The idea apparently is that Kaburagi Shisei was pretty much immune to any kind of physical attack, but vulnerable to cantus itself (something Saki figured out when she suddenly recalled that he was visibly worried about cantus leakage back when Shun was turning into a Gôma). Instead of using his cantus to move objects around (as usual), the kid used it directly on Kaburagi's body (the "rainbow" over the guy's head is a phenomenon that occurs when canti collide).
From the New World (Shin Sekai Yori) |OT| - Of molerats and men
- Thread starter Branduil
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Caught up to 21.
The author of the novel actually named it "From the New World" because it is named after Dvorak's Symphony No. 9. So yes, using the actual piece of music there is intentional. Nobody's translated the novel but it's not hard to guess that in the novel that's really the piece of music played every day at dusk.
Is there really no emergency solution where the hypnosis that results in death feedback can be removed from somebody? Please tell me the human scientists weren't actually that stupid to create a system like this without a failsafe? Apparently to bypass death feedback all you need to do is raise a child without the hypnosis which regulates and controls their psychokinesis. Nobody realized this fundamental flaw in the system as they were implementing it?
The author of the novel actually named it "From the New World" because it is named after Dvorak's Symphony No. 9. So yes, using the actual piece of music there is intentional. Nobody's translated the novel but it's not hard to guess that in the novel that's really the piece of music played every day at dusk.
So, the way I saw it
Death Feedback is a genetic thing reinforced with a hypnotic component. There's no real "turning it off" for someone who already has it. It really only works if you don't give someone the power to turn it off. If they could just turn it off, some leader may become a massive dictator just by turning off the feedback on a couple subjects or perhaps just himself. Basically, what's happening now. No way you could trust any human with that power
they had some help from a Cantus user to selectively disable the gene in the fetus' development. We already see Cantus users have that sort of power of genetic mutation. Now as for who or why, I don't really have a clue
Prior to this episode, I would have sworn that they explained death feedback as something that was on the DNA level, which explained why certain mutants would have been born without that. That notion was
It is kind of lame that their
I don't think they have time, but I'd love some justification for why humans allowed the bakenezumi to exist at all. Clearly they have no qualms about killing their own children, and they have the cantus modified cats, so why do they need the bakenezumi at all? They could have wiped them out at any time in the past hundred plus years, but didn't for some reason. I need that explained.
It's a nice easter egg for those of us that can't read the novel. I think one of the smaller publishers was thinking about translating it, so hopefully that will happen at some point.
proved wrong by this episode though. Clearly death feedback is something that they've got to hypnotize into children, or maybe even something that they use their powers to alter in the brain of children.
It is kind of lame that their
entire society is in horrible jeopardy if a single human child is stolen.
It's a nice easter egg for those of us that can't read the novel. I think one of the smaller publishers was thinking about translating it, so hopefully that will happen at some point.
They did say that. There's clearly a bit more going on than what's been shown already. Either there's some
selective breeding
At the beginning, the feedback was stated to be genetic reinforced by hypnosis. Now, one other explanation would be that since the society has been so many generations after the initial manipulation that it's been effectively bred out of society and all that's holding them from that power is the hypnosis.
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Well unless Maria and Mamoru gave birth to the Kwisatz Haderach a generation too early or someshit, it's unlikely that this child is any different from any other human child in this world. The original group of Saki, Satoru, Maria, Mamoru, and Shun were randomly selected to be in this "limited hypnosis" group, there isn't any suggestion that they were chosen because of some breeding program.
We honestly don't know anything other than
Maria is the mother. There's possibly been some other specially chosen father to weaken death feedback
It's funny how they don't even have electricity yet but they already have much greater genetic engineering and knowledge of behavioral conditioning than we ever had.
She's witnessed the
intelligence of Kiromaru and Squealer first hand, and still doesn't understand why one of them would think that they deserved to not be slaves, or to be under constant threat of genocide.
I understand that they're slave labor, I just don't know why humanity would want them around. Any labor that needed to be done could easily be accomplished by cantus. Maybe there are just so many bakenezumi that it was deemed unwise to not have a subservient colony of them as protection. Then again, with the arrogance on display, I doubt they would have seen them as protection at all, which brings me back around to "why would they let them live".
They do have an immensely over inflated sense of what their powers are capable of, don't they? You'd think everyone could make a cantus shield around themselves and be completely immune to any and all bakenezumi attacks, but that isn't what happened at all.
Given how few episodes they have left, I don't see how they could do that ending. The only thing close would be humanity is forced underground while the queerats rule above and leave a sort of hint that humans could be preparing for revolt.
True, but you also have to know that the original death feedback DNA change was done years, possibly hundreds of years, ago. Many generations have passed. There's no guarantee that the mutation didn't somehow breed itself out, especially since they had hypnosis as a back up. What's to say that hypnosis isn't all that's keeping all of them from that power now?
But you could be right, we've seen you can manipulate genetics with cantus. I could totally see that coming back and that the death feedback DNA mutation is part of the hypnosis initiation they all have.
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I find this hard to believe. All this destruction was caused by a single human child who is a fiend. All they need to do is find someone who is willing to sacrifice themselves to save their entire species, hand him or her a gun, tell him to point it at the kid, and pull the trigger. Death feedback will kill this person of course. After the fiend is dead, they can then proceed to exterminate the entire queerat species and resume their dystopic lives.
Is there any evidence that this society even have weapons that can kill people in one go? We've already seen that death feedback shuts cantus down before they can accomplish the actual killing. Also, who's to say the fiend can't just deflect conventional weapons with their cantus? It seems like Cantus is the only way to take out a fiend.
The way
the queerats
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The queerats have guns and have used them in wars. The False Minoshiros contain a store of all human knowledge up to the point of the apocalypse and for hundreds of years after, so it's not as if the humans don't know about guns. And you would have to sneak up on the fiend and shoot him while he is not alert obviously. If the fiend was sleeping when you infiltrated his camp, you could just stab him or behead him or something. Cantus doesn't make you immune to physical injury, as Shisei found out rather unpleasantly.
Using cantus still requires effort. There's so few humans left that they need help to keep their society running.
Death feedback keeps them from even thinking about directly killing humans.
He's playing with fire by
breeding human children and turning them into barely controllable killing machines. A war with humanity would take generations, and would end with humans breeding their own killing machines. There's no easy way out of what Squealer has done, unless Saki, Satoru, and maybe Shun can track down the stolen children and kill them, while also killing Squealer. Any other ending is going to have to be some terrible "and that's how the war started..." fade to black awfulness.
They could limit colony numbers at the very least. Allowing them to combine into super colonies was just crazy.
If they can get to them soon enough
no reason the babies couldn't be reintegrated into society. If they can get them back before they get their cantus, they can be easily reintegrated with the usual hypnosis
Considering the promo art...
Since we see
that Kiroumaru returns next episode, I wonder if Saki and Co. are going to contract with him.
Squealer's
if Kiroumaru (and whatever cohorts he has left) is able to find a way to kill the fiend, well, game over. A traitor rat could very well get close enough to assassinate the psychic.
I doubt it'll be that easy, but speculation is fun.
Well it's made pretty obvious that Kamisu had become arrogant to a fault.
Meanwhile the education committee is so paranoid that they dispose of their own children at the drop of a hat. It's an interesting dichotomy.
That could happen I guess. That art could be any number of bakenezumi battles though.
It's clear that the entirety of humanity has a huge blind spot when it comes to the queerats. It's not surprising that they don't see them as intelligent and self sufficient enough to be a threat. Prior to recent events, they weren't. They revered humans. They were docile and dumb. Now, when they
completely reorganized their society
I know, it was just in response to the
'Any other ending is going to have to be some terrible "and that's how the war started..." fade to black awfulness.'
I really hope that isn't what happens, because it will really throw a damper over the entire series for me.
I am. If monkeys started talking and forming societies, my immediate reaction would be "alright...they've got to go". Forget about enslaving them. I guess they appeared so many years into the arrogance of Cantus users that no one even considered the possibility of them being a threat though.
The show has been pretty adept at avoiding the obvious move when it comes to story, so I doubt they'd screw it up now and go for something as awful and trite as that. Who knows, though? I'm really excited to find out.
I would say that most of this arrogance more derives from the fact that the queerats see the humans as gods. They feel like gods. They don't see how their loyal subjects would even think about harming their gods. Other queerats? Yes, but gods never.
Well, it'd still be better than a
'reset' ending where Saki repairs the world like she repaired the vase. Or how Tomioka repaired her cells. Micro -> Macro.
I joked about this a few weeks ago and the thought always amuses me.
It's too bad that episode 5 through 7 were so poorly handled, because some really significant things happen there. Lost in all the CG rock hurling was Satoru's sudden bloodlust after Saki's re-programming of his Cantus, for one.
We know that
Saki lives to an old age
humanity can't get wiped out.
Have they said how many humans are left alive worldwide? If they got the message out that
they needed to breed humans capable of killing other humans
war would begin ten years later. Saki may be the only one to see the end of such a war, if she can turn her pot expertise into telomere lengthening magic.
It's going to be interesting, one way or another.
In other words, they could
outbreed squealer about thirty thousand to one (assuming a 50/50 male/female split) every nine months in terms of fiends.
How did
Squealer think this was going to end well for him?
Edit: Now that I think about, outside of that one priest guy and the old lady....where are the
elderly people
age to the point that they have to kill their senior citizens?
Had to be a gamble, but
I don't think there's significant contact between each district, no? If he struck hard enough, and wiped them out, then he gets breathing room to expand and configure for the next battle.
I imagine he wanted to
use blitzkrieg tactics. Hit then hard and fast. Keep them too afraid and confused to fight back and strategize.
He also has the benefit of tactical and strategic experience and knowledge. Most of the humans don't seem to know what the heck they're doing.
It's what happens when you breed out the overly competitive. (And to think people said the game in ep2 wasn't important!)
Fair enough. Killing
Shisei
It's interesting to me that the one
fiend they have isn't guarding the newborns. If someone can relay the message that the cats should go after them, there's no way the bakenezumi could stop it from happening.
Yeah that was pretty much a "well we're all FUBAR'd now" moment. But it looks like
Kiroumaru may be their ace in the hole.
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The leader of the Ethics committee says exactly 60k.
Also, when you turn most of the society into sheep.
The lady of the Ethics committee mentioned that they were psychically monitoring and controlling the population to avoid any major turbulence. Saki's group just so happened to be the control group that was not controlled heavily in order to pick a leader(Saki) and successor to Shisei(Shun)
The False Minoshiro said worldwide population levels are under 2% compared to the "golden age," so that's less than 140 million people on the whole planet.
Do we know if all of humanity has Cantus, or if it's just the residents of Japan?
I can't remember,
did they actually say how they got rid of the previous fiend? I'm inclined to think that their one hope would be a practical approach to killing the fiend. Tricking it into some kind of trap, it doesn't seem to know how to fly for example so they could potentially copy what happened in that story from ep.2 or w.e where the guy cut down a rope bridge with the fiend on still on it.
The fiend felt
sick and went to a doctor, where it was poisoned to death.
Someone earlier said that humans couldn't even "think about" killing other humans in this world. If that's true, that is a new thing since those events, because the
doctor was able to plan the poisoning and carry it out without the feedback killing him.
Actually, didn't they give
Shun some poison pills that didn't work?
Yeah, it didn't seem true when I read it, but I was too busy doing other things to think about why until now.
There's no reason why they couldn't just
shoot the fiend with a gun like someone else suggested. They clearly know that guns exist, since the bakenezumi have them
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