AniManga: Shin Sekai Yori (From The New World)

 Shin Sekai Yori (From The New World) is a blend of science fiction, horror, and deep insight into the mind of humanity. The story takes place a thousand years in the future. It follows a group of kids who learn some forbidden knowledge about their utopian society.  Six children—Saki, Satoru, Maria, Mamoru, Shun, and Reiko—born and raised in a town, named  Kamisu's 66th district, learn about a plot to wage war against humanity and try to stop it.

In the not to distant future, science proves the existence of PK (Psychokinesis). Once people with PK started appearing around the globe there was a scramble by governments to weaponize the ability. Within 100 years people with PK over powered the humans and controlled society. After a few hundred more years, humans without PK waged war against the PK users. This resulted in all out nuclear warfare which almost destroyed the earth.

From the ashes humanity rebuilt. Top global minds decided that disabling PK users from being able to harm or kill other humans was the solution. They believed genetic modification was the only solution to protect mankind from violence ever occurring again. If someone with PK tried to hurt another human, they would suffer "The death of shame."  This would begin with symptoms of mild discomfort ending in death. In every case where a PK user kills someone the result is death by heart attack. 

With these new restrictions placed on on PK users mankind secretly decided  to develop a way to identify people with abilities from normal humans. Then they genetically cross-bred all PK user humans with the Naked Mole Rat and forced them into servitude. This knowledge and all information related to that part of human history was hidden away and stored as forbidden knowledge.

Since PK users couldn't hurt other users without suffering, they used these hybrid (Mole) humans to carry out their warfare and assassinations. They also created mutant cats that could hunt down children who couldn't control their abilities. Kids who couldn't control their PK were called Ogres and were the most feared. 

The story takes place two hundred years after the last ogre appeared. The hybrid humans learn what happened from a living library and once again wage war on the PK users. The result is one action packed anime that I highly recommend watching. 

AniManga: Dragon Ball Z

Dragon Ball Z was the first anime I saw when I went to Japan, this was back in 1993. I lived there for over a year and DBZ had already been running for almost four years when I started watching. DBZ started out as a manga (like most anime) and became a T.V. show around 1989. The series follows the adventures of Son Goku and his children from his childhood through adulthood as they train in martial arts and explore the world in search of the seven mystical objects known as the Dragon Balls, which can summon the mystical dragon Shinron who could grant 3 wishes. The wishes could be used for anything like bringing back the dead, to granting immortality. Due to their incredible power the dragon balls attracted a wide variety of villains, both alien and human which Goku and his group of warriors had to defeat.

The show was broken into three seperate series first was Dragon Ball which chronicled Goku's childhood. Then Dragon Ball Z the most popular which dealt with his adulthood and growing martial arts expertise, and finally Dragon Ball GT which dealt more with his children and descendant than Goku. He makes appearances throughout the show, but due to a curse he was reverted to the child form he had in Dragon Ball. Recently DBZ has been re-mastered and released as Dragon Ball Kai, which changes the original footage and story.

Since its release, Dragon Ball has become one of the most popular manga series of its time in both Japan and North America. It enjoys a high readership, with over 150 million volumes of the series, has 17 feature films and was ranking number 12 among the best anime series of all time in 2006. Below I posted a small clip of one of the best fights in the series Goku vs. the Galactic warrior Freeza. Peep the part where he bitch slaps the taste out of Freeza's mouth...if that doesn't get you hooked on the series then the fight with Goku vs. Perfect Cell will.