Summer 2021 First Impressions – Night Head 2041

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: TBA

Source: Manga (there have also been previous TV and anime adaptations)

Episode Summary: In the year 2041, society has disavowed any depiction of the supernatural. Belief in ideas and entities that can’t be proven is criminalized by the government. The Special Weapons Enforcers work to root out illegal thought activities and arrest those responsible. When they’re assigned to capture a man purporting to be a psychic along with his followers, they assume this will be a straightforward mission, but when brothers Takuya and Yuuya begin to see oddities that the others on their team don’t, it suggests there’s something much stranger going on. Takuya then exhibits a strange power when he tries to rescue Yuuya from being hurt. A huge EMP wave is emitted and they’re suddenly faced with the prospect that the realities of their own minds and existences may not be quite as factually cut-and-dry as they may have assumed.

Meanwhile, brothers Naoto and Naoya Kirihara find themselves freed from the laboratory where they’ve been isolated for the past 15 years. Because they truly do have telekinetic abilities they soon discover that this unfamiliar world they’ve been separated from for so long isn’t the bastion of understanding and acceptance that they had hoped it may have become in the interim. While they’re able to leave their isolation with a few resources at their disposal, they’re about to enter a hotbed of prejudice in which their powers are decidedly unwelcome.

Impressions: Though human belief systems and the differences therein may be a frequent source of conflict in this world, I have a difficult time believing that, in the course of 20-something years from today, any event (even one as devastating as a World War) could possibly cause any government to outright ban unrealistic thinking altogether. So much of our culture is based around fantasy, imagination, storytelling… to completely eliminate things like that feels like an impossibility. Imagination is actually one of the foundations of science; many concepts that we consider factual nowadays could once only be theorized (and some still today can’t necessarily be directly observed even despite many advances in tools and measurement devices). Anyway, the unreality of this scenario means that stopping to take in this episode requires telling one’s brain to take a step back and ignore the lack of logic in the premise.

Besides the hurdles revolving around suspension of disbelief, this is actually a pretty decent premiere episode. I’ve never seen any other adaptations of this story, but at the very least the 2006 anime adaptation has existed at the periphery of my fandom knowledge for a while; that made me curious even in spite of the premise’s inherent goofiness. Setting aside some of its storytelling mechanics, it’s interesting to think about what might happen if certain humans were able to perform feats of psychic manipulation. I think the scenario laid out in From the New World is one logical endpoint – the psychic users become the ruling class and establish their own society using extremely strict (and f’ed-up) rules and a disguising of historical context. On the other hand, if so-called “normal” humans are able to channel their fear of winding up powerless over time in the face of more evolved brethren, they’d probably end up doing some pretty awful things – like separating psychic kids from their parents and performing experiments on them for 15 years as this story implies. Thus, “normal” society exerting extremely strict rules on its people and punishing those with the newly-revealed power. Two sides of the same screwed-up coin.

When a story is introduced so bluntly, I start looking for characters worth sympathizing with. Predictably, introducing both sides of the potential conflict and then complicating it by suggesting one of the protagonists more associated with the oppressive government sponsored police force might have something in common with the two brothers recently introduced to the outside world (and conceivably with a bone to pick) is a decent way to ensure that picking sides is more than simply based around “good guys” and “bad guys.” The SWE’s are pretty scary, especially since state-sponsored oppression is a very real thing in the world that has to be dealt with. But the Kirihara brothers are a bit scary in their own way because they simply exist outside the bounds of a society that they’ve been unaware of for so long. I think there’s the potential for a decently-compelling conflict here.

Pros: Hooray, it’s everyone’s favorite topic – full CG animation! In all seriousness, though, this is yet another series this season that manages to make the most of its animation technology in a way that’s unobtrusive. The show contains so much military weaponry and detailed costuming (primarily for the SWE soldiers) that I can’t imagine it would look very good depicted within today’s limited-resource traditionally-animated world. I’d like to call out something specific that I noticed that I think helped to provide a better sense of life to the characters – there seems to be some animation algorithm in place that allows their eyes to faintly twitch every once-in-a-while, much like our own eyes do as they focus and refocus. It’s a tiny thing, but one which keep the characters from looking dead-eyed and creepy.

Cons: The episode begins with a loudspeaker narration reminding the populace that believing in gods, Buddhas or what-have-you is considered criminal activity. This comes across as extremely ham-fisted worldbuilding and sort of laughable in its execution.

Content Warnings: Kidnapping (referenced briefly in a flashback). Military-style violence using firearms, with glimpses of blood. Physical violence, including a character being thrown into a wall and attacked by sharp glass. General dystopian atmosphere.

Would I Watch More? – I’m curious about this one. Perhaps not so much that I’d build my watch schedule around it, but I think it’s sort of conceptually interesting in spite of its flaws.