Summary: Saki finds and confronts Shun, who reveals his tragic fate to her.

Zigg’s  Thoughts: This was probably the best New World episode yet, one which successfully managed to marry the elements of psychological science fiction and creeping horror which have been the cornerstones of the show so far. Where it went above and beyond however was connecting these with a personal and emotional conflict. Centering the episode’s necessary exposition around the tragic example of Shun helps it connect that much more strongly to the viewer.

Indeed, Shun dominates this episode, fittingly so as it looks to be his last stand. Saki here is pretty much an audience proxy – she asks the questions and delivers the reactions – but it’s ultimately Shun’s story this time round. He cuts a haunting figure in his white robes and mournful Noh style mask, landing somewhere between serial killer and Japanese spirit. It’s a fitting symbol for his loss of purpose and identity – in the eyes of this society, he’s become a non-person, and it’s very telling he doesn’t take it off even though he’s alone.  There’s some clever script construction here, as we’re basically getting another infodump, but by telling it through Shun’s eyes and connecting it personally to him it becomes much more interesting and palatable.

There’s only really one major revelation here, but boy is it a good one. The idea that the empowered humans have been subconsciously shaping the world around them with their latent psychic abilities is an absolutely brilliant one, fully accounting for the ways in which this future is warped and making the concept of their powers even more disturbing and abhorrent to nature.  The purpose of the ‘Holy Barrier’ is justified well too – we’ve already seen that people’s powers can be channeled or suppressed by hypnotic or religious suggestion, so the idea that a simple symbol can cause all this excess energy to be redirected outwards is both plausible and consistent with fictional logic.  Shun mentions that the High Priest failed at sealing his power away and again this ties in nicely with the idea this society essentially oppresses itself. Shun has already seen that the ‘sealing’ of power is a scam, and now that same trick just won’t work on him again, because he knows that.

Visually, this is an extremely curious episode, which fortunately helps it out a fair old bit. Even more so than before, there’s a dreamlike state permeating this entire affair, aided by the decision to consciously not draw the background in many scenes. Directorially, this episode marks the return of Shigeyasu Yamauchi, the Casshern Sins director who also directed episode 5, which I was less than impressed with. Here though his style is much more suitable, and there’s noticeably less off-model animation. There’s still some pretty unusual stuff, like the constant dutch angles, or the fact that Saki suddenly looks more pin-up model than teen girl, but there are also some impressive artistic flourishes. The opening is most definitely not one of these however. It’s audacious in its use of an overly white palette, but the effect is ruined by terrible CGI ‘tablets’ that look like a first year student’s animation project. Much more successful are Shun’s constantly circling ‘marbles’, especially when we discover why he needs to keep them moving. The highlight though is undoubtedly the episode climax, and Shun’s death scene. The combination of the gorgeous music and bizarre apocalyptic imagery reminded me strongly of the closing moments of Akira, which has the same combination of desperate sadness at a monster who was once a man destroying himself. High praise indeed.

From the New World has shown courage and unpredictability to kill off someone who had been set up to be a major character from the outset. It’ll be interesting to see where the show will move from this point onwards, especially since without Shun the remaining classmates will have to take up his share of the characterisation. What was most notable about this episode though was that for the first time in a while it made me feel genuine emotion, rather than just the continual intrigue that’s held me with the show for some time now. being mysterious is all well and good but when the rubber meets the road you have to make your audience feel for your characters, and that’s where I think New World made important progress here.

Random Observations

• Shattering masks and dying love confessions are two huge cliche alerts, but they somehow work beautifully together here
• Another visual quirk – there’s an awful lot of crotch shots of Saki in this episode. I don’t mean in a crass way, but rather that there’s an unusual number of shots where her upper body and legs aren’t in the frame, like so.
• Shun turning that cat to quartz was pretty terrifying.
• Saki looks like she’s grown about two feet and lost fourty pounds. She’s supermodel skinny in this episode.
• Shun says ‘Have you forgotten me already’ in the next episode preview. Another time skip?