Shin Sekai Yori

How are they going to communicate? Satoru and Saki barely escaped. The rest of the villagers are essentially sheep, and most of the leadership is dead. By this point, half the town is also dead. The other half think an Akki is roaming around. They probably don't know he/she is in Tokyo.

I assumed she meant there have only been fifty recorded Akki throughout all of history. Worldwide. Remember, they were not nearly as paranoid before K. People were not killed by the government. As I recall, people were given full human rights 22 weeks after conception. Still, Akki were a rare sight.

edited 21st Mar '13 4:01:04 PM by SilentColossus

No. 50 fiends, worldwide, ever. The number of fiends since the measures were put in is presumably much lower than that, because the measures are effective. And they'd better be, given that they eliminate anyone who shows even the slightest sign of going fiend.

Remember, Tomiko had seen exactly one fiend in her life, and when K emerged, he caught their society completely unawares. Meaning that their society had been going on just fine without any anti-fiend measures for generations. Meaning fiends happen less than once a generation, even without the counter-measures.

And, anyway, a fiend wouldn't be that much of a threat of Yakomaru; the rats are perfectly capable of dealing with isolated humans.

edited 21st Mar '13 4:08:48 PM by Gilphon

Also, unrelated for the most part, but saying a gouma is invincible doesn't really mean anything since they are always harmless, gentle people.

Who said that Gouma are invincible? They really aren't. They're just as vulnerable as a regular human. Even more so in some ways. The problem is that they're more common and less predictable than Akki.

I think he was assuming that all gouma are as talented as Shun, which isn't really supported.

Well, yeah. The balance of evidence suggests that those pills they gave Shun usually work, for one thing.

And even Shun should have been vulnerable to sneak attacks. Well, I suppose it's possible that he's regenerate from any injury that didn't kill him instantly, but there would still be ways of killing him.

Although speaking of sneak-attacks, there was Mamoru with that tainted cat...

@Silent Colossus, @Gilphon. 50 fiends counted worldwide since the idea of fiend existed, i.e., after people started applying ways of reducing aggression such as genetic manipulation and hypnotism (0.02 percent of humanity is not 50 people, and they killed a lot). 50 fiends despite the countermeasures - which have been applied to everyone. We even SAW them being applied to our protagonists, and they don't have any special anti-fiend tactics other than killing them before they show up. And we know that many people have been killed in only a few years, in a single village - probability dictates than a few or even just one could have become a fiend. And if you take out the carefully restricted upbringing, then if anything I might be underestimating the amount of fiends that can show up.

Tomiko states that at the time they had forgotten what a fiend is capable of, not the measures they have taken against potential fends. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been that remark about people not finding signs of danger until he snapped.

One of the advantage that the rats had to kill the humans was infiltration, but that obviously won't work if that someone kills everything around him/her. The other tactic, attacking by surprise, still works even if it's harder to pull off, but the problem is that it's not about killing a single fiend.

I did overestimate the powers of a karma demon, now that I think about it. But not even being a gentle soul will prevent it from warping anything and anyone that can get close, so conventional means other than long range guns are unlikely to succeed. Although I actually got the idea that karma demons are much rarer, because the restrictions don't seem to target them specifically... If they weren't, they would actually work much better than fiends because all they would have to do is stay near a colony for a while, put there by an adult who can make sure he/she is in a well hidden place.

1. Fifty fiends worldwide ever, not since people started reducing aggression and introducing death feedback.
2. The world has had cantus users for at least a thousand years
3. Countermeasures have only been in place for two hundred years. There have been no fiends spotted since and there hadn't been any in a long enough time before that.
4. The countermeasures have not been applied to everyone. You seem to forget that the percentage of the human population seen is only a fraction of what actually exists. There are massive slave empires elsewhere that don't run their societies like this.
5. You seem to be assuming that all fifty fiends were in this isolated society. That's wrong.
6. You are not overestimating. You are greatly overestimating based on your flawed information.

1. Why would it be necessary to counteract them and why would they be willing to be used? It's implied that gouma always commit suicide when they realize what they've become.
2. They are, in fact, more common than akkis. The last generation had one, didn't it? Or was it Tomiko relating having known one?
3. I don't think they would be willing to be used as weapons. "Hey, freak who hates hurting people and wants to kill himself, could you go infect rat people with your doomsday aura?"

edited 22nd Mar '13 1:58:21 PM by Arha

Guns would totally work on Gouma. Their doomsaday auras, as Arha put it, don't act that quickly, from what we've seen. They're essentially just people who're radioactive in a really freaky way.

And anyway, if you're trying to use them as a weapon against the rats, a regular person would be able to do everything a Gouma could and more. After all, it's not like they naturally affect everything; they only touch what their subconscious is aware of. And as long as you're only targetting things you're aware of, it's just a lot more efficient to kill them by remotely snapping their necks than through disease or horrific mutations or whatever the freaky aura of this particular person does.

I was wrong about the 50 Akki. Rewatching the episode, Tomiko said there were 30.

Edit: But remember, potential Akki are not the only ones who can be killed. Remember the deep shit Group One was in for breaking an Ethics Law?

edited 22nd Mar '13 2:30:23 PM by SilentColossus

1. The 0.02% percent that killed most of humanity were not fiends because they had nothing preventing them from killing other people. The term fiend does not equal to cantus powered serial killer. It applies to those who have a compulsion to kill, despite supposedly not being able to, due to a mental disorder. So by definition, the concept only came into existence after the countermeasures were put into place. Otherwise, 0.02 percent corresponds to 30 people, which is wrong.

2. Tomiko's generation most certainly wasn't the one that set in place the genetical manipulation, the first form of countermeasures, which along with the others was developed throughout the dark ages by cientists who might not even be cantus users. That happened more than a thousand years ago, as the false minoshiro stated.

3. Every society that didn't put some level of countermeasures died off. We know that, because that was exactly what the false minoshiro said, that the last ones to survive were scientists which devised the current society, so while they may be variations the principle in all of them HAS to be the same.

4. 30 fiends worldwide over a thousand years when the entire world works as hard as they can to repress them (because if they didn't, they would be dead) indicates that they are not that rare.

5.Karma demons commit suicide because their existence means that they could only hurt they're love ones. Going away to hurt queerats can actually help the survival of those they care about. They are not going to kill themselves over it. That's also more than enough motivation to use themselves as weapons, especially because they don't even have to kill anything directly - they just have to be near them, it's not even necessary to see them.

6. I did say that guns would work, what wouldn't work would be getting into melee range because unlike regular cantus users, karma demons affect everything around them and not just what they are thinking about (just look at Tokyo, no one has any idea of what's it like yet everyone affects it subconsciously). The subconscious only doesn't work on what it can't imagine. The point about karma demons is that they can hide themselves very easily because they only have to stay still, so it's likely they wouldn't even get attacked in the first place.

7. The difference between fiends and karma demons is that the former is an outright negation of the fundamental principle upon which this society is based (as well as biologically via bonobos and death feedback), that humans don't kill other humans. Practically every rule and conditioning exists to prevent people from killing fellow humans (or queerats, if you think you are a fellow queerat), which is exactly what a fiend is all about. Karma demons, on the other hand, exist within the rules and acceptable behavior, so it's only held back by hypnotic suggestion (that states cantus can be sealed, among other things). The personality controls are also based on potential aggression and adherence to the rules, which means the vast majority of the ones targeted for elimination are potential fiends. So logically, karma demons are rare exactly because there have only been a few despite the purges not specifically targeting them.

8. Fiends break the rules (like killing other people because they feel like it). People who break the rules are thus likelier to become fiends. This is not about eliminating political adversaries or dissenters, like in most distopias. The reason the council wanted to eliminate Mamuro and Saki when they ran away is because of they could become, not because it would undermine their governments.

edited 22nd Mar '13 3:34:08 PM by lgcruz

1. The False Minoshire claims they existed before the Dark Ages. It outright denies that they only appeared after the Death Feedback was placed. Shun asks, the Minoshiro says "no."

edited 22nd Mar '13 3:59:32 PM by SilentColossus

This, right here, is the crux of your misunderstanding. It's exactly the other way round. The threat fiends pose is so extreme that they work as had as they can to suppress them despite their rarity. We know this because, as we've said several times, their society was completely unprepared for K when he emerged, and the idea of him being the first one ever is laughable. They work hard to stop them pre-emptively because a single fiend can and will tear an entire city to pieces.

To eleborate further on my above point, simply being able to kill people does not make you an Akki. It is a specific disorder that makes you a killing machine.

Ummm, interesting point about them existing before the death feedback. I guess it is a variation of psychopathic behavior, except with serial killer compulsion. That would make it a bit rarer than I think, although it's still implied that it came about due the ease and amount of power that cantus allows, so still late phase of dark ages when cantus was most developed.

That's not how probability works. The more potentially faulty objects you eliminate, the less likely it is that a faulty one will appear. Because people are terrified of fiends's, they will kill a lot more potential fiends than you would normally. As such, the probability of one occurring is much smaller than if they weren't terrified of it. The inverse would only happen if you were deliberately or unknowingly avoiding dangerous individuals, which is not true. That also does explain why there aren't any after K, Tomiko did not forget that fear and would not allow anyone within reach to forget either.

Yeah, I get that they would also be trying to avoid people who would want to kill others (regular people can't even conceive the idea) despite suffering from death feedback, so not fiends. But since cantus is heavily psychologically determined, I'm assuming that if someone really wants to, their brain will eventually find some sort of solution.

edited 22nd Mar '13 4:13:53 PM by lgcruz

That's exactly what I've been saying. They were rare, and then they instituted countermeasures against them, so they became non-existent. If the countermeasures were relaxed, they'd go back to simply being rare.

I mean, the fact that fiends were extremely rare is basically what tipped them off about Maria's kid not being one, remember? They realized how improbable it was for the one child the rats had access to to just happen to go fiend.

Okay. let's guess 1000 to 1. The probability of a single child being a fiend is 0,1 %, which is ridiculously low, as we both agree. But in 1000 babies born, at least one of them ought to be a fiend. Wanna bet that a lot more babies are born, just in this world's japan, within 5 years?

The point is, even if the probability is low, sheer numbers dictate that it will take place. The preventive killings took it from low to practically non-existent. If they are relaxed, they will go back to low - meaning that in a large population, there are always a few individuals. And unlike yakomaru's, they don't need to wait so long for them until they manifest.

And of course, that's ignoring the possibility that grown adults can't turn into fiends due to their war experiences, which is very likely considering the number of related PTS Ds and their effects on the psyche.

edited 22nd Mar '13 11:19:14 PM by lgcruz

The problem is we still have insufficient data.

Primarily you shouldn't use statistics you made up to argue against what we've seen in the show.

We don't know if adults can just turn Akki. We don't even really know what defensive measures are employed outside of the area we've seen.

An untrained Akki could probably still be easily taken down by queerats too.

Stupid humans. Forgetting the first rule: Kill or be killed.

Episode 25: Thanks a lot Squealer, for making me eat my words.

It changes nothing to me that his ancestors were human, but everybody talking to him, starting with Saki herself was just unable to see outside their own point of view. And I don't really like the view that killing an intelligent species is fine, but killing and intelligent species that came from humans is somehow different. I don't agree with Squealer, but he actually shows conviction and dedication this episode. His arguments make more sense than anyone else's.

Okay the humans are just borderline evil. Not even we treat our war criminals like that. Nobody deserves that fate.

I think you have to take into account that it's a novel, so that's why the epilogue was dialogue-heavy.

But this was a good ending. I had expected them to waste half of it with the fight, but that was wrapped up almost too abruptly (some of the poorest direction in the show for Kiromaru's death scene), and we spent the rest of the episode closing off the plot, and end on a note of hope Saki has learnt all we have about this world. So she hopefully knows how to avoid all the pitfalls. If there was a message, perhaps it is about learning from your mistakes and moving on.

edited 23rd Mar '13 7:09:33 AM by UltimatelySubjective

That was a rather abrupt ending.

Hmm... Well, yes, Squealer's arguments did make the most sense, but after surrendering, I'm pretty sure he was dressing his motives up when talking to Saki and Satoru. Kiroumaru's death was dealt with rather quickly.

You know, I can't help wondering why they didn't just give the normal humans death feedback and attack inhibition as well. Surely once you know how to do that it must be easier than taking the entire population of the planet and splicing their DNA with mole rats?

Also, Squealer probably didn't even know that his race was originally spawned from humans. Or at least that's what I'll think until proven otherwise. Him stating 'We are humans' is more like 'We are intelligent beings and blah blah' that he normally says, but stated more bluntly. 'We're humans because the only difference is between us is that we're ugly and you have psychic powers.'

And yeah, Satoru/Saki ending. Kind of saw that one coming way back when everyone was still 12.

Death Feedback requires the attacker's own Power to turn on them. Their PK will begin attacking their own bodies after they begin to attack someone. So it wouldn't work for regular humans.

edited 23rd Mar '13 9:04:06 AM by SilentColossus

Oh, is that how it is? I thought it was just the body shutting down its own organs somehow.

Yes, via PK.

RIP Squealer. I do not agree with your actions, but your vision was honorable and just. I do truly believe that he only had the best of his oppressed species in mind as he acted.

This episode had quite some powerful moments to me... from Squealer's rejection and hate of the name Yakomaru to that last chat from Saki to Squealers remains

Edit: And on the funny side... SQUEALER◊

edited 23rd Mar '13 1:29:10 PM by daltar