With the monk now dead, the kids find themselves in an incredibly desperate situation.
What They Say:
Satoru and Saki have been split up from the rest of the group and captured by the outside Monster Rat group.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the way the series has unfolded, the previous episode was a massive info dump of the most obvious kind, but one that it desperately needed. While the monk that discovered them talking the Library was less than pleased, going so far as to eliminate their ability to use their power, things went much worse after that when the monster rats found them and just went to town with a simpe kind of brutality. The kids have certainly not had it easy on this trip once it really got going and the things they’ve learned have completely altered their perception of the world, if they truly choose to believe it. Which may be dangerous for them to do since it could put them at a huge risk.
With the situation in such a weird state now, with the monster rats giving off the impression that the kids ought to just leave, it’s pretty tense in a lot of ways. Smartly, the kids at least put on a brave face with it all as they retreat, knowing that fast or panicked movements could make it all a heck of a lot worse for them. Watching the gang work their way away, it’s definitely done pretty well as there’s a fair number of surprises as the world that they see is far more dangerous than they imagined. They’ve been fairly well kept in a simple and safe world, one that definitely had its dangers, but this is something unlike what they thought their lives would be like when you get down to it.
The show does take an interesting turn as things eventually turn into a panic as we get both Satoru and Saki split off from the others and they end up being guided by Squera, one of the Monster Rats from the Robber Fly colony. The show brings us an interesting look at what’s going on down deep underground as these two make their way through, learning about the warring factions of the Monster Rats and the kind of surreal natural order that exists there with creatures and tunnels. With it being a thousand years since the fall of man, this may be moving fast, but it just leaves so much more open to what could happen depending on what crazy people got involved with things once society fell. And when you add in what the espers were up to as well and the nuts that followed that had power, seeing places like this and the disturbing nature of it all makes a certain sense.
In Summary:
From the New World definitely changes things up a bit here with this episode in terms of what it wants to do, but what I liked the best is that it separated the cast. One of the main problems I’ve had with it is that the cast is fairly nondescript, so getting time with them in smaller pairings, such as just Satoru and Saki here, definitely works in its favor and keeps it from being as frantic in a way since there are so many voices and reactions when it’s the five of them. Bringing these two underground definitely shows them even more of a world they didn’t have a clue about, as if the Library wasn’t enough, and it just has so many ways to go here and so many reveals it can do that it does draw you in more and more.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: FUNimation
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
