Through three episodes, the new anime Shin Sekai yori is outstanding. It could even be heading for masterpiece territory, in my opinion. The anime very adeptly tells the story of a group of mid-teens in the Japan of a thousand years from now.
This is not a technological wonderland, but a fairly agrarian country in which human adults possess varying degrees of telekinetic powers. Our heroine, Saki, is worried that she is not showing the powers her friends do. In episode three, the group is on a sort of Outward Bound expedition, just a group of teens alone in the wilderness. On the trip, they may be beginning to find out things about their world that they never suspected. From the first episode on, we have been kept on tenterhooks, feeling that everyone is living on a knife-edge, with death and disappearance everyday facts that people seem to accept as the norm .
I have made a characters/seiyuus page showing pics of each main character and their seiyuu, as well as some info about each seiyuu. Click here or on the image to go to the full page:
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There are some well-known seiyuus in the cast -- Hanazawa Kana, Kaji Yuuki, Hirata Hiroaki, Namikawa Daisuke, Endou Aya (the narrator), Itou Miki (Saya's mom). But there are a lot of relative unknowns in major roles, too.
Only a couple of seiyuus are playing their characters at both ages (12 and 14) shown in the story. Those are Kana-chan (Maria) and our apparent star, Taneda Risa (Saki). Shun at 12 is played by a woman, Toudou Mai; but at 14 he is played by a young man who appears to be around 14 himself, Murase Ayumu.
I've included a couple of characters who haven't appeared yet, and could be considered spoilers (although it's pretty clear characters like them are about to appear). Anyway, don't click through if you are extremely spoiler-phobic. Otherwise, it's no problem. I didn't feel they spoiled me at all, personally.
I got some of my info from Japanese Wikipedia, however, and had to look lightly to avoid seeing outlines of the full plot, lol.
This is not a technological wonderland, but a fairly agrarian country in which human adults possess varying degrees of telekinetic powers. Our heroine, Saki, is worried that she is not showing the powers her friends do. In episode three, the group is on a sort of Outward Bound expedition, just a group of teens alone in the wilderness. On the trip, they may be beginning to find out things about their world that they never suspected. From the first episode on, we have been kept on tenterhooks, feeling that everyone is living on a knife-edge, with death and disappearance everyday facts that people seem to accept as the norm .
I have made a characters/seiyuus page showing pics of each main character and their seiyuu, as well as some info about each seiyuu. Click here or on the image to go to the full page:
There are some well-known seiyuus in the cast -- Hanazawa Kana, Kaji Yuuki, Hirata Hiroaki, Namikawa Daisuke, Endou Aya (the narrator), Itou Miki (Saya's mom). But there are a lot of relative unknowns in major roles, too.
Only a couple of seiyuus are playing their characters at both ages (12 and 14) shown in the story. Those are Kana-chan (Maria) and our apparent star, Taneda Risa (Saki). Shun at 12 is played by a woman, Toudou Mai; but at 14 he is played by a young man who appears to be around 14 himself, Murase Ayumu.
I've included a couple of characters who haven't appeared yet, and could be considered spoilers (although it's pretty clear characters like them are about to appear). Anyway, don't click through if you are extremely spoiler-phobic. Otherwise, it's no problem. I didn't feel they spoiled me at all, personally.
I got some of my info from Japanese Wikipedia, however, and had to look lightly to avoid seeing outlines of the full plot, lol.