Shin Sekai Yori

[shinta|hikari]

Shisui would have easily melted the bullets as they came at him.

Cantus at such a level is simply overpowered. He even knew about the spies once he started to actively look for them. He simply let his guard down, and it cost him a powerful, albeit irritating and arrogant ally.

I really hope Yakomaru receives the protracted death promised this episode. I hate smarmy ambitious assholes.

Karma demons are karma demons because they can kill. Skill is irrelevant I believe, but as was shown in this episode, geniuses do exist regardless of moral inclination.

[MFauli]

I really hope Yakomaru receives the protracted death promised this episode. I hate smarmy ambitious assholes.

Yeah, fuck the guy that devotes his life to save his kind from slavery and discrimination. Wait, what!

[Kraco]

Karma demons are karma demons because they can kill. Skill is irrelevant I believe, but as was shown in this episode, geniuses do exist regardless of moral inclination.

No, fiends are those who can kill, and probably will kill because turning into a fiend seems to require some screws to become loose in the head. Karma demons are simply individuals who can't control their cantus anymore and thus screw up their surroundings accidentally. Karma demons, after all, have a history of assisting their own removal and recorded their experiences for any later unfortunates to learn from.

[shinta|hikari]

Oh crap, in that entire post I meant to say fiends, not Karma demons.

[Buffalobiian]

UTW - Episode 19

[David75]

Yakomaru really got a way to control a fiend, and a fiend's cantus power is in an other league entirely. So I wonder if Shisui would be enough.
I guess the way they control Mamoru's fiend form is thanks to Maria. Also, I guess Saki and Satoru are still alive thanks to Maria's control, since I don't think fiends care that much for old relatives.

[Kraco]

Damn, it's annoying to watch people not doing anything to protect themselves but just die like sheep. If not for the brainwashing they would have had any number of ways to get rid of the fiend. But being conditioned as they are, they can barely run away.

I don't honestly see how Squealer or anybody could control that thing. Why would it even want to be controlled by a queerat? If it kills humans for fun, killing queerats should be no different. Maria should make no difference here. Even if the fiend wouldn't kill her, I don't see how Maria would be all too sane trying to control the fiend considering what it is doing. Yet if she is, it'd be somewhat strange she would in turn be controlled by queerats, because she would be pretty much a fiend herself. Even normal humans can kill queerats by hundreds without a second thought.

[David75]

Maria=Karma Demon
Mamoru=Fiend

And for some reason, although changing so much, they still share a very deep bond but completely lost their sense of reality.

Then, in a way we still have to be explained, Yakomaru can influence a KD (Maria) enough for his own tasks.

I just thought that maybe Qeerats, with their queen to individual reproduction, keep past experience and keep improving over generations as some of them evolve and find solutions to many problems.
Maybe over the course of time, they acquired some ways to influence KDs, and maybe they got that with a minoshiro too.

[MFauli]

Finally, all the (at times boring/tedious) build up is paying off. The last two episodes were fantastic.

First, I´d like to repeat that I´m siding with the queerrats. Oh, so I´m supposed to feel empathy for those four "gods", when they´re slaughtering dozens of queerrats in the beginning just by looking at them? I guess everyone who´s siding with the humans in this anime is also a fan of Uchiha Sasuke sadlol.

We finally get to encounter the real threat of the queerrats´ revolution: The fiend. I don´t know how Yakomaru managed to get control over one, but he somehow did. Although I´d like to mention that we really don´t know all that much about how influenceable fiends really are. It´s all hearsay from the human elders. There could be lots of lies or simply broken records hampering with the true image of what a fiend is.
Then there´s David´s posting above mine, introducing an interesting theory, too. Mamoru as a fiend, Maria as a Karma demon, strong enough to keep up with the former, combined with the emotional band between the two.

What I don´t remember: Shouldn´t Saki and Satoru actually be able to fight the fiend? The other humans cannot, due to death feedback. But didn´t the heroes-group "remove" that "seal", when they were on their camping trip and met the fake momoshiro? After losing and regaining their Cantus? Which is why they were considered dangerous by the human elders to begin with?

Which gets me to the point: Is Shisui also free to use his Cantus against other human beings?

[Kraco]

Maria=Karma Demon
Mamoru=Fiend

And for some reason, although changing so much, they still share a very deep bond but completely lost their sense of reality.

Then, in a way we still have to be explained, Yakomaru can influence a KD (Maria) enough for his own tasks.

I just thought that maybe Qeerats, with their queen to individual reproduction, keep past experience and keep improving over generations as some of them evolve and find solutions to many problems.
Maybe over the course of time, they acquired some ways to influence KDs, and maybe they got that with a minoshiro too.

A karma demon is somebody who has lost control of their cantus, at least to a substantial degree. It's nothing more than that. They are still as sane as any other villager, unless death feedback or the bizarreness of their surroundings damaged their headspace. They are just involuntarily altering or destroying everything around them. I reckon in the beginning many of them wouldn't even realise what's going on.

So, I don't see the relevance in suggesting Maria is a karma demon and that somehow would help Squealer control her. They can't even control themselves, so it's not like somebody else could - unless that somebody else was a better cantus user than anybody has ever seen and could somehow tweak with a karma demon's brain to control their cantus for them.

A fiend is another matter. They seem to be insane, more or less, and have no inhibitions whatsoever. Quite the contrary, in fact, since normally a human without any fancy hypnotized or genetic conditioning wouldn't just slaughter everybody inside a random building, unless they had a specific mission to do that (like wiping out terrorists). It seems like fiends enjoy killing and aren't simply able to do it.

[Buffalobiian]

The man kept saying the Fiend was a "he", but I wouldn't believe him entirely until I see the thing myself. He was growling and was shrouded in darkness, so it could easily have been a misinterpretation.

Maria being a KD is irrelevant, and would make her even less approachable by queerats IMO. The rest of this point was covered by Kraco.

Fiends seem to have lost some of their rationality, but I'm not sure that they're incapable of being reasoned to. Yakomaru can give the field the element of surprise he may need to infiltrate the village and hence they cooperated. That, or the fiend simply had no reason to fight the queerats that helped him in the past. Perhaps he even feels sorry for them because they've been mistreated the same way he had been.

Satoru's anti-queerat tactics continue to impress, and I'm genuinely amazed that he's now able to make a mirror out of condensed air.


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[Kraco]

The man kept saying the Fiend was a "he", but I wouldn't believe him entirely until I see the thing myself. He was growling and was shrouded in darkness, so it could easily have been a misinterpretation.

The fiend was in fact Maria? Squealer assassinated Mamoru and managed to make Maria believe the village got him?

The only thing that really bothers me about all this is the timeline. To be specific, the ten years jump. What on Earth were Maria and Mamoru doing all that time? Logic dictates they would be long gone. So, what would have made them come back? I find it hard to believe they would have enjoyed Squealer's hospitality right next to the village bent on killing them. There's also no way Squealer could have kept them imprisoned until he was ready to make his grand move against other queerats and the humans. The only logical explanation would be that Mamoru turned into a fiend somewhere far away (perhaps the world was just as shitty everywhere) and in his insanity wandered back to the place of origin, with Maria forced to follow him. Then Squealer would have needed to do nothing but take full advantage of the rare chance. That doesn't exactly explain how he could have used those two to wipe out Giant Hornet, though.

Hmm... Or Mamoru could have randomly died elsewhere and Maria, turned into a fiend, came back to look for her old love, Saki. And decided to kill everybody else in the process while she was at it. I guess that sort of thinking would be natural for a fiend.

[MFauli]

Well, there´s one more possibility (if you can call it that) that would also incorporate the 10 years jump.

In the episode where we got to see the imprisoned queerrat queen, we speculated about this kind of control over a superior being. That there might even be a clue to how he, Yakomaru, might gain control over a human being/Cantus user in the future. So, maybe, just maybe, Yakomaru indeed successfully turned the experience of controlling a queen into something that let him control a human. I mean, if this anime decides to become truly fucked up, maybe we´ll get to see Maria kept captive in some dark hole, put in chains agianst a wall, her belly all swollen and big. And we´ll learn that Yakomaru had her give birth to newly born human beings that Yakomaru then turned into his personal war machines. Could we make out how old the fiend in this latest episode was? If not, maybe it is indeed some 9-10 year old boy/girl.
But that´s really the most disturbing "solution" I could come up with. It´s probably something less provoking.

[Buffalobiian]

Well, there´s one more possibility (if you can call it that) that would also incorporate the 10 years jump.

In the episode where we got to see the imprisoned queerrat queen, we speculated about this kind of control over a superior being. That there might even be a clue to how he, Yakomaru, might gain control over a human being/Cantus user in the future. So, maybe, just maybe, Yakomaru indeed successfully turned the experience of controlling a queen into something that let him control a human. I mean, if this anime decides to become truly fucked up, maybe we´ll get to see Maria kept captive in some dark hole, put in chains agianst a wall, her belly all swollen and big. And we´ll learn that Yakomaru had her give birth to newly born human beings that Yakomaru then turned into his personal war machines. Could we make out how old the fiend in this latest episode was? If not, maybe it is indeed some 9-10 year old boy/girl.
But that´s really the most disturbing "solution" I could come up with. It´s probably something less provoking.

This post is a bannable offence unless you draw it.

@Kraco: Squealer might have been able to keep tabs on them during the last 10 years. One of them might have spontaneously died or turned into a fiend from some attack, and Yakomaru somehow convinced them that the attacks were from enemy queerats and that the entire human village is after them.

The labotomising technique might be able to detach things in the brain such that death feedback no longer occurs.

[David75]

I like the Maria Queen idea... Quite plausible indeed. I like the idea very much.

My idea for the KD controlling a fiend stems from the fact that KDs change everything around them, so a fiend would also be changed somehow. I know it's quite a stretch, but we have two powers that can interact with one another and at the same power level so that they can't kill each other. And KDs can influence everything around them.

[Kraco]

In the episode where we got to see the imprisoned queerrat queen, we speculated about this kind of control over a superior being. That there might even be a clue to how he, Yakomaru, might gain control over a human being/Cantus user in the future. So, maybe, just maybe, Yakomaru indeed successfully turned the experience of controlling a queen into something that let him control a human. I mean, if this anime decides to become truly fucked up, maybe we´ll get to see Maria kept captive in some dark hole, put in chains agianst a wall, her belly all swollen and big. And we´ll learn that Yakomaru had her give birth to newly born human beings that Yakomaru then turned into his personal war machines. Could we make out how old the fiend in this latest episode was? If not, maybe it is indeed some 9-10 year old boy/girl.
But that´s really the most disturbing "solution" I could come up with. It´s probably something less provoking.

... I don't really want to believe in that (because it would be so gross). I feel the facts also speak against it. Narration and some other hints suggest Maria isn't lobotomized. I can't see any other way for powerless queerats to manage to imprison a human for a long time. As long as she could use her cantus, it would take hundreds of queerats to subdue her, and even afterwards it would be a nightmare for the queerats to keep her under control using force. If they did tinker with her brain, she would be in no condition anymore to be a character of much importance.

Besides, who would be the father? If it was Mamoru, the queerats would need to survive keeping two humans prisoners! But other than that, it is actually quite an interesting idea, leaving the queerats out of it. If the fiend was Maria and Mamoru's kid who, without any education or conditioning, was running rampant. Although I'm not sure if 9-10 years is old enough to be so powerful and dangerous.

[David75]

In the Minoshiro ep, one of the flashbacks depicted a boy that seemed to be quite young.

[Ryllharu]

It's more likely that the queerrats lobotomized Maria, blamed it on the humans, which caused Mamoru to snap, as opposed to some other grotesque means.

To utilize a fiend, Yakomaru would have to ensure that its rage was directed at the human society, so it wasn't randomly slaughtering them. Substantial brainwashing combined with a very clever ruse to keep the Fiend focused on killing only the human society and its allies. That's only if Maria isn't dead. They also could have killed her in the woods with with poison or whatever, and again, blamed it on the humans. This would also have had to happen recently.

Narrator Saki's words long ago were interestingly phrased. She said that if only Maria had died early on, many many lives would be saved, not that Saki herself had to kill her (referring to when Maria and Mamoru escaped). If Mamoru is the fiend, this makes more sense. He never would have fallen desperately in love with her to the point the he would go ballistic trying to avenge her.

At this point, the queerrats aren't really controlling Mamoru anymore. It's like biological or fire warfare. Release it, and stay upwind.

-----------------

As for anyone here claiming to support a particular side, it should be pretty clear that there isn't a "good" side in this entire series. There are no heroes, no one to admire, only villains and our hopelessly lost protagonists, paralyzed by indecisiveness.

Yakomaru is a sociopath who will stop at nothing to secure his ambitions and retaliate against whatever might humiliate him even if it takes years (his queen, Kiroumaru, humans in general). He is exceptionally manipulative. It should be absolutely certain that his "democracy" is a joke. There is no question who truly rules their society. It may have a sort of Senate, but it would be child's play for someone of his skill at manipulation to sway all of them his way over and over and over again. He rarely will even field his own forces unless he is certain of his own safety (often tricking Saki and Satoru into shielding him). He sends the latest subordinate group that his kingdom has subjugated to do the dirty work.

The humans on the other hand, have become as foolish as the Cantus Emperors, thinking that nothing could ever threaten them. Their society as a whole began to treat everything different from them as less than human. They slaughter their own. Their crimes against their own are far worse than anything they have done to queerrats or anything else. Out of fear of creating new Cantus Emperors, they as a whole became what they were so afraid of. It was interesting that Satoru got so angry about what the queerrats had done to their queen, while Saki at least understood that it's not any different from what human do to their own children, equally out of fear.

Yakomaru displays ambition at all costs with no risk to oneself like the worst dynastic Chinese bureaucrat, humans possess an immense hubris, while at the same time constantly cowering in fear about the threats from within.

[Kraco]

It's more likely that the queerrats lobotomized Maria, blamed it on the humans, which caused Mamoru to snap, as opposed to some other grotesque means.

To utilize a fiend, Yakomaru would have to ensure that its rage was directed at the human society, so it wasn't randomly slaughtering them. Substantial brainwashing combined with a very clever ruse to keep the Fiend focused on killing only the human society and its allies. That's only if Maria isn't dead. They also could have killed her in the woods with with poison or whatever, and again, blamed it on the humans. This would also have had to happen recently.

The preview had Maria's voice saying she will protect Saki. Was it a flashback? Or was it referring to upcoming events when Maria wouldn't allow the fiend to harm Saki? I guess only the next episodes will reveal that. With this show, there's no way to know beforehand.

[Buffalobiian]

The preview had Maria's voice saying she will protect Saki. Was it a flashback? Or was it referring to upcoming events when Maria wouldn't allow the fiend to harm Saki? I guess only the next episodes will reveal that. With this show, there's no way to know beforehand.

I thought it was indicating that Maria is coming (the fiend) to protect Saki from the humans. Saki will probably kill her since she's the one that Maria lets her guard down against.