== More words on the ending of *Shin Sekai Yori* and the show overall

(There are plenty of spoilers here.)

This is sort of a reaction to [[Bobduh's articulate review
http://wrongeverytime.com/2013/08/11/shinsekai-yori-and-true-heroism/]],
where he covers both why the show is excellent and why despite this it
leaves him cold. While I've come to sort of agree with him about some of
its flaws, what elevates *Shin Sekai Yori* to greatness for me anyways
is the power of its ending, specifically roughly the second half of the
last episode, and [[how I read it ShinSekaiYoriSquealer]]. Rather than
simply give us an action show resolution to the situation in the ruins
of Tokyo and then a straightforward upbeat epilogue, *Shin Sekai Yori*
instead went out of its way to give us an uncomfortable ending that
grants humanity to previously inhuman characters and systematically
strips away the idea that the Cantus humans are the clear heroes; even
Saki, our sympathetic protagonist character, is revealed to still be
reflexively prejudiced. If there is a hero of the ending it's shown to
be someone viewers had probably been looking down on and hating. This is
a dramatic and powerful reversal of the situation that leaves us without
comfortable or easy answers (and the revelation in the final coda of the
show drives that home).

To be specific, I think that the staging and presentation of the ending
makes it clear that *we're supposed to sympathize with Squealer, not
the Cantus humans running the trial*. The whole visual vocabulary of
the trial is that of a humiliating show trial, Squealer engages our
sympathies throughout with both logic and bravery, and what happens to
him is horrible. The final revelation at the end of the show finishes
this off by giving the viewer no refuge for prejudice and no grounds to
look down on the queerrats. I am not at Bobduh's level of 'burn down the
Cantus humans' but the ending makes me believe that we're supposed to
feel uncomfortable about what happened with Squealer (and even that it
was unjust), and I do. At the same time the show has spent the entire
run building up Saki (and Satoru) as our viewpoint and people we like,
so we didn't want to see them die either. This dilemma is where and why
I think the show becomes great.

(In fact I think most people will have been reflexively rooting for
Saki right through the action in the ruins of Tokyo. Only when the
show pulls back afterwards to give Squealer's side of things do doubts
start seeping into our minds. I'm pretty sure that this is deliberate
on the show's part; it wants us to be caught up in Saki's viewpoint and
then come to a skidding halt as things look more and more disturbing
afterwards. Some people may pull themselves away beforehand but I didn't
really.)

To me, where *Shin Sekai Yori* excels is in raising hard questions
and then not giving us comfortable answers. [[As I wrote at the time
ShinSekaiYoriWords]] everyone is doing horrible things because they
are all trapped in horrible situations. Over and over the show gives us
a clear evil to rage against and then shows us why that evil exists and
how it is the result of well intentioned people doing the best that they
can in a terrible situation. There are no morally bright characters that
we can root for without qualms, not even Saki and Satoru at the end. For
all that Squealer is not a nice person, even his rebellion is [[morally
defensible ShinSekaiYoriRebellionMorality]], as he carefully explains to
Saki (and us, the viewers). I could do worse here than quoting [[@llvn
from Twitter https://twitter.com/lvlln/status/316299231344345092]]:

> I love how it presents complexity without judgment. Everyone is wrong.
> But they deserve life, freedom.

*Shin Sekai Yori* is both a picture of fallible people trapped in a
terrible situation making the best life that they can, mistakes and all,
and a show that confronts us with hard questions that it doesn't give us
any comfortable answers to. It doesn't give us any heroes or any clear
villains; instead it makes us uncomfortably understand all sorts of
people who are doing terrible things.

(Similarly, what happened with the queerrats is extremely unpleasant
but [[it's also pretty much the result of relentless logic
ShinSekaiYoriQueerratNecessity]]. Also note that even Kiromaru, the
'good' queerrat, is a complex character with his own motivations that
don't neatly align with those of the Cantus humans. After all, the
entire reason Kiromaru came to the ruins of Tokyo the first time was to
see if he could find some effective way to rebel.)

By the way, I would probably have a somewhat different reaction
to the end of the show if I thought that the show was presenting
the Cantus humans as being successful. My view is that it's
rather to the contrary; the Cantus humans are on a not so slow
decline due to [[a shrinking population base ShinSekaiYoriWords]]
and repeated horrifying incidents such as what happened with
Shun ([[cf the worldbuilding bits pointed out in this comment
http://wrongeverytime.com/2013/08/11/shinsekai-yori-and-true-heroism/comment-page-1/#comment-214]]).
Since I don't like the Cantus humans and think that the world would
be better off if they didn't exist, this is okay with me.

(I'm pretty sure that the show also agrees with this position since I
don't see any particular sign that the show considers its world of the
future to be a better place than today.)

As for the flaws (or at least one ongoing flaw), I have to agree with
Bobduh that in retrospect the protagonists are the weak point of *Shin
Sekai Yori*. I don't want to sound too negative here because I don't
think they're bad (I found them and their interactions perfectly
believable), but they are pretty passive. *Shin Sekai Yori* is not a
story about Saki acting forthrightly to change her world, it is mostly a
story about her experiencing and coming to understand it. In that sense
Bobduh is right; this is more a science fiction story about setting and
ideas than a story about actual people.

([[This was also Inushide's major criticism of the show
http://thecartdriver.com/shinsekai-yori-episode-25-trials-and-torture-lations/]].)

=== Sidebar: an alternate reading of the show

To be fair, you can also read *Shin Sekai Yori* in a different way. I
can construct a plausible reading where the Cantus humans are right
to be as cruel and brutal as they are to everything and where the
show is an argument from utilitarianism. In this version of the show,
Saki's life is the story of a tragedy (and she even tells us this in
a voiceover); her moments of rebellion against the proper way of the
village lead first to the rise of Squealer and second to the tragedy of
his rebellion.

(Squealer's life arguably revolves around his first encounter with Saki
and her friends. That fateful meeting not only saved his life and
his colony, it also may well have put him on the path to rebellion by
showing him weak, fallible, and manipulable Cantus humans.)

My justification against this simple reading of the show is how it
handled Squealer's trial, specifically how it doesn't show the Cantus
humans in a good light. [[They are not people handing out justice, they
are the masters punishing an uppity slave ShinSekaiYoriSquealer]].