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Tremendous, tremendous episode. When Shin Sekai Yori is on its game, it is by far the best thing going.
I've got a really bad feeling about that queerat who appeared just long enough to be noted as they approached Pinewood. It almost has to be related to what happened there.
The unspoken rules of what can and cannot be spoken of aloud was finally addressed in the dinner scene, and it was really satisfying. So many things revealed that you just knew had to be the case about how tightly controlled things really are. I liked the imagery of Saki, covered in the muck of reality being unable to bear the sanitized, Ethics Committee-approved small talk. Saki's father, for his part, gave her absolutely nothing to go on, but it still felt as though he was sticking his neck way out there for her sake, just by acknowledging that anything was happening at all.
We're starting to get a better understanding of how people can just disappear, and nobody mentions them again.
I greatly respect that they didn't overplay or linger too long on the horror of Maria's silhouette at the window. It was a fantastic scare, and by moving along immediately, it left me unsettled and off-balance in a really effective way.
It may be worth re-watching the lessons from the first few episodes to see what the parables tell us about the karma demons, and how they're portrayed. The story of the herb-gatherer in particular stands out to me as an example of what extreme lengths children are taught they are expected to go to in order to keep "fiends" from ever reaching the village.
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