Shin Sekai Yori episode 20- Sunflowers make me consider the futility of life…

Strangely enough, this episode also managed to be quite unnerving. However, it couldn’t have been more different visually if it tried! Whilst last week our characters stumbled blindly around a cramped, pitch-black hospital, this week they flee from the fiend into the surrounding countryside, in (for the most part) broad daylight. But the reason it was still tense was because this made you feel as though Saki and Satoru were completely exposed to the threat, and with no weapons to fight back against it, they had absolutely no chance of winning against it were it to find them. Saki even said as much herself! And after years of being indoctrinated with the values of never giving up, and always fighting against adversity by your typical shounen show, having your main character acknowledge that they’re doomed is pretty harrowing!!

Shin Sekai Yori episode 15- Between a rock and a hard place

To start with, what I’d hoped to get out of this episode was whether or not Satoru still had any feelings for Saki- seeing as they were both alone together once more. I don’t root for them as a couple; I’m just mildly interested as to where his feelings for her have disappeared to. However, what I got instead was a lot more interesting! It seemed as though this episode was making some sort of comment on democracy through the uneasiness a combination of both characters’ reactions and facial expressions, and the music playing in the background, created.

Shin Sekai Yori episode 6- Return of the groovy minoshiro

Another interesting episode, though interesting for the right reasons, I should stress. Plenty of visual metaphors, gripping twists in storyline, and artistic choices, comparatively, a lot easier on the eyes, but just as functional. And despite the fact that the events of this episode were not much different from those in the last episode, this one felt a lot less muddled- I guess because we’ve seen Satoru behave aggressively before so the behaviour he displayed during this episode was a lot less surprising than the sexual behaviour he displayed last week, and the queerat war had already been established, in other words, what we saw this episode felt like the natural progression of events rather than something launched at us at high-speed from what seems like nowhere.