The fight against the Earth Spiders goes in strange and disturbing directions.
What They Say:
Satoru is getting tired and his power is waning and the Earth Spider Colony army is much larger than expected. When all seems lost, help comes from an ally that could be much more dangerous.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the push to get away from the Earth Spider’s, and the bit of help that they’ve gotten from some rather surprisingly adorable forces, it’s not a surprise to see how events are turning out. Satoru’s use of his power has been impressive by far, but it’s not something he can sustain for long or in these kinds of tense situations. So much so that he’s starting to really tire out here, but is putting on enough of a brave face in order to push on. Thankfully, Saki’s holding her own pretty well at the same time and offers up some ideas for him on how they can best defend against the very primitive but usually effective attacks from the Earth Spiders. The who sequence works well, but the wear on Satoru is getting to be significant.
Where the show takes an unusual turn is when they get help from Kiroumaru, someone of the same nature as the rat type creature we saw before, but is more man sized and has a gift for speech and a real flair for it, and understanding the enemy at hand. With the idea of just taking out the queen in order to settle things, it makes the most sense with the nature of the spiders. But Kiroumaru’s motives certainly aren’t pure as his intention is to take hold of all of the larvae from the Earth Spider Queen and use them for a labor force for years to come. But it requires the death of the queen and that alone makes Saki and Satoru unhappy with the whole endeavour, but mostly because of what will be done with the larvae. It’s an interesting circle of life exposure for the humans in a world that they seemingly knew nothing about.
With this kind of imagery in mind, it doesn’t take much for the pair to want to get the hell out of there all the more. Luckily, with a little help from the Monster Rat that’s been with them all this time, they’re able to end up back with the other three. It’s an amusing kind of adventure that they get to relay to them and it just feels surreal that they were involved in all of it and can be so casual with it. Squeala really comes across well here and you can sense the changes in Saki and Satoru that will come from knowing him. There’s some good little bits of nuance that come from all of this in what we learn about the Monster Rats and their culture, but also some really surprising potential for what the kids themselves will have to deal with now that they’re back home.
In Summary:
From The New World continues to move in interesting directions and the best thing it could have done in the last couple of episodes it did. By removing two of them, Saki and Satoru, we were able to do some real exploring, expand what we know of the world in ways that opened up the characters eyes more, and then places them back in the fold with two different types of people. The other students and elders who didn’t experience it and the three friends that got partial experience. Each segment will have something different to play off of the pair and what they do and how they react will be fascinating to watch. While the show is still something of a fence sitter for me, I’m waiting for it to have some kind of big reveal where the purpose of the series is laid bare and we have that “aha!” moment. I’m enjoying it, but still cautious.
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.
