Monday, October 1, 2012

First Impressions: Shin Sekai Yori

Yes. Your series is named From the New World. We get it.

Please don't blast Dvorak Symphony No. 9.

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You will have to go through...THE RING OF FIRE!

I mean, that'd be pretty interesting you gotta admit

Yay! A standard dystopian series that will probably have enough references to 20th-century dystopian-background novels to make someone's head explode before too long! I should start running a pool to see how long this series can last before it makes a Brave New World or 1984 reference.

The only reason I'm being this cynical is because really, dystopian plots haven't moved out of their ditch since they were all the rage during the Cold War era. The physical/social backgrounds are different, sure. But there's always gonna be that one little anti-hero fucker that wonders why everybody else is on the happy pill and also why her friends are being taken away by the little black ninja gnomes in the middle of the night. He/She's gonna do some slightly crazy shit, then ramp up the crazy as the series goes on until he/she breaks free of the community more or less completely (99% of the time this is just running away from the village, but going deeper into the rabbit-hole/secret underground base is also par for the course). 

She (I'll say she from now on, since the main character is a girl named Watanabe Saki) is going to get into a lot of fucking deep shit, and by that I mean the thought-police are after her ass. She's going to evade them all while also gathering reluctant buddies to form a rebel gang, and after a lot of survival arcs she's going to wind up in a safe zone, looking at the sunset while marveling at the glory of a new, free world. That or she ends up being the savior/catalyst-for-change in her society, but that's less likely b/c she's a fucking middle schooler from the looks of it.

Too fucking easy. Be more creative, will you?

Oh, by the way, the metric by which the leaders measure who's gonna have a fun time and who's going to have a fun time in heaven is academic excellence. Can I relabel this as comedy now?

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Well if your daughter got an A-...

That's a pretty compelling case for death imo

On the other hand, the music is nondescript, but the graphics are pretty damn fine, so if you're willing to sit through the obvious, be my guest. If you like the whole standard dystopian plot, then props to you.

Recommendation: Meh. Can I just watch The Matrix and pretend everyone's wearing Japanese clothes or something?

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Apparently this society is headed by this man.

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