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 Written by masako
Upon first viewing of Teekyu, the overwhelming feeling one gets is “What the heck did I just watch?!” The one thing you cannot accuse Teekyu of having is filler – there's no time for that! It's joke after joke after joke to the point where you need to focus on the subtitles 100% to even understand what's going on. The speed associated with this anime continues when you find out that the time spanned from first announcement to first broadcast was only eight weeks. Eight weeks. The manga itself was published only five months prior; which is still pretty rapid a release.
 From what you can gather, the show is about four girls who are a part of the school's tennis club despite the fact that the onus is mainly on their madcap adventures rather than any tennis being played; the racket is more likely to be used as a gag. The main pair of Yuri and Kanae factor heavily on proceedings rallying off each other in quickfire succession with jokes that are funny, albeit slightly hard to follow.
 Basically, the characters are easy to pin down. Yuri is the straight talker, Kanae is the buffoon, Nasuno is the hoity rich girl and Marimo is the perverted senior figure. Having their archetypes laid before us, there's no confusion about what their drives are. It may lack in originality but for this kind of comedy, it doesn't really matter. What matters is the aforementioned comedy which for me, was not at fault. Most Japanese comedies fall to the wayside as most of the humour derived is based on cultural background whereas Teekyu's characters, most particularly and especially Kanae, use slapstick and oddball gags which are universally understood and enjoyed. For now, it's advantage Teekyu.
 The major stumbling block for the show is in the animation. It's all very well and good claiming that this show is the fastest anime adaptation ever (which the manga's publisher Earth Star Entertainment constantly hammers into our heads!) but if the animation quality is questionable, it cheapens the logistical achievement. As a result, the character proportions and detailing keeps changing as fast as the dialogue. Some shots look amateurish, others look awful or inconsistent and rarely does it look 'good'. This is the compromise one has to face when you wish to put speed in front of style.
So to sum up, if you're looking for a quick fix of laughter from this anime season, you could do worse. If you're not bothered by art quality and would wish to get your jollies from action-based comedy then you're in luck here. Just don't expect anything close to Prince of Tennis level detail about the sport which this show tries to emulate!
Written by dai_loli
8:00am - Ogres and Karmic Demons
9:00am - Sand Pictures (reproduce an image with only your mind, canvas and sand)
10:00am - Card Pyramids (build the pyramid without ever touching the cards)
11:00am - Wave Interference and Impulsive Force Exchange
12:00pm - Lunch Break
 A regular day at school for Saki Watanabe who just finally graduated into the Unified Class where the most gifted students hone their skills of telekinesis. Call it the “Cursed Power” or “Gods' Power”, the world Saki lives in is populated with people blessed with this talent. From the looks of her hometown surrounded by nature, the alien life forms populating it, lack of technology and exotic architectural designs, one would assume Shin Sekai Yori (From the New World) is set in another world, but it is actually taking place right here on Earth – a thousand years from now, that is.
 In the first scene, we are shown a boy walking around a decidedly 21st century-like city and killing innocent bystanders like mere water balloons, liquifying their bodies in split seconds. Immediately switching to a playful scene of kids playing on a peaceful hill at twilight a thousand years later, the anime sets the tone for its main mystery: What the hell happened in the last thousand years?
Although things look peaceful at first glance in Saki's village, there is a strong sense that a very dark truth lies behind the façade. Before children can graduate to the Unified Class, they have to become awakened through the touch of a Blessing Spirit, a phenomenon similar to puberty in the sense that not all children experience it at the same age. Unlike puberty, however, not everyone awakens. Shortly before awakening, Saki had eavesdropped on her parents' conversation about how she had yet to awaken and heard her mother on the brink of tears screaming that she did not want to lose another one of her children. The seed of doubt was planted as she began to second guess her parents' reassuring words about how Awakening is only a matter of time...
On her first day in class, her friends from Harmony Elementary greet her and tease her about how she's the last one to graduate. After asking them how she could be the last one when there were still plenty of others left in her previous class, she is met with a somber silence from the group who hastily bends the conversation to another topic.
 Just what happens to those the Blessing Spirit does not visit? Why did the new student, Amano Reiko, suddenly disappear from class after showing dismal results in her studies? Why is the Ogres and Karmic Demons class teaching them to obediently remain within the confines of the Sacred Barrier and, if they should ever lure an Ogre toward the village, that they should prioritize suicide for the greater benefit of the village? Is there any truth behind the stories of the “Trickster Cat” eating little kids, or that there are a bunch of graves in the courtyard of Harmony Elementary?
Shin Sekai Yori loses no time in captivating its audience with its setting rife with unsettling mysteries. The gloomy atmosphere, subtle soundtrack with a certain religious tone and recurring scenes taking place at dusk as the darkness is about to set in help us along throughout every episode as our curiosity and desire to uncover the truth intensifies. Tantalizing tidbits of the past are gradually shown to us as the group of children become increasingly curious about their world and come ever closer to their trip up Tone River where all the answers will be revealed to them.
 … And that's when things go downhill. Granted, at the time of this writing, only episodes 1 through 6 are available, and the anime is planned to have at least 25 episodes, so things have ample time to get back on track, but episodes 5 and 6 represent the biggest shift in focus and pacing I've seen in a long time. Not only are the animation and art style of episode 5 so different the characters are barely recognizable, the plot also takes a sudden turn that tramples over the so perfectly built up tension of the first few episodes to develop into a story arc that feels rushed and disconnected.
As it stands, I am at a crossroad between recommending From the New World as the most promising show of the season and at the same time calling it the biggest disappointment. However, I still hold on to the hope that the latest episodes are but a bump in the road and that persevering will allow it to prove why the novel it was adapted from was considered captivating enough to be animated.
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