I really do have to hand it to Shin Sekai Yori, right up to the very end I’ve no idea how this series is going to wrap itself up! Part of me doesn’t want to ruin the surprise by theorising about the show’s conclusion, you know, just in case I actually guess right!! *scoff* But then again, very few of my educated guesses about the show have turned out to be on the mark so far, so… And as a blogger, it’s sorta my duty to provide a service for my readers… If that service just so happens to be making you guys giggle at how spectacularly wrong I turned out to be, so be it!!!
So after some deliberation (and tea and cake) these are two theories I managed to come up with!
Theory 1: Kiroumaru (who does not have to worry about death-feedback) launches an all-out kamikaze attack on the fiend, killing it, and saving the day. An unlikely solution, as it would make the group’s journey to Tokyo to find the psychobuster seem even more pointless than it does already, like, why didn’t he just do that in the first place? He probably would have, if it had been asked of him… But who knows, it’s altogether a possibility! I mean, the fiend probably wouldn’t recognise him, a queerat, as an enemy, so wouldn’t realise he was in danger, until it was too late!!
Theory 2: Saki and co. try to appeal to the fiend’s better nature (if it has one). The fiend’s enraged reaction to his own reflection seems to me to suggest that he has some awareness that what he is doing is wrong. Perhaps he lashed out at that moment because he was confused, and attacking the mirror, and then them, would destroy that source of confusion…? The fiend has only ever been treated as a target, or something to be feared by humans up until this point, so what if he has simply been acting according to the roles that had been forced on him? What if, deep down, he didn’t actually want to be doing this? And if that were the case, what would happen if he was treated with a bit of love? He’s probably never been shown love before, so who knows how he would react to it? Would it eventually be possible to rehabilitate the boy? I know it would be an incredibly risky move for Saki to, I dunno, walk up to the boy and give it a hug, but no more risky than some of the other things that she has done this series!
I know these theories are by no means inspired, so I’d be very interested to hear if you’ve anything better!
So something I briefly mentioned in one of the above paragraphs was how pointless this journey to Tokyo to retrieve the psychobuster has been. But that’s not the only scenario in SSY that’s had a less than satisfactory conclusion. If you think back, group one learned all about the terrible goings on in their village, but they went back to it anyway, Saki tried to stop Shun from becoming a karma demon, but was unable to, her group went to retrieve Mamoru when he ran away, but were unsuccessful, when sent to find both Maria and Mamoru, Saki and Satoru were unable to locate them, the village failed in their attempt to exterminate the Robber Fly colony, and to prevent them from destroying their home… Absolutely nothing seems to have gone our main characters’ way! I’m beginning to think that this is an attempt at irony- how ironic is it that characters with the power to blur the line between fiction and reality, and who have such an unconscious influence on their surroundings, have so little conscious control over the events that happen to them?
Roll on the final episode!
