EARLY ACCESS Shinsekai Yori Episode 25 Reaction

Hi Caleb and Jacob, Thank you for your reactions to this show. I believe the drop in plot quality in the last few episodes is due to the constraint that the anime couldn't run for more than 25 episodes, so they had to cut and condense a lot of plot content. The original material is a long sci-fi novel published in 2008 that had more than 1000 pages. It won Japan's Best SF Novel Award that year. I read the novel after watching the anime years ago and it contains a lot more details and answers and clear explanations to many of the questions that you have. The novel is very well-written, but unfortunately it seems like it does not have an official English translation. If it ever gets one or if there exists a good fan translation, I'd recommend giving the novel a read. The manga is quite different from both the novel and the anime although the main story stays the same. I would not particularly recommend it but you can check it out if you'd like. For more background, when the anime was aired in Japan, it was criticized for poorly-drawn characters in some scenes. (Most of it got fixed in Blu-Ray later on.) On one hand, the director Ishihama Masashi chose to use the kagenashi technique (shadowless animation) which many people were not used to drawing. On the other hand, the animation studio A-1 Pictures was producing four shows at the same time, including the first season of Sword Art Online. A-1 Pictures was short-handed and did not allocate enough budget and resources to the Shinsekai Yori team. Ishihama Masashi is also the director of Persona 5's animation, Horimiya, Spy x Family's first opening, and Attack on Titan First Season's second opening. Original author of the novel Kishi Yusuke is known for writing crime, detective, mystery, and horror stories. Shinsekai Yori is his only science fiction.

Thank you guys for react to this show!

Morringhan

I also subscribed to this Patreon just to get early reactions for this series! I really appreciate your thoughts and analysis for Shinsekai Yori :)

ngl. i'm cool with some smutty yuri for no reason in the midst of any sort of plot

Rue Surnameunimportant

I've tried reading a couple of the fan translations of the novel but they are all over the place, i.e., both incomplete and vastly different than each other it. I haven't gone near the manga adaptation.

Stonewielder

Agreed!

Stonewielder

I skimmed over the manga once after watching the anime, and I was pretty confused as to how the original author even allowed that adaptation to go on. A massive chunk of the manga is dedicated to yuri sex scenes, to the point where the manga artist introduces original characters for the sole purpose of continuing to have those scenes after Maria is gone. And just in case anyone is wondering if the artist uses those scenes in any sort of nuanced way to build up an interesting and layered relationship like the anime/novel does? It doesn't, it's just smut, it legitimately felt closer to a hentai parody than an official adaptation.

Michael Kerr

Just looked it up and yeas apparently there is no official translation... (though I found a few people who claimed to have fan translation to download but I didn't verify that because viruses are a thing and I don't trust people). So I guess my recommendation was kind of pointless wasn't it?

Herman

It's a shame the novel was never published in English (as far as I know), though I don't doubt there are fan translations floating around. It's definitely one of the books on my reading list.

Hex

So I know I commented on the full length video, but I've got to bring this up here after you expressed that you wanted to read the manga. The manga and the anime are both adaptations of a novel (not a light novel, an 'actual' novel), and they had some... differences in focus. To make it short, on My Anime List the anime has two tags that the manga doesnt: Horror and Myster, while the manga has three tags that the anime doesn't: Adventure, Fantasy, and Ecchi. The novel(s? there might be two of them) are the way to go if you are looking for the source.

Herman

Same. If any of us win the lottery we must make it a priority to get the rights worked out and arrange for a proper translation.

Louise C

God, I would LOVE to read a proper english translation of the novel!

Stonewielder

I absolutely loved watching your reactions to this series! I think its a great series for in-depth discussions and I always looked forward to hearing your thoughts. Thanks for giving it a shot :)

TheWriggler

Hi Guys, Thanks for doing this one. I appreciate you doing a sophisticated, quality show that probably didn’t get as many views on YouTube as you would have liked. For what it’s worth, I subscribed to the Patreon because of it. When I first watched this show about 10 years ago, I remember having to go out for a walk after and just think about it. I wasn’t able to predict as much as you were about how things would wrap up. Thematically, it just gave me so much to think about. I was able to convince a friend of mine to watch it recently and we spent about 4 hours on the golf course talking about it. It’s under-appreciated. Unfortunately, the show wasn’t popular in Japan either with embarrassingly low sales. And it wasn’t enough to get someone to license the novel, either. In my mind, it’s something that a lot of the anime community missed out on. So thanks again for increasing its exposure. Squeara did nothing wrong!

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