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Yet another scenery shot to avoid spoilers because caves are cool.
It’s times like this that I feel that my microbiology knowledge is paying off… kinda.
I want a false minoshiro of my very own.
I have been anticipating this all day. Thanks a lot!
Thank you for the release!! I’m kinda afraid of what I’ll do once this one is finally finished. So hard to find a good suspense anime that isn’t moe-filled…
Now we wait for Accel Word Special 2
Why does the the ddl link an .exe
Oh… how I long for the episode I see Squealer get dismembered and mutilated in any and every which way imaginable… please come soon…
Thanks so much for the episode and please have a good night and weekend!
Thanks for more of the greatness!
[spoiler]But really…anthrax? Quite a letdown after the build-up in the mother’s notes. And again, I can’t see how it’s more effective than a tranquilizer gun with a tainted cat chaser. It’s certainly more dangerous. Hopefully the Psychobuster kit comes with some biohazard suits and a pile of vaccination kits.[/spoiler]
I think the story calls for a more complicated response than just wanting revenge on Yakomaru (as he is known these days). Yakomaru, after all, is behaving more like a human of our own times than the humans in this series do. The parallel between the psychokinetic power of humans in this imagined world and the destructive power of nuclear weapons in our world has been clearly spelled out for us; Yakomaru’s attempt to gain control of that power and use it to conquer the earth should not seem so alien. His deceitful diplomacy is not very different from the diplomacy of present day politicians, and the “Great Cause” outlined by the queerrat they encounter in the tunnels in Episode 21 is clearly based on the psychology used in our times to get soldiers to sacrifice themselves for the military objectives of their leaders. To the extent that you want revenge on Yakomaru, you should probably want similar revenge on the leaders of whatever nation you happen to be a citizen of.
Earlier in the series, did you want the adults punished for this nasty habit they have of murdering children who they perceive as a threat to the peaceful social order? If so, that is also an overly simple response to the story. The adults have chosen one way of dealing with the devastating possibilities of fiends and karma demons; before one can judge them as evil for their choice, one has to come up with a better solution– and once again, the parallel with nuclear weapons should be kept in mind. There are not always easy answers, and simple ways of labeling choices right and wrong. The story of this anime series and the novel it is based on is trying to challenge you to think about these issues more deeply.
Why do these episodes have to go by so fast!? I swear these episodes feel like 10 minutes rather than 20…
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Saki just had a super orgasm in this episode.. Haha
Thanks!
[spoiler]Psychobuster. My first impression is the name fits some tactical nuke device like in the earlier version of Planets of the Apes. Saki asked the true nature of the device, it’s the good ol’ Cold War/bioterrorism weapon. Let’s hope that the container and containment system that holds the weapon still intact after millenia of abandonment and neglect. Like man00ver said, let’s hope the weapon includes BNC hazmat suits and vaccines if Saki and co wanna to kill the fiend in Tokyo. [/spoiler]
I think it’s quite obvious right now that Kiroumaru is a planted spy and he is just waiting for them to lead him to the psycobuster. With it they annul all cantus and render the remaining villagers completely harmless.
Thanks! 😀
@Fuonk – You draw some strange parallels to today’s sociopolitics. Yakomaru isn’t engaged in diplomacy of any sort, his aim is genocide. To that end, he has propagatged a mindless collectivism in his own society, abjured and perverted its traditions to kill and control his own kind, subverted the disaffected or impressionable youth of his targeted population, and sent suicide bombers into sleeping villages. This reflects our reality, but not in the sweeping way you’ve described. You could think of him as Mao, Stalin, Hitler, and Osama bin Laden all rolled up in one villain.
As to the story’s human society, they’ve made a fundamentally stupid mistake based on the same false assumptions of today’s gun-control proponents. Only by denying the existence and nature of evil can one blunder into thinking that disarmament is the best defense against it. It’s clear the Villagers need Fiend Police unencumbered by Attack Inhibition, or at least some Soldiers willing to sacrifice themselves to Death Feedback. These aren’t the mythical Perfect Solutions, but they’re better options than watching the whole District go splat.
Thanks for the episode !
Just wondering… Why doesn’t the fiend hurt the other queerats ? How can they “control” him ?
Caves are cool… did you intend to make a Hitchhiker’s reference?
@man00ver – creating a group of people that wields absolute power – by being able to kill or harm another human – is incredibly dangerous. The truth is, the people in the village are actually doing an incredible job at keeping fiends non-existent. They are not denying evil, they are recognizing it and accepting the fact that some people are just predisposed to psychopathy and instability. Proper instruction in the use of their weapon, proper training in controlling their weapon, a strong culture of collectivism, and a very gray-area law. Those who died or were killed to stop the appearance of fiends are dead for the greater good. People have been dying since the beginning of the series for the greater good.
If Maria and Mamoru was never allowed to live or if Tomiko never trusted Saki, this would probably not happen.
The village is not disarmed against external threats or non-humans. They are still pretty powerful and Shisei could’ve exterminated most if not all types of non-human threats. And yes, the sociopolitical scene of today is mirrored by Yakomaru. Remember, in the previous episode, his idea of spreading a queenless, democratic society is by offering it to other groups.. if they refuse.. they get conquered. Yakomaru is spreading his ideals, which he thinks is absolutely good, by violence and sheer military power. Powerful colonies trample and abuse the weaker ones and weaker colonies have no choice but to side with the powerful ones or risk being destroyed.
TLDR: This is Saki’s and Satoru’s fault. The village was doing fine until these two knowingly broke the rules. The village is not disarmed and could deal with external threats quite easily. Of course, they’ve grown complacent but without a fiend, Yakomaru’s army would’ve been destroyed.
Speaking of microbiology, bacteria form endospore when exposed to harsh environment instead of spore. Spores are released by fungi, as one of the reproduction purposes.
@Hue – “Those who died or were killed…for the greater good” were innocent of crimes, imperfectly pre-judged as potential threats by imperfect humans that had painted themselves into a corner with no other choices. They’ve created a situation where they’re at greater risk than normal humans were when the first Fiend appeared. The “incredible job” they’ve done, in a fruitless attempt to prevent the appearance of Fiends, involves not only the mass slaughter of innocents, but also thought control from birth through maturity, and the alteration of memories and suppression of knowledge. What’s worse, they KNOW they can’t prevent Fiends, which is why they still teach about them. It’s senseless and barbaric. Saki has unusual “strength” because they’ve made themselves pitifully weak. In our world, humans can harm each other, and are in fact the greatest threat to other humans, but the things that restrain us do not constrain a New World Fiend, who can’t be stopped by their society in the ways we can stop our real-world fiends.
When I weigh the moral cost of the freedoms and children they sacrifice, against the cost of having a few more Fiends and be able to destroy them, the balance seems clear. What I don’t understand is how an adult that orders a Tainted Cat to kill a child who’s done no harm can escape the Death Feedback. I guess they’ve utterly sublimated their consciences to perform daily atrocities in the name of “the greater good.” In the meantime, they can’t harm a hair on a Fiend’s head. They’ve given Yakomaru the ultimate weapon, though it’s worth noting that he killed many humans without using the Fiend at all, and was able to hide from retaliation until he wanted his army found.
TL/DR: Evil can not be eliminated from the world, and attempting to prevent it by inhibiting self-defense is twice-foolish.
I’m a little confused by your sociopolitcal musings. Your descriptions of Yakomaru’s actions seem to agree with my assessment (he’s acting like Hitler, bin Laden, et al), but you seem to be agreeing with fuonk as well. What nation or leader of today (or the recent past) would you say he’s mirroring? What sort of offer did he make to humans before embarking on genocide? If he felt trampled and abused, it seems easier and less evil to move away from the villages like the wild queerats.
I am under the impression that death feedback is triggered solely by a human directly killing another human. That`s the primary reason for the queerats, after all – to perform the function of eliminating the children the Ethics Committee cannot.
Recall also that the culling is also to prevent the growth of Karma Demons. Take Reiko for example. She was pretty much the poster child for subconscious Cantus usage. I assume that “guy who broke the rules” was a Fiend candidate.
I’m still wondering why they didn’t implement a self-defense mechanism.
Thank you!
I’m confused. Why hasn’t a single human sacrificed himself for the destruction of the friend? I’m under the impression that death feedback triggers upon killing, not the thought of the atempt, am I wrong?
Also, how about Kiromaru tell them about the actual dangers of the caves instead of waiting for them to strike first and then say the details about it’s dangers? Confused if it’s for drama sake or something else…
Really Japan,antrax is deadly to Fiends,but not humans?Made me LOL.They should
ve just made up a bacteria,is it that hard…Nice ep though.Kiromaru is obv playing with them.
@man00ver
Your “Fiend Police” solution is not a solution. If you give any group of people that much power, it will eventually be abused. The Police would make themselves into new murderous emperors of the sort they had in the centuries before the scientists stepped in and did their meddling (which as things turned out, has created new problems while solving some old ones).
You are quite sure that Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Osama Bin Laden are psychopaths, but you are quite sure that the politicians who are trying to monopolize access to nuclear weapons in our time are not. I am a citizen of the US, the only nation which has used nuclear weapons against another nation in wartime. When the history of our era is written in future centuries, it will be obvious that American military dominance during this period is partly the result of the implicit threat of using nuclear weapons again if the US were ever sufficiently threatened. Our solution to the problem of the horrible destructive power which the invention of nuclear weapons has unleashed has been for a small group of nations to maintain a monopoly on access to that destructive power.
This analogue of your “Fiend Police” is a short term solution, but it is an unstable one; eventually other nations and subnational groups will gain access to nuclear weapons, and things will get a lot more unstable. If the human race doesn’t learn a better way– a way involving finding nonmilitary ways of resolving conflicts, which you believe to be impossible– then there will inevitably be at least one war in which heretofore inconceivable damage is done to the human race and to the earth.
The humans in this imagined future are not stupid. They have found imperfect solutions to an extremely difficult problem, as we have with ours. You denounce their “collectivism” and “brainwashing”, but the stability of our current day societies is based on indoctrinating populations with “patriotic” lies about how the world works, and playing dangerous diplomatic, military and economic games between nations, any of which could erupt in global conflict, making us all losers. I haven’t read the novel yet, so I don’t know how careful the author is about framing the problem, but I suspect he did it carefully enough so that there aren’t any simpler solutions to the problem he poses than there are to the problems we have today. The anime gives us much less information than is contained in the novel, but I think it is still sufficient to provoke more thought about how we are dealing with our present day problems.
By the way, I think that there are strong hints in episode 22 that Shisei, the most powerful Cantus user, could easily have become a new murderous emperor if he had not been constrained by the death feedback. His call for national unity and extermination of all queerrats was surely meant to remind the audience of populace-rousing speeches made during World War II (certainly the ones in Japan and Germany; but I would argue that the similar xenophobic speeches made in the nations on the other side of the war were not entirely different in nature).
I can’t say I liked this episode. We were shown that humans destroy False Minoshiro to prevent others from doubting the system or gaining power like Yakomaru, but now suddenly in a Deus Ex Machina there is suddenly a way to stop the fiend and a False Minoshiro to guide Saki.
And why is she going as opposed to her parents and an army? The humans might as well send everyone they can to Tokyo, if they stay they’ll just die. And what parents would order their only child to go on a dangerous mission she might never return from? Especially when it’s established that Saki’s parents are traumatized from losing their other children.
Saki’s just going because she’s the main character.
Do anyone know if this bad writing is from the book or from the writers for this episode?
@fuonk – A “Fiend Police” might be an imperfect solution. A “Board of Eduction” with discetonary child-killing power isn’t better, it’s just another tyranny. Have they slaughtered fewer than did the Emperor of Merciful Light?
There’s a reason there hasn’t been nuclear war in my lifetime, though opposing powers possess the weapons, and it’s largely the same reason most of us have never witnessed a global war. Hint: it’s not because of disarmament. It’s because of responsibility and self-restraint. Nations that lack these qualities should not have nuclear weapons, for the same reason queerats shouldn’t have Fiend Squads. Should they acquire those weapons, Shisei’s “final solution” may be the only practical option. I don’t wish for this; you’d have to be insane. You seem to think a better solution is possible, and I’d like to hear what that is. By all means, let’s learn it, if it exists. It has to be on planet earth, though, not some mythical utopia.
At this point in this story, almost all humans have Cantus. If they didn’t have Attack Inhibtion or Death Feeback, what would happen? Crimes? Certainly, but also self-restraint and self-defense. All good citizens could be the Neighborhood Watch. They could learn their history without sealing it away. And the society could stop living in fear of every growing child. Punishing the guilty is preferable to killing the guiltless out of suspicion.
Could someone like Shisei become a tyrant? Speculatively, yes, though society could successfully oppose him (even non-users of Cantus successfully deposed the Emperor, so Cantus-users would have less trouble I’m sure). But in this New World, Shisei was the Defender, and he was squashed like a bug. Shisei, villagers, all utterly defenseless against the Fiend they couldn’t prevent, no matter how many children they sacrificed in vain. This was a non-solution, no matter how well it seemed to be working.
@man00ver
Our perceptions of recent world history are so different that I doubt a short conversation here can bring us any closer. Perhaps the fact that I was alive during the “Cuban Missile Crisis”of 1962 and you– I am guessing– were not is part of the reason that we see the nuclear status quo and the alleged “responsibility” of world political leaders differently. You seem to like simplistic emotional words like “tyranny”and “restraint” and “responsibility”; I don’t think you are thinking realistically about political choices. The US has done about 40% of the entire world’s military-related spending in recent years; this has temporarily put us in the position of dictating the terms of many political and economic agreements to our advantage. This can as easily be labeled “tyranny”as “restraint”or “responsibility”. Meanwhile, many children have died, since you seem to want to focus on that issue in Shinsekai Yori– both as a result of “collateral damage” of our military attacks, the side effects of destruction of infrastructure, and here at home as the result of having spent our wealth on guns instead of butter. In the wealthiest nation in the world, a large number of children live in poverty, with predictable consequences concerning their life expectancy. I think you have been brainwashed with simplistic ideas about good and evil no less than the children of Shinsekai are brainwashed.
I don’t think you are coming to grips with the premise of Shinsekai Yori. Imagine every citizen of the US in our day and age owning his or her own nuclear weapons. That is the situation the Shinsekai people would be in without the restraints on humans attacking other humans. There were centuries of violence in which the human population was reduced to a tiny fraction of the population in our time, and yes, the murderous emperor was killing far more people than the Shinsekai school board. You insist that “good” people could be allowed to keep their nuclear weapons, that they only have to be taken away from bad people. That is far more unrealistic thinking than the utopianism you accuse me of, and in fact it is not very different from the School Board strategy– who would decide who those people who could be trusted with nuclear weapons were? What would the consequences be if they made mistakes, even presuming that they never became corrupt with power themselves? Remember, the premise is that each individual has the capability of doing immense damage. The only solution you are offering to this is to have others ready and able to gang up on anyone who steps out of line– in other words, to nuke the person who is abusing his or her nuclear weapons– presumably with a preemptive strike, since it wouldn’t do much good after those weapons were unleashed. That idea of preemptive strike is exactly what you find most offensive in the School Board murders, though– they identify individuals who are likely to disturb the peace, and eliminate them.
I’m not condoning or praising the solution that the Shinsekai people have chosen. It is, however, a choice that one can imagine being made, and within the premises of the story, it has in fact succeeded in greatly reducing the violence in their society, and enabling many people to live peaceful lives. You have yet to propose a strategy which would be nearly as successful.
@fuonk – Fun discussion, hope we’re not boring anyone. For the record –
I started breathing about 2 years after the Cuban Missile Crisis. You may be a little older (perhaps a lot older, if you were tuned into the current events of ’62), but I’m an adult.
I’m using the word “tyranny” with no emotional context other than the classical definition: forcible oppression of people by their government. I don’t consider any agreement–even if one side has leverage–to represent a tyranny. A result forced under threat of violence is not an ageement, and if this is what you’re attributing to the US government I’m not certain to what you’re referring. I’d argue that our economic power is a far greater lever in world affairs than our military spending.
Getting into child mortality statistics in the US and what fraction of that fraction might be caused by poverty (and whether even a single child death could be reasonably attributed to “butter shortages” due to military spending) is pretty far afield of my point…so I won’t. There’s data out there.
Back on point: You’re right that I don’t like the preemptive killing done by the Board, but you’re wrong in presuming I favor another kind of preemption instead. I say they should remove the Inhibitions and Death Feedback from everyone, and punish crimes when they occur, not before. Cantus is powerful, but the only reason to liken a Fiend to a nuke is because there is no defense against him. This defenselessness was self-engineered, and though it may have been well-intentioned it was a poor choice. It only seemed effective because they killed anyone who looked funny, by policy, in secret proceedings without trial or defense, while mutilating others’ memories to avoid questioning or accountability.
I might be persuaded to concede there was a time in the New World when their regime may have been seemingly better justified, perhaps when there were more humans without Cantus. But the previous Fiend incident should have led to some deeper thinking than simply continuing on with the same policies.
> You’re right that I don’t like the preemptive killing done by the Board, but you’re wrong in presuming I favor another kind of preemption instead. I say they should remove the Inhibitions and Death Feedback from everyone, and punish crimes when they occur, not before. Cantus is powerful, but the only reason to liken a Fiend to a nuke is because there is no defense against him.
The reason to compare Cantus to nuclear weapons is that one individual has the power to cause an immense amount of destruction– far more than a lunatic with an automatic rifle and lots of ammunition. I know you aren’t advocating a preemptive strike, but your police force (assuming they could be trusted not to stage a military coup, which I think is a bad assumption) would be useless if they “punished crimes when they occur”– a single person could destroy all of the housing and machinery of a village before your police went into action. I still say you are not coming to grips with the premise of the story. Given the magnitude of the power involved, individuals have to be prevented in some way from using those powers destructively. You haven’t suggested a way this could be accomplished.
Fun discussion, hope we’re not boring anyone.
Far from it!
Fuonk, it’s a minor point, but I don’t think Attack Inhibition includes property, livestock, etc. Any disgruntled villager could tear the whole village apart as long as he didn’t hurt anyone, and no one could stop him. So why doesn’t it happen? It should be because of standard societal controls that we’d all recognize (rearing, education)…and because most people, imperfect as we all are, are not criminals.
But wait, this is the New World, and they don’t tolerate the disgruntled types either. They also get “disappeared,” like the cheater from the school competition…along with the weak-powered and non-powered children. All potential troublemakers and atypicals end up in the kitty litter, alongside the potential Fiends and Karma Demons. Only the good little Aryans get to join the People’s Commune (you’ll forgive the mixed metaphors, I hope).
In our society, a lunatic with a fertilizer bomb, or even just some fuel and matches, can inflict some pretty widespread destruction. It doesn’t happen everywhere and every day because society proscribes it, and is prepared to respond and stop it before it goes citywide. We can’t respond against a nuke, we can only run away like the New Worlders do. When I watch that scene with the slow-walking Fiend killing everyone he comes across and burning up the landscape in his wake, I see a murderous arsonist that might be stopped by something as simple as a rock, well-thrown from hiding. It’s ironic that they could easily stop an incoming ICBM!
So, the postulated Fiend Police would have to be checked by a New World Judiciary, and punished like everyone else if they break the laws. It’s not difficult to imagine an overlay of modern societal mechanics onto this New World, minus their engineered mind/body controls, with beneficial results. There would be pain and evil deeds. I’m not proposing a solution to acheive a perfect world, because there’s no such thing.
You say I don’t grasp the premise of the story, but I think I do. We’re not meant to admire this New World. Tomiko, their wisest, saw the need to make some changes and began to experiment. And the semi-enlightened young protagonists to whom we’re supposed to relate are surely not content about being kept in the dark, or the Board hearings where honesty can be punished by death, or the unreachable memories of vanished friends and relatives. They don’t have any of the freedoms we can easily take for granted: life, speech, thought, self-defense, due process. They can’t even travel without permission. It’s the Hell of Gulags with a pastoral veneer. In order to win, our heroes will have to re-make it from scratch.
@fuonk
There’s a very strong implication that Fiends are mostly dangerous because they have no death feedback. Sure, they’re undisciplined and can still vaporize you with a thought, but considering that an average child in the town can twist a tree in half with a thought, this isn’t really *that* impressive.
There’s also a very strong implication that the feedback is a learnt and conditioned behavior. If their society can alter memories and make their citizens believe they’ve lost their Cantus through some ceremonial ritual, then they can certainly program the death inhibition.
We’re told the death inhibition is genetic, but that cannot be the full truth, because Marie’s child certainly has the same genetics as the other humans. He must lack the same social conditioning that occurs in the Temple of Purity and so on. And he goes about killing humans willy nilly.
The visual cues add to this. Characters invariably imagine the child as being some sort of shrieking silhouette. But it’s not some monster. It’s just a kid with a Cantus. A fairly powerful one to be sure, but it’s not the boogeyman they were told about around the campfires and in the classroom. The monster myths are part of the social conditioning as is the nonsense about “walking to the bottom of the lake” — as this was intended to make problem members dispose of themselves.