterosexual relationships in the end, the way the felt about one another remained.

Religion

Shin Sekai Yori draws strongly on religious influences, but I have to confess that I don’t know nearly enough about Japanese religions to comment on it. I would be thrilled if I could find sources that discussed the references to Buddhism and Shinto in Shin Sekai Yori in depth, and I did find one short but interesting article  on the subject, but there seems to be very little available.

I can’t help wondering if common Japanese views on religion in popular media is different from those in the US. It seems to me that, if a show aired in the US with such ostentatious Christian symbolism in a fascist dystopia, it would be highly controversial and a great number of people would consider it horribly offensive. But Shin Sekai Yori did that with the most prominent religion in Japan, and it was based on an award-winning novel. Honestly, I have absolutely no idea how the show was received in Japan or what people thought about its religious imagery, but it definitely seems interesting.