Summary: After an attack by Rats splits the group up, Saki and Satoru spend a long and eventful night together.

Dragonzigg’s Thoughts: It’s always telling when an episode feels like it’s treading water to fill time, and that’s exactly the feeling I got from this episode unfortunately.  While some interesting stuff does happen, it also feels as if the characters are somewhat buffeted by events, swept from one location to the next with little real context for their actions.  Normally I would say that From the New World could rely on its unrivaled atmosphere to make up for plot shortcomings, as it has in episodes previously, but that seems to be absent as well, or rather seems to have been trying a little too hard.

There’s a good effort at it here though – narrowing the focus to just two characters is an obvious attempt to make the story more intimate and personal, but it seems odd that you’d choose wisecracker Satoru for the task. Saki has more established chemistry with Shun, and Mamoru provides the opportunity for more character development. As it is, the pairing seems rather arbitrary and forced, especially since Satoru loses a lot of his cocky personality for this sequence.  There’s also a lack of plot continuity here – the two are pretty much swept between several unrelated events under the unifying idea of this pursuit but the show lacks the focused intensity that the best ‘on the run’ sequences have and as a result the sense of danger is never as immediate as I’d like.

I want to talk a little more about two sequences in this episode which I think show off some of it’s more obvious problems. The first is the supremely uncomfortable almost sex scene between Saki and Satoru. I get the whole point of this is that it’s meant to be extremely creepy, and naturally it’s hardly explicit. Nevertheless, I personally felt this was slightly beyond what I want to see on the screen, even if it’s in the service of making a plot point. Again, the fact that it’s Satoru who triggers this sort of behaviour in Saki is odd, as she has has established quasi-romantic tension with Shun and I think that with him as a substitute the scene could have been used as a subtler indictment of teen sexuality than just ‘monkey genes made me do it’. It does show that Saki is increasingly seeing evidence for the words of the Minoshiro, and the showmakers are to be commended for not shying away from the subject as I’m sure a less brave production team would have. In short, I can sort of see why the scene is there, but it does unsettle me in a way beyond what’s normal for the show although hey, I guess that’s the point.

The other major scene I wanted to talk about is the confrontation with the Rat Queen and unlike the previous scene I have absolutely no issue with throwing this one under the bus. Firstly, it’s entirely pointless – Saki and Satoru are taken to the Queen, the Queen goes nuts and they run away. You could cut this with no meaningful loss to anything and that’s a bad sign for any scene. It also breaks the cardinal horror rule – what you don’t see is infinitely scarier than what you do.  Especially in a heavy psychological horror like New World (and I feel confident in calling it that at this point) unveiling a super goofy looking monster is a major mood killer, and that’s what I felt this sequence amounted to really.

This episode is also handicapped by some utterly appalling animation, which is especially jarring for a show that up until this point has been noted for outstanding visual quality.  The official explanation for this is a guest director in Shigeyasu Yamauchi, but at the end of the day it still looks terrible (at one point Satoru is drawn with only one eye) and there’s no excuse for that.  The net result of all of this is an episode which, as I said in the intro, feels curiously inconsequential. Yes, Rijin is removed from the picture and we learn a bit more about Rat society, but it’s a curiously slow, unmemorable episode, which is a concern when previous episodes, as uneven as the quality might have been, were never anything less than striking. Hopefully we can get back on track next time round.

Aqua’s Thoughts: Zigg’s remarks, as well as some other reactions I have seen on Twitter and other blogs have clearly shown that this episode is the most divisive thing in the anime fandom since a certain anime about games that will no longer be mentioned. Culprit for all this is guest director Shigeyasu Yamauchi, the director of Casshern SINS and Dream Eater Merry. Yamauchi is known for his signature style: a combination of Zak Snyder-esque still frame bending and skewing the animation on purpose for maximum stylishness. His tendency to turn “quality” into an art form is not appreciated by all, as seen by our British friend’s reaction, but I personally very much enjoyed this one-time unique episode. One gripe I have is that A1 allegedly allowed Yamauchi to change the character designs, which results in the characters looking quite a bit older. With it being revealed from the get-go that a timeskip would take place, this caused some confusion.

While I do agree with Zigg that the plot was a bit all over the place, I have to disagree with some of the things he said. First off, choosing Satoru over Shun seems more logical to me, as it is quite obvious that while Satoru is in love with Saki, she has the hots for Shun. Their journey together could be seen as his desperate attempt to win her over with Shun gone – which would also explain his acting serious for once – and also explains why he initiated the already infamous almost-sex scene. I thought this scene was extremely well done, intentionally disturbing without in any way being fanservice-y – and unlike Zigg, I do think there is a better explanation for why it happened. From last week’s episode, it became pretty clear to me that From The New World is heavily implying the villagers being brainwashed and conditioned to start “loving” whenever they are in a pinch. It’s hard to see where exactkly this Queerat clan war arc is going, but From The New World still remains something wholly unique.