From the New World (novel)
From the New World is a Japanese novel by Yusuke Kishi, originally published in 2008 by Kodansha. It received the 29th Nihon SF Taisho Award. The story received a manga adaptation with slight disparities in Kodansha's Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine, which was serialized between May 2012 and June 2014, and an anime television series adaptation by A-1 Pictures, which aired in Japan between October 2012 and March 2013. The manga has been licensed by Vertical and the anime by Sentai Filmworks in North America. It is titled after Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 "From the New World", whose Movement II appears in the story several times.
Plot
Part I
Set in Japan 1000 years after the modern era, Shin Sekai Yori follows the life of Saki Watanabe, a girl from the town of Kamisu 66. In this era, all humans possess powerful psychic abilities and live an idyllic life in agrarian villages. Despite her parents' fears that she may not awaken her powers, Saki gains her special powers at the age of twelve and joins her friends—Satoru Asahina, Maria Akizuki, Mamoru Itou, Shun Aonuma, and Reiko Amano—in Sage Academy, a special school for psychics. However, the children are unaware that the village government is monitoring and evaluating students through the education system. Based on these evaluations, certain students are removed from society because of reasons such as poor performance or for cheating. The memories of the removed students are erased from the community; Saki and her remaining friends have no memory of Reiko and other students. During an unsupervised camping field trip, Saki and her friends capture a False Minoshiro, a mythical animal revealed to be an ancient library robot. The False Minoshiro explains the violent truth of how the current era came about and what their special powers truly are.In AD 2013, 0.3 percent of the population developed psychic abilities that allowed them to alter their surrounding environment. Soon after the powers manifest, many begin using them for violence and crime. This leads to a breakdown of modern society and a world war that devastates the human population. The conscious and unconscious use of these powers alter the wildlife and the environment. After the fall of modern society, oppressive, feudalistic regimes rise up over humanity. These regimes, too, dissolve in chaos due to the violence of the psychic humans. Eventually, the psychic endowed humans established a stable society where they control their powers by using genetic modification and social conditioning to make themselves incapable of violence against other humans. If a psychic human kills another, a biological Death Feedback is activated, causing the murderer's organs to shut down and the attacker to die almost instantly. The villages also use genetically designed animals for various purposes. The mole-like Monster Rats resemble humanity, able to speak human language and living in a complex eusocial society ruled by queens. The feline Impure Cats are used to kill children at risk of developing one of the two dangerous disorders: the Karmic Demons, who are unable to control their powers, and the Ogres, who can suppress the Attack Inhibition and Death Feedback and use their special powers against humans.
In the middle of interrogating the False Minoshiro, Saki and her friends are found by the monk Rijin. He destroys the False Minoshiro and seemingly seals away the children's special powers for associating with a demon. On the way back to be judged at the village, Rijin is killed by a rogue Monster Rat tribe while Saki and Satoru are separated from their friends. They are captured by the rogue Monster Rat colony. Using objects found during their trip, Saki and Satoru are able to escape their prison. During their escape, they meet a Monster Rat, Squealer, of the Robber Fly colony who rescues them from their pursuers. Saki and Satoru help Squealer and his colony to defeat the rogue monster rats, later with assistance from General Kiroumaru and his Giant Hornet colony, a colony with an especially close relationship to humans. After regrouping with their friends with the help of Squealer and general Kiroumaru, Saki restores their powers, using the same hypnotic methods the village uses to control children, before returning to the village under the belief that the adults do not know of their transgressions.
Part II
Two years later, as Saki and her friends reach adolescence and develop relationships, Shun starts to distance himself from the others and eventually goes missing. Saki finds Shun in an abandoned house and learns that he has become a Karmic Demon and had been sent to die in isolation. After holding himself back for the duration of their meeting, Shun tells Saki to go while telling her the adults know of their transgressions two years ago before using his powers to take his own life. Soon after, unlike with Reiko, Saki and her remaining friends start to realize Shun's absence despite being unable to fully remember him. In time, Saki learns that the survival of herself and her friends has been orchestrated by the Education board and the Ethics Committee Head Tomiko Asahina, who sees Saki as a potential successor. Later, Mamoru and Maria run away after the Education Board tries to purge Mamoru. Squealer, renamed by the humans as Yakomaru as a reward for his usefulness, helps them by staging their deaths. However, after finding the Robber Fly queen lobotomized and that Yakomaru acquired a False Minoshiro, Saki begins to have dreams of a faceless child that tells her not to find Mamoru and Maria as they must die.Part III
Now 26 years old, Saki works for the village government in the "Department of Mutant Management" which oversees the Monster Rats. Yakomaru's colony slowly ascends to power while conquering other colonies and wiping out the Giant Hornet colony, eventually attacking Kamisu 66 with what is believed to be an Ogre that the Monster Rats refer to as their "Messiah." This is later revealed to be the biological child of Mamoru and Maria who Yakomaru raised after murdering the parents. After evading the Ogre and learning that Yakomaru intends to steal more human infants to create an army to wipe out the human race, Saki and Satoru are joined by Kiroumaru who guides them to the ruins of Tokyo to find the "Psychobuster"; an anthrax-like anti-psychic weapon. With Yakomaru's forces surrounding them, Satoru attempts to kill the Messiah with the Psychobuster, but Saki destroys the weapon because its use at such close proximity would also have killed Satoru. Saki realizes that the Messiah is not truly an Ogre, but actually a regular psychic like themselves, with one key difference: the Messiah considers Monster Rats as his kin which is what enables him to bypass the Death Feedback when attacking other humans. With seemingly no options left, Saki and Satoru plead with Kiroumaru for help. After admitting his own disdain towards humans and their treatment of his kind, Kiroumaru agrees to help, but asks for his colony to be spared the humans' retaliation once the revolt is ended. He disguises himself as a human and attacks the Messiah. The Messiah kills Kiroumaru, but upon realizing that Kiroumaru is a Monster Rat, dies due to Death Feedback.With the Messiah dead and his rebellion crushed Squealer is defeated. Renouncing the name the humans gave him, Squealer is sentenced to perpetual torture of the "Infinite Hell" where his body is simultaneously regenerated and destroyed using psychic powers. However, Saki is troubled when Squealer explains the reasons behind his revolt, claiming that his people are human. Later, Saki learns from Satoru that the Monster Rats are the descendants of normal humans whose DNA had been altered with mole rat genes to make it easier for the psychic humans to control them, since they will not trigger Attack Inhibition and Death Feedback. Now feeling sorry for Squealer, Saki secretly puts him out of his misery.
In the epilogue ten years later, Saki has married Satoru and they expect their first child. Both are positive that the world will be a better place by the time their child grows up.
Characters
Main characters
;Saki Watanabe;Satoru Asahina
;Shun Aonuma
;Maria Akizuki
;Mamoru Itō
Humans
;Tomiko Asahina;Shisei Kaburagi
;Hiromi Torigai
;Masayo Komatsuzaki
;Koufuu Hino
;Mizuho Watanabe
;Takashi Sugiura
;Inui
;Mushin
;Rijin
;Reiko Amano
Monster Rats
The Monster Rats are humanoid molerat mutants who live in colonies and appear obedient to the humans to the point of referring to them as gods. However, during the attack on the humans by Squealer, it's revealed that the Monster Rats disdain humans for the way they're treated. Saki eventually learns to her horror that Monster Rats are actually the descendants of normal humans who were genetically modified with molerat DNA to enable the humans with special powers to subjugate those who don't suffer the Death of Shame, whom they would otherwise be defenseless against.;Squealer Yakomaru
;Kiroumaru
;Squnk
Media
Novel
The novel From the New World was written by the Japanese author Yusuke Kishi and published by Kodansha. Its original publication was on January 23, 2008, in two volumes. It is believed that the author has remained "silent" three years prior to publishing the novel. On August 7, 2009, it was re-released as a single volume under the Kodansha Novels imprint and again on January 14, 2011, as three volumes under the Kodansha Bunko imprint.Manga
A manga adaption of the novel, drawn by Tōru Oikawa, was serialized in Kodansha's Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine. The first chapter was published in the June 2012 issue on May 9, 2012, and the final in the July 2014 issue on June 9, 2014. The series has been collected in seven tankōbon volumes under the Kodansha Comics imprint, released between October 9, 2012, and August 8, 2014. In 2013 the series was licensed in English by Vertical Inc, who released it between November 12, 2013, and January 20, 2015.Anime
The novel was adapted into an anime television series by A-1 Pictures which aired on TV Asahi from October 2012 to March 2013. The anime does not have an opening theme but has two ending themes. "Wareta Ringo" by Risa Taneda was used for episode 1 through 16, which was replaced by "Yuki ni Saku Hana" by Kana Hanazawa starting in episode 17.It has been licensed by Sentai Filmworks in North America. Sentai Filmworks later released the English dub version on DVD and Blu-Ray on April 15. 2014. Hanabee Entertainment later licensed the series on February 23, 2014 alongside Campione! and The Familiar of Zero.
| Title | Original air date |