Anime/Manga From The New World

This is what I got in the third lucky dip. Not so lucky, truth be told - I've dropped it. I watched eight episodes and I promptly gave up, feeling rather frustrated by it.

This is another case of a show that has a potentially fantastic premise ruined by the most banal and infuriating cast they could possibly devise to make it as boring as humanly possible. The show DID draw me in for a while with the world and the general mystery surrounding pretty much everything...at least right up to the point any one of the cast opened their mouth to say something. I think I'd actually rather watch Sword Art Online almost, because at least THAT terrible cast has a focus, even if that focus is another terrible cast member. There is so much undelivered promise inherent in the worldbuilding that it's not only painful to watch, it's very frustrating - they could have done so much more with even a half-decent cast of characters with more than one personality trait and emotion apiece.

I really struggled to find the point to this show. Maybe it would have been revealed if I had watched more of it, but getting a third of the way through and having to endure teenage angst on top of everything else at that point was the final nail in the coffin for me.

So...has anyone else watched this? Did you suffer as much as I did? xD

I'm quite surprised tbh

I absolutely love this anime, to the point that I even went and found an English translation of the novel, something I rarely do. Something at least that we both agree on though, is that the worldbuilding was absolutely incredible. I can't go into detail obviously without spoiling the show for others, and while it's obviously quite old, it's one I want everyone to experience as fresh as possible the first time. But the history, the society, the queerats - it's all very in-depth and detailed.

I do feel like you're a bit harsh on the characters. I can agree that there's definitely deeper characters out there, but the show wasn't a character study. A lot of the "one note" feeling you seem to be getting comes from the characters spending 90% of the series in some form of crisis. Nobody is going to display the full range of their personality in the middle of being attacked by a mob of mutants or something. Then, of the 10% of the series that isn't actively a part of a crisis, naturally teenage angst is a part of it because through most of that time we're seeing the characters experiencing normal life in their society as teenagers. It'd be weird if they handled everything like adults - which ironically is the part you missed out on stopping at episode 8.

I think if you'd managed to make it through, you'd definitely have gotten a better understanding of the show's "point". You were looking for a character study, but the point of the show is to explore the many faults in what is seemingly an idealistic, maybe even Utopian society and, to an extents, the faults of humanity in general. I can definitely understand this show not being for everyone though, all though my surprise at seeing it straight up dropped remains.

Shinsekai Yori/From the New World is one of my favourites though, so it goes without saying that we probably had very different viewing experiences. At this point, I doubt it'd be a shock that I'm the one who put this series in to begin with haha.