Bring her in, please.
As you wish.
Watanabe Saki-san, right?
Mizuho-chan's treasured little girl...
I am!
Don't be so nervous.
FROM THE NEW WORLD
Episode Twelve
Weak Link
I'm Asahina Tomiko.
I hear you're good friends with Satoru.
Satoru—
Satoru-san and I have been friends since we were little, and—
I see.
Your eyes are just as wonderful as I'd imagined.
There is light in them.
Thank you.
I've always wanted to talk to you, you know?
Why?
That's because...
I want you to eventually succeed me.
Surprised?
I'm not joking, though.
But... There is no way that I am fit for the role!
That's exactly what Mizuho-chan said.
Do you know my mother?
Yes, ever since she was born.
She has a knack for making others follow her.
She's doing an excellent job as librarian.
However, my position requires more than that.
My grades aren't very good...
Your Cantus isn't all that is assessed in school.
There's the personality index as well.
Personality index?
Yes.
That's what has always been demanded of leaders.
The personality index shows the mental stability of the person.
Can they remain themselves even when all takes an entirely unexpected turn?
That's the most important quality of a leader.
And my score is high?
Yes, wonderfully high.
Maybe the best in the history of the Academy.
But that's not all.
Most remarkable is that even when you discovered the truth, there was no permanent decline in your score.
What are you referring to?
The Tsukuba branch of the National Assembly Library—the false minoshiro.
You learned about mankind's bloodstained history from the false minoshiro.
You discovered how our society found peace and on what thin ice we tread.
After you returned, we thoroughly examined you psychologically.
Your personality index stabilized surprisingly quickly after the initial shock.
The others found their return to normal far more arduous.
Did you plan it all from the beginning?
Hardly.
We'd never take such a big risk.
All we knew was that you were planning some sort of violation of the rules during summer camp.
Who would've thought you would actually catch a fake minoshiro?
Are those test results why I am here?
No.
To be able to shoulder the fate of all the people as its highest leader,
one needs to have a broad mind and nerves of steel .
You have those.
Why were we not disposed of?
That's not our jurisdiction, but the Board of Education's.
Their chief is Hiromi-chan.
She's always been worrying over nothing.
The Ethics Committee is the highest authority in the villages,
but we don't generally interfere with the Board of Education's decisions.
Your cases were an exception.
I asked them not to dispose of you.
Was it because of Satoru?
No. I would never let personal sentiments get in the way of such important matters.
You were the reason.
You are indispensable for the future of the villages.
Please don't think badly of Hiromi-chan and her people.
They're driven by a sort of paranoia.
Paranoia?
Perhaps that was a bad choice of words.
I have the exact same fears too.
Fears of what?
Isn't that obvious?
There are only two things in this world we really have to fear.
Fiends and Karma Demons.
But Hiromi-chan and her people have never seen a real Fiend or Karma Demon.
That's why I'm always saying that they're simply driven by paranoia.
So you have actually...
Yes. I've seen them myself.
Up close and personal, I might add.
Want to hear about it?
Yes.
Records detail the exploits of close to 30 Fiends throughout the world.
All were boys except for two.
Let's call this boy K.
What does this remind you of?
A corpse.
And this?
An axe. It's broken.
And this?
A dog. Beheaded.
The desire for destruction and bloodshed must have been deeply entrenched in his subconsciousness.
All his associations were violent.
He must be under great stress.
But he's a completely average student...
This data doesn't allow much of a decision.
I really think we should do something.
Let's ask the Board of Education for directions.
As you wish.
But nobody paid much heed to his abnormality at the time.
Reason One: Already 80 years had passed since the last appearance of a Fiend.
Reason Two: K's mother was a rather outspoken member of the main village council.
Reason Three: No established mechanisms for such situations were in place at the time.
The combination of all these factors made it happen one day.
No one could raise a hand against the rampaging Fiend.
They were all bound by a powerful attack inhibition and their own death feedback.
Attacking a fellow human being wasn't possible.
Approximately one thousand died in Kamisu 66 that day.
All at the hands of K.
Do you want to know more?
I'd like to know how K was stopped in the end.
Very well.
Fiends have no attack inhibition.
Some suggest that they attack and kill those around them preemptively, driven by their fear of being attacked.
Another theory is that Fiends become intoxicated by the endorphins in their brain,
and simply cannot stop their slaughter.
That's why the syndrome is also called "Fox in the Henhouse".
Doctor!
What's wrong?
The boy!
Take care of the patients, Asahina-kun.
Examination room
Medicine...
Do you think you're sick?
I caught a cold.
A cold, huh?
Let me look at your throat.
It looks inflamed and swollen.
Open your mouth again.
Bring him antibiotics.
Huh? Okay!
This is cold medicine.
It works well with penicillin.
K blew off Dr. Tsuchida's head.
Then he himself died from the drug.
It took much patience before the villages grappled with the scars left by the Fiend.
Do you know what we did first?
We eliminated all who showed the potential to be like K.
Potential... Eliminated?
Please don't misunderstand me.
It wasn't revenge.
We were simply determined to avert the appearance of another Fiend.
But how did you eliminate them?
At that time we used the queerats.
We commanded the most powerful warriors of loyal colonies to attack them.
It was an all-or-nothing strategy, but luckily also a complete success.
However, there was no guarantee that Fiends would never appear again.
So what did you do?
The former Code of Ethics considered a child to be endowed with human rights 22 weeks after conception.
In the new Code of Ethics, this was moved to their 17th birthday.
Accordingly, the Board of Education was given the power to order their disposal until their 17th birthday.
That's crazy...
The method of disposal was likewise changed to something more polished.
Tainted Cats were selectively bred using Cantus from ordinary household cats.
Thanks to these thorough measures that we undertook to remove potential Fiends,
their appearances have since stopped.
However, another terrifying incident occurred.
It has barely been twenty years since then.
The potential risks of leaking Cantus were noted as early as the final years of the ancient civilization.
However, "bad spill", the phenomenon of destructive leakage, was overlooked and underestimated for a long time.
It was thought that such changes to the environment would pose humans and other animals no harm.
It was at that time that a girl, Kutegawa Izumi, proved us wrong.
She was an only child who lived on a farm outside the village of Gold.
Her Cantus polluted everything around her.
The Board of Education and Ethics Committee sent specialists to investigate.
Their investigation showed that the "bad spill" of her Cantus could damage even human DNA.
It was a typical case of Hashimoto-Appelbaum syndrome.
Hashimoto-Appelbaum syndrome...
Unlike Fiends, they use their Cantus subconsciously.
More accurately, they have no control whatsoever over the dangerous leakage of their Cantus.
This is what changing into a Karma Demon means.
A Karma Demon...
Even now it pains me to remember.
Izumi-chan was a kind and gentle girl with every fiber of her being.
However, as history has shown, those are precisely the ones most in danger of becoming Karma Demons.
When she learned that she had put the lives of many people in danger, she herself proposed that she be disposed of.
Meanwhile—and we never told her this—her family and the farm workers had already mutated and died.
We told her it was medicine to stop the bad spill.
Only one of those pills was lethal.
We told her that taking one each day would cure her.
But, being the smart girl that she was, she figured it out.
It's okay.
Cry if you need to.
Why...
Why is it so sad?
I cannot answer that yet.
But when confronting our grief, we need to give ourselves time to mourn so that we can accept and overcome it.
You needed a chance to shed tears.
Is this related to the memories that have been purged from our minds?
Yes, it is.
I have no face.
You should know well what I look like, though.
Please give me back my memories!
We cannot do that.
We resolved to erase all traces of him because the incident was so shocking and visceral.
We were afraid that mere memories of the events would be traumatic,
destabilizing the minds of the villagers and bringing even greater tragedy upon us.
An insidious domino effect.
You might be able to endure it.
But if I restore your memory, you won't be able to keep it a secret from your friends, right?
In the end, everyone would find out.
But...
Please think about it.
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
We must give the most care and attention to the weakest ones.
The weakest ones?
When I asked you to succeed me earlier, I was by no means joking.
At that point you would also be allowed to retrieve your lost memories.
There is no way I could ever replace you!
I understand you well.
I used to be the same.
But one day there will be a time when you must do what needs to be done.
It's a task only you can shoulder.
Do you understand?
Remember then what we must do to stop Fiends and Karma Demons from appearing again.
Don't look for me. Mamoru
Good morning.
Maria-chan!
Mamoru... Mamoru...!
Why would he? What happened?
Don't tell anyone about this!
No one!
What should we do?
Isn't that obvious? We have to look for him!
Let's get Satoru and go.
But wouldn't it be suspicious if everyone from Group One suddenly skipped school?
That's right. Let's go to school for now.
We've got independent observation for 3rd and 4th periods, right?
Let's sneak out then.
We'll never make it back for homeroom, though.
Let's think of our excuses afterwards.
This was the first proposal to regulate the ethics of human society.
Clause 39 set the new standard for ethics.
Independent Observation
You can leave the school grounds if necessary,
but please do so in your groups.
Hey! Where are you going, guys?
Don't we have independent observation?
That's why I'm asking where you're going.
I'm in Group One too.
Don't you always hang out with Group Two?
But officially I'm in Group One.
Not to mention we used to be together for such a long time.
It's a mystery to me how this even happened.
Right, right. Sorry.
We never told you, did we?
You weren't there the last time we met.
We decided to research snowflakes.
Snowflakes? But that's for children.
We did that back in Friendship School.
It's no ordinary observation!
We want to look into how Cantus can affect them.
We've already decided how to split the work.
Could you look behind the school?
What am I supposed to do?
First look at the snowflakes under a magnifying glass and draw their shape.
We'll need at least a hundred.
Then, after you broadly categorize them by shape,
you choose a few and try to copy their pattern to another patch of snow.
But can snowflakes change their shape once they're frozen?
Yeah, that's the point! You're so sharp!
Most solid objects are some kind of crystal, right?
So if we could change the shape of water crystals without melting them,
we could change other objects a lot more freely than we can right now!
So you want me to check behind the school?
Yeah, please.
We're gonna split up to search too.
Okay.
You're so evil.
Come on, it was the best solution.
I'll be right back with some stuff!
Do you have any ideas?
Not really. He just looked kinda down lately.
Did something happen?
Well...
It wasn't anything serious...
There was an assignment he couldn't really work out.
It should've been easy for him.
But once he considers the possibility of failing, it's all hopeless.
That's all?
No. I think the teacher gave him an earful.
I joked that they might send a Copycat after him,
but he went pale as death and took it really seriously.
We shouldn't have talked about the people who vanished from class...
Huh? What?
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Huh?
ＵＴＷ
Presents
SHINSEKAI
YORI
ＵＴＷ
Presents
SHINSEKAI
YORI
Nakisou na aoringo kakaeteru mune no oku
泣きそうな青リンゴ 抱えてる胸の奥
In my chest, I carry a green apple that wets my eyes
Korogatte tsuyogatte
転がって 強がって
I fall over yet pretend to be strong
Kyuukutsu na sora niramu
窮屈な空睨む
I glower at the sky and it seems to suffocate me
Unmei ni juujun ni
運命に従順に
Do I look like I'd wait quietly
Jukusu no wo matsu mon ka
熟すのを待つもんか
For destiny to ripen it?
Sen no kaze
千の風
The winds
Agaite sakende
あがいて 叫んで
I struggle and scream
Fuke fuke
吹け吹け
Blow and blow
Watashi wa shabondama
わたしはしゃぼん玉
I'm a soap bubble
Soredemo shinjiteru
それでも信じてる
And still I have faith
Yokisenu arashi ni
予期せぬ 嵐に
In a sudden storm
Joushou shite kakou shite
上昇して 下降して
I rise and fall
Aragau shabondama
あらがうしゃぼん玉
I fight, soap bubble that I am
Soredemo ikiteku
それでも生きてく
And still I live on
Hajikeru shunkan niji hanate
弾ける瞬間 虹、放て
I make a rainbow when I burst
FROM THE NEW WORLD
Where is he?! Where's Mamoru?!
It must be a queerat.
What's it doing here?
Hurry! We have to find Mamoru quickly!
Is someone there?
Satoru! Maria!