This will be a review of the final episode, spoilers are below the first section detailing my overall thoughts to how the show ended in a respectable manner.
Shinsekai has been a favourite of this season, it carefully crafted some amazing and unexpected twists, as well as numerous heart wrenching moments, but I always wondered how it would end. Thankfully Shinsekai Yori ends rather well, in terms of resolve and peace of mind at least.
Unfortunately the amount of tension from a nail biting climax of episode 24 was quickly resolved within about two minutes, leaving the remaining 22 minutes to tie up the series entirely. It might have been more appropriate to split this episode into two, giving us more of a climax than the 2 minutes of a rushed ending.
With the final act on Squeeler's plans, I wasn't sure what to expect for the rest of episode 25, but to my treat the episode was very informative and brought up an amazing question of humanity and perspectives of evil.
The final episode had one last card up its sleeve, bringing to light yet another shocking reveal of the truth behind Queerats and what became of the Hunters and Gatherers mentioned by the False Monoshiro way back when Saki was a child. Shinsekai Yori never ceased to amaze me with the amount of shocking turn of events that continued to surprise myself as I cringed on the inside for many moments throughout the story. The last episode did well to bring everything to rest, but I felt there wasn't enough justice for all the characters to conclude on. Saki's parents get a notable amount of information describing their final actions and their role they played during the onslaught, but I wish we could have seen a nice memorabilia for the other characters as a final farewell to their memory, since Saki and Satoru can finally grieve for their lost friends form their dark society.
This was definitely one of the greatest shows I have ever seen, and the final episode does well to tie in the end. It makes me sad that I cannot read Japanese and won't be able to read the books, but I will definitely come back to re-watch this show later on now that I know more about the truths and can watch this with a different perspective.
Spoilers Below!
I always likes Shun, which made his departure very sad to see. I'm interested about how he can appear to Saki and reveal events after his disappearance. We never really understand what exactly happens to Shun, whether or not he is simply a form of his own leaked cantus entering Saki's mind or that he has become something of a living ghost, I'm not entirely sure, but I would be lying if I said I didn't have hopes he would return to the living after his disappearance.
Kuroumaru's sacrifice was a brilliant ploy to fool the child, I can't help but applaud his character as one of respect, as he did have plans to overthrow the humans, but never stooped down to savage methods of killing off humans for good.
Overall I can't think of any obvious plot holes, but I am curious as to what happened to their society, since it seemed that nearly the entire village was being wiped out and that other villages were an incredible distance away. I'm not entirely sure how the village ended up with all of its destruction and massive death toll from the attack, but I think its safe to say there were indeed a large number of survivors than we were lead to believe among the mass killings and that they came to rebuild their town.
Squeelers final resolve and trial was a very striking feat that made me realize just how ignorant the human society is, how untrustworthy it became throughout the series and was the root of nearly every event that lead to all the death and chaos.
The final scenes tore at my heart as flashbacks of all of those dear to Saki who had died are shown before coming to present day where laughter of children can be heard in what appears to be a school, showing how all of the suffering and terrible events that nearly destroyed their civilization lead to a better future. I was happy to see Saki and Satoru marry at the end as well as the kittens of the tainted cats, giving us quite possibly the only happy event of the entire season.
Too bad it's over, hopefully I'll get to see something as epic as this in the coming seasons.
~Djr7
