The one thing that can be said for Shin Sekai Yori (From the New World), is that many expect the show to be one of the best of the season. Based off of a hit novel in Japan, it'd be fair to say that anime fans have approached this series of roughly 25 episodes with very high hopes. However, like many shows in recent times, Shin Sekai Yori is starting to suffer from pacing problems.
When it first started the series seemed to be fairly slow paced in introducing us to this world and these characters, up until we hit the fourth and fifth episode. The fourth episode saw us gain a massive amount of information to do with the history of the, now peaceful, world in which our characters live, but over allowing its viewers to absorb all this history, the show sped forward into some monster rat war. The fifth episode really doesn't allow viewers the time to breath either, with battles afoot, the kids split up and without their powers, and a whole heck of crazy stuff going on, you'd be forgiven for feeling somewhat lost.
Another interesting (and somewhat distracting), aspect of the fifth episode is the changes to the shows art style. The characters suddenly look more mature and less childlike, but in that change it feels like we've lost a lot of their emotion too. About halfway through the episode there is a very intimate moment between Saki and Satoru after they've been caught by one of the monster rats, but there really is very little emotion in the characters faces, which leads you to instantly dislike these changes to the overall designs. Especially when all the effort towards design has seemingly been put towards the characters, considering how bland the rest of the show looked this week. For a show that should be one of the best of the season just judging by its source material, you can't help but feel cheated by an art style which looks quite low budget even if it wasn't.
It isn't to say I disliked this episode, nor has it put me off continuing with the series, but I still felt like we haven't had time to breath and really take everything in from the fourth episode. We're trying to play catchup while being thrust into even more action packed episodes. I really wouldn't mind the character designs going back to what they were either.
