I find protagonists like Saki from Shin Sekai Yori and (sorry) Madoka from PMMM incredibly compelling because they’re not particularly strong, talented, intelligent or courageous but succeed just because they’re the only characters both willing to look the reality of the world in the face and capable of doing so without being destroyed or changed such that they lose their ability to conceptualize the world outside of that reality’s terms.

I think a lot of people, especially people who subscribe to some virtuous ideology, like to think they’re this sort of person just because optimism is in the text of their stated beliefs, but in real life these people are actually so vanishingly rare that they’re almost mythical, and maybe weren’t real to begin with— the idea of being able to grow up and lose your innocence without losing the person you were before that is a very compelling fantasy, but perhaps it’s just that. Saki was always the more compelling of the two to me because unlike Madoka, who’s kind of just an archetype, she crosses that barrier but then reclaims herself in the story’s final moments. SSY’s ending is melancholy and bitter in a lot of ways but in a way it’s more optimistic because if Saki can come back out of the dark then other people can too