Shin Sekai Yori - Episode 21 Discussion / Poll

[Tougarashi]

Originally Posted by Gohan78

My idea is to keep an elite guard of loyal bakenezumi (from Kiroumaro's tribe for instance) near the village at all times, kinda like a police force. I don't know about you, but I trust an intelligent being with opposable thumbs more than a weird cat.


Of course there are holes in my plans but at least I have plans. And I thought all of this up in 10 minutes while they had 200 years!
What strikes me as wrong is that when Tomiko was informed of the presence of an akki, she didn't say "Ok, time to implement plan B". No, she basically said "We are doomed, tell everyone to run"!

Outside the barrier of the village, there should be a mine field. Or at least they could plant the land mines at the entrance of the village as soon as they knew Akki and rats were approaching the village.

[Kirarakim]

Originally Posted by Gohan78

They didn't lose all the technology. They still have electricity. They can even do a DNA test, for good's sake! Even the bakenezumi were able to make guns, are you telling me that the humans can't?

I thought the story made it pretty clear that over the years the Monster rats have actually become more technologically advanced than the humans.

I didn't say the humans had no technology but it is not a technologically advanced society, especially not in terms of weaponry

I fail to see how injecting Boy K with poison is any different from putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger. The syringe is like a gun in this case. The doctor knew that he was killing the guy.

While it wasn't explained (at least not yet) I think there were extenuating circumstances to what happened there that you are missing (again with the fact that the fiend calmed down and asked for medicine.)

I mean seriously if you could just so easily shoot someone with a gun what makes you think you can't just shoot someone with the power?

Aren't you overestimating the effects of the death feedback? I rewatched the explanation of the False Minoshiro from episode 4. It's not like they die instantly as soon as they think of harming another human being. Firstly they just suffer from pain and nausea.
Shooting a gun or detonating a bomb is an instantaneous action. Maybe they will feel terrible afterwards, but they should be able to do it.

No I am not you are underestimating the effects. Just thinking you killed a human (even if you didn't) bring out the effect, what do you think would happen if you actually did kill a human?

These things should be set up at all times, like the countermeasures against natural disasters. It's not that every day we have an earthquake or a tsunami or a flood but we have contingency plans for when they happen. It doesn't need to be public knowledge but the higher ups of the village should know what to do.

Countermeasures against natural disasters don't usually involve set ups that can also harm your citizens if things go wrong (either during the fiend attack or even before).

Also as Satoru said one human with PK can destroy an entire Bakenezumi village. Don't you just have the same situation in reverse here? Could all those weapons even stop a fiend who can use his PK?

My idea is to keep an elite guard of loyal bakenezumi (from Kiroumaro's tribe for instance) near the village at all times, kinda like a police force. I don't know about you, but I trust an intelligent being with opposable thumbs more than a weird cat.

As someone already said the monster rats loyal to the humans were killed and they are now being attacked by the other monster rats. Even if this was a viable plan it certainly isn't in this situation.

Of course there are holes in my plans but at least I have plans. And I thought all of this up in 10 minutes while they had 200 years!

But who says they didn't think of things but realized they were no good. Sorry a disaster plan with holes in it is not a very effective plan.

What strikes me as wrong is that when Tomiko was informed of the presence of an akki, she didn't say "Ok, time to implement plan B". No, she basically said "We are doomed, tell everyone to run"!

Or maybe she said that because they could not put a disaster plan in action since they were all outside and were not warned in time. There are many ways to interpret her words.

[Arya]

That's what I was trying to say with my analogy, rats as humans and humans as gods, in the first place. Not to prove that humans are inhuman in terms of human emotions (but of course they lost part of it), but more in terms of logic. The fact that they have power that we have not is a crucial point to understand why we shouldn't expect their logic overlapping with ours. The "god" component I was talking about is another point to understand how much they are confident of themselves. To the point to not consider any other life forms to ever be a threat for them. And they weren't that far from the truth if:

• queerats didn't find out most likely a false minoshiro
• they weren't so smart to evolve in such a short time thanks to those information
• meanwhile a hot old lady wouldn't have decided to start a particular experiment on five children of her village

Quite a lot of extremely rare if not unique occurrences all together to really blame humans to have not take them in consideration IMHO.
Using an example, have you ever seen Superman using a gun, or driving a car (smallville doesn't count )? And if they had a society of all supermen I don't think they would spend time in developing such a things. But probably they would spend time in developing gramophones for music or electric irons for their capes.

BTW, I don't remember, just to be sure, we can't discuss about previews in this thread, can we?

[ChainLegacy]

Originally Posted by Kirarakim

Yikes I am not really sure what you took from my tone but I just saw it as a debate. I wasn't angry or anything

Oh, okay. I have a bad tendency of misreading people's tonality through text. I've done it before on this forum and made myself look stupid several times...

Originally Posted by Arya

That's what I was trying to say with my analogy, rats as humans and humans as gods, in the first place. Not to prove that humans are inhuman in terms of human emotions (but of course they lost part of it), but more in terms of logic. The fact that they have power that we have not is a crucial point to understand why we shouldn't expect their logic overlapping with ours. The "god" component I was talking about is another point to understand how much they are confident of themselves. To the point to not consider any other life forms to ever be a threat for them. And they weren't that far from the truth if:

• queerats didn't find out most likely a false minoshiro
• they weren't so smart to evolve in such a short time thanks to those information
• meanwhile a hot old lady wouldn't have decided to start a particular experiment on five children of her village

Quite a lot of extremely rare if not unique occurrences all together to really blame humans to have not take them in consideration IMHO.
Using an example, have you ever seen Superman using a gun, or driving a car (smallville doesn't count )? And if they had a society of all supermen I don't think they would spend time in developing such a things. But probably they would spend time in developing gramophones for music or electric irons for their capes.

BTW, I don't remember, just to be sure, we can't discuss about previews in this thread, can we?

True, but whatever your opinion is of Squeeler, he seems to be a genius in terms of political maneuvering and manipulation. I think if the rats did need to take advantage of those circumstances, it wasn't due to a lack of intelligence on their part so much as a willingness to exploit opportunities as they came (and, plus, it took humanity nearly 90,000 years to even begin civilization, so we can assume building technology from the ground up will take a while regardless of intelligence).

[ChronoReverse]

Originally Posted by Kirarakim

Also a phonograph was introduced in 1877. That doesn't really seem all that "advanced" to me.

Phonographs are an example of backwards technology if you ask me.

However, I feel it's more like they prefer agrarian style of living but they still do have high technology. For example, they verified Maria and Mamoru's remains using DNA testing and dental records. This points their technology level at minimum to our current levels.

[Arya]

Originally Posted by ChainLegacy

True, but whatever your opinion is of Squeeler, he seems to be a genius in terms of political maneuvering and manipulation. I think if the rats did need to take advantage of those circumstances, it wasn't due to a lack of intelligence on their part so much as a willingness to exploit opportunities as they came (and, plus, it took humanity nearly 90,000 years to even begin civilization, so we can assume building technology from the ground up will take a while regardless of intelligence).

Yep, you are right, I got carried away a bit and missed one step in my train of thought.
What I truly wanted to say was that, given all the facts as presented, we can't say that the story has plot holes regarding human technologies or regarding their ways to protect themselves. The plot has been consistent after all, so if we want someone to blame, we should blame humans, but for in-universe reasons.

[Raghar]

Originally Posted by Arya

Using an example, have you ever seen Superman using a gun,

No he is a pacifist.

or driving a car

Yes, when he is in incognito (everyone and his dog knows who he is, but he is still pretending he is just journalist.) Otherwise, he is too smart to risk traffic jams.

don't think they would spend time in developing such a things.

More likely they are suffering from lack of transportation network, and result of majority of easily available resources being consumed by previous civilization. Also, there is theirs indecisivity.

[apotheosis]

Originally Posted by Gohan78

I fail to see how injecting Boy K with poison is any different from putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger. The syringe is like a gun in this case. The doctor knew that he was killing the guy.

...

Of course there are holes in my plans but at least I have plans. And I thought all of this up in 10 minutes while they had 200 years!
What strikes me as wrong is that when Tomiko was informed of the presence of an akki, she didn't say "Ok, time to implement plan B". No, she basically said "We are doomed, tell everyone to run"!

Yep, these are pretty much the two points that made me go "huh".

In the latter case, it certainly seems like they went that way for the mood rather than logical sense.

It still mostly works for me - it just seems like they could have dealt with this by having some sort of last ditch backup plan that still fails ... which would preserve the mood just fine IMO.


As an example of silly backup plans, consider the usual airline spiel of "in the event of a water landing, use your seat as a flotation device!". You're going die some ridiculously high% of the time if they have to make a water landing, but they still have this mostly useless plan in place anyway.

And this is just to preserve a small # of humas in some rare event. If it was to preserve humanity itself against something that actually happened previously & was dangerously close to destroying them that time ... there'd be a ridiculous # of contingency plans.

Part of it is definitely to give the airline customer a false sense of security ... but if all your children could turn into nuclear weapons, I should think there is a good market for sense of security and backup plans just in case things go horribly wrong

They are ok with this horrific program of killing their children (which I agree has been well presented as possibly justified on utilitarian terms and wonderously morally grey ), but they don't want to take time to think about what else to do?

[apotheosis]

Originally Posted by Kirarakim

Countermeasures against natural disasters don't usually involve set ups that can also harm your citizens if things go wrong (either during the fiend attack or even before).

Have you perhaps heard of the CDC?

They keep a ridiculous # of deadly diseases that could devestate the world if things went wrong, because it's an acceptable risk vs not being able to deal with the disaster of an epidemic/pandemic.

Originally Posted by Kirarakim

Also as Satoru said one human with PK can destroy an entire Bakenezumi village. Don't you just have the same situation in reverse here? Could all those weapons even stop a fiend who can use his PK?

They might not be able to, but humanity usually plans for things in some way and dies trying rather than not having a plan.

There are thousands of examples of battles or entire wars that were fought with pretty much no hope of success .. but there was still a plan and they died trying.

[Kirarakim]

Originally Posted by apotheosis

There are thousands of examples of battles or entire wars that were fought with pretty much no hope of success .. but there was still a plan and they died trying.

You are still under the assumption that they had no disaster plan. Maybe they did and they could not put it into action because of how this disaster came about.

The CDC is a good example and yet its way more controlled than anything mentioned so far.

And going back to natural disasters there were plenty of times where things happened and humanity was not prepared either.

[apotheosis]

Originally Posted by Kirarakim

You are still under the assumption that they had no disaster plan. Maybe they did and they could not put it into action because of how this disaster came about.

The CDC is a good example and yet its way more controlled than anything mentioned so far.

And going back to natural disasters there were plenty of times where things happened and humanity was not prepared either.

I did make some assumptions, based on statements of the grandmother. I don't know the full extent of what they might or might not have planned, but I still find the "we're doomed" statement from grandmother-san rather bizarre.

Yes some plans take time to implement & I don't fault them for not having 100% of situations accounted for in a perfect way. But for an event of this magnitude I'd think they'd have plans for various situations and not count on knowing ahead of time in all of them. Do I fault them for not planning for rat controlled fiends? No, not at all ... that is a new twist.

Without spoiling the other thread, I will say the CDC is a pretty ironic example.

[Guido]

This was a blast of an episode, and the mind-blowing will continue unabashed for the rest of the show. The begging question is which species is going to make it at the end? or total mutual, mass annihilation for both is certain?


About five episodes ago I commented upon the growing intelligence of the queerats, but this episode clearly exposed without doubts that the queerats were intelligent creatures all along. If in the past were presented as cowardly, defenseless, and pathetic that's because of humanity's treatment toward them.

Surprisingly, some of what I posted about five episodes ago became partially true.

Spoiler:

I originally posted six episodes back then, that Yakomaru would realize the truth about the human's Cantus and get sure confirmation of it by learning from a False Minoshiro.

Yakomaru resented humanity all along since its own birth but couldn't do jack about it since it was taught humans were god-like entities and their species mere pawns to obey them. And, whenever it came in contact with adult humans to witness the prowess of their Canti live in flesh, Yakomaru would usually sink in pathetic hopelessness.

But, everything changed the summer Saki and friends broke the rules and went farther from the villages boundaries.
- Saki and Satoru got separated, and later got involved both unwillingly into the middle of a queerat skirmish.

- Recall the climax of that battle. Satoru strained himself to exhaustion, and Saki couldn't do a thing to help, since her Cantus was still sealed. That was the precise time that Yakomaru keenly observed their behavior and began doubting if its supposedly, invincible Gods were gods at all?
That was the catalyst.

The trigger, as future episodes implied later on, was that Yakomaru and its colony found by accident a False Minoshiro and the rest became history up to the present episode were the humans are now being laid under siege by the queerats's rebellion.

The end result kidnapping human babies and raising them up to become fiends within a ten year timespan; Maria+Mamoru's child has been unleashed into the world by the queerats to become their Messiah and chief slayer.

There was a thick and dense moral issue raised in this episode: When one's own existence is jeopardized with certain and absolute destruction, then what would be the approach to take?
- Kill or be killed?
- Or find a way to settlement

I, honestly, believe that both parties are too far away from diplomacy.
- Queerats do not understand "Golden Rule", obviously, because of the human's fascistic treatment towards their kind.

- It's now too much late for humans to apply "Golden" Rule now that their existence is literally put to death.

Morality is either collapsing or has been discarded.
- Queerats bent to wipe out to the very last individual from the human species off the face of the Earth.

- Humans stirred up to kill every queerat species from the Japanese Islands archipielago.