Sidonia no Kishi: Daikyuu Wakusei Seneki

Short Review: minor spoilers regarding characters After the excitement of Season 1, I immediately went on to watch Season 2. Alas, it is not quite the hardcore sci-fi war epic Season 1 promised to be. Season 2 is 50% bizarre alien dating simulator, 30% shonen action fantasy and 20% futuristic dystopian drama. It is a significant step down from S1 for me. Though it may work better for some (as the rating on this site shows, that S2 got overall higher score than S1). Like I said in the review of S1, there is a special charm to how the original author/mangaka Nihei handles sci-fi details in his works. In his masterpiece "Blame!", there is an ever-present existential dread and anxiety despite the thrilling actions in the front stage. That is because at the back of the audience's head, once one understands the Lovecraftian implications to everything happens around Killy and Cibo, one is bound to feel insignificant in the larger scheme of things. Is the whole quest futile? Can loved characters even die properly or for good? You never know whose memory/personality the next interdimensional entity Killy encounters might inherit. In Season 1 of Sidonia, this sense of existential dread is somewhat in the front stage, and the common shonen/space opera tropes are handled with mature reserve. You know something far more sinister is happening to the fate of humanity on a larger scale than what our naive chosen one Nagate can comprehend. This makes what happens in the backstage far more interesting than the MC's expanding harem (which I did not mind that much in S1). Alas, Season 2 decided to center its narrative focus on the MC's bizarre budding romance with the human/alien hybrid, Tsumugi, who interacts with him by a sentient tentacle that looks terribly like a "Johnson". Izana, the once gender-neutral best buddy of the MC, now develops deep feelings and female parts for him. You think the MC will make a sensible choice with Izana, who risks arms and legs for him? No, he acts like Shinji in NGE, not only with Izana but also with all other women who want a piece of him. Think anime fans and furries are weird? You probably haven't seen Sidonia Season 2. Perhaps one can argue the MC's space harem is an interesting concept with subtle transhumanistic debate hidden somewhere, though I doubt that is the reason such harem became the center of S2 (cute elements and fan service from the said harem sell better than existential dread, for sure). That said, it's not impossible to appreciate the character development here. It's just often tonally off for me. To be fair, Tsumugi is likeable. Battle sequences in S2 are also impacted by this creative choice, from a certain point onwards you know the MC will never be truly in danger under the protection of his super tentacle space waifu. The sense of insignificance in the vast space/infinite battleground from S1 is heavily weakened here. Also, the subtitle for Season 2 "Duel on Planet 9" is also somewhat misleading, as space battles take a backseat for most of the season. The promised great duel that determines the fate of humanity is also postponed to the movie finale. In the meanwhile, a coup is taking place in the backstage, with the evil scientist Ochiai and the Captain both showing their hands. The ambiguous implications of their power plays and controversial choices kept the entire season from falling apart. The art in Season 1 has the signature crudeness/roughness Nihei is famous for (which adds to the atmosphere quite well), but now in Season 2 most of the roughness is gone, replaced by typical CG cleanness which makes certain elements look washed. Fortunately more elements retain Nihei's artistic vision. Soundtrack in S1 is good if not too outstanding. The opening song in Season 2, however, immediately rub me the wrong way. For a show about existential dread, that song is way too triumphalist (it's not even a parody of the national anthem antics, just a serious propaganda song). In the end, Season 2 ended with an exhilarating epic battle and is still a decent show. My disappointment mainly comes from the quality drop compared to S1.

In the 2nd season, Sidonia's integrity begins to crack. A new threat is established early, then the plot makes a detour, turning the harem aspect up to eleven. The comedic nature of the chimera Tsumugi muddies the previously established dark tone. Her "pinball" animation makes skirmishes against multiple Gauna look silly too. 2nd opening song is nowhere near as good as the 1st. I love the idea of Tsutomu Nihei applying his unique style in various genres, but I suspect the editor's hand pushed him in the wrong direction. The cheap fanservice and slapstick feel beneath Nihei's level of talent and imagination. Speaking of work on Nihei's level...There was a shameless BLAME! movie plug that stuck out like a sore thumb. Leave Killy alone! Despite the glaring flaws, the last couple of episodes delivered an exciting, dramatic finale. Still, for the season called "Battle for Planet 9", the plot has too much awkward, lowbrow romance for my taste.

knights of sidonia [s1, s2, movie] contains spoilers. s1 liked the sidonia deisgn, on the inside it's kinda steampunk, but you can't build a space-bike in your garage kinda, on the outside it looks very crude when we're used to sci-fi ships being perfect and sparking glittering metal. it adds to the feeling that things aren't perfect and humanity's tech level isn't a definitive repellent to any threat. the threat feels like real deal, it's a vibe coming from aesthetics and events following, like in begining of season 1 they had to suffer extreme loses just to repel 1 gauna, add the fact that they are probably the last remaining humanity left in space, because the main reason they could hold on so far is kabizashi they found accidentaly during space travel. usually a main character always wins and prevails, but in this anime the longing theme is that not everyone is a main character, they die a lot and there's anxiety of going into battle, and even he(mc) is struggling. you can hear it in the opening too, as she sings about falling in battle, as she dies for someone else, this opening feels like a monologue of a regular pilots-soldiers, followed by matrial song into a rhytmic and dynamic "knights of sidonia" chorus. opening is amazing, as well as overall soundtrack, notably it's main themes are: distortion and pristine-sharp violin, very fitting. now onto the horror part: the organic unknown space species that can copy things in it's twisted and organic way is creepy, but when gauna copies human himself (which is eerie and perversed in existential sense by itself) it gets much creepier, and said human is actually a somewhat lover of protagonist it get's personal too. hoshijiro also becomes the main antagonist and biggest threat and mystery for s1, since gauna can copy humans anything can happen and it's interesting. s2 the series took a turn from a serious space-mecha horror into a rom-com with blushing and awkward situations. first of all tsumugi has schoolgirl from anime personality, and she can extend a thing from her body which can show facial expression and blush...yeah, it's very cringe. say goodbye to any hopes of body horror too, except kunato getting his body taken over randomly. overall much weaker than s1, but still okay i guess, the final battle was very epic - at the level of s1 or better, it had a moment at the end where hope is lost but the rescue comes at the last moment(in this case it wasn't obvious), and they shoot gauna from orbit in this cool formation, and the medal nagate got was shaped like this formation, the scene where he leaves this medal in his old home is pretty touching. movie: all his previous relationships and development has been made pointless since he goes: i choose you tsumugi!, yeah fuck you izana, whatever... - it would be, if they didn't spend like half s2 on nagate/izana. yuhana is actually whatever since the impression i've got - she just wanted to have sex with him. honestly, if you go tsumugi route or set up a story like that, you could let izana and yuhana be a thing. ochiai doesn't work as main villain because with him it's about some ideology, crazy ego, god complex or other bullshit. tanikaze doesn't give a shit about any of that, neither anyone else - there is no character that would have to say anything about it, he's a threat but not something creepy and unknown like gauna, he's just a crazy scientist. no mystery of gauna, i was expecting something more, think of the potential of what gauna could have been... pretty dissapointing. in the ending tsumugi gets a human body and they can live together with nagate on new earth, i don't care though because it feels like hoshijiro is the only one who was done dirty and it doesn't reedem her fate in any way. ending: i'd say the expectations and set-ups didn't pay off the way i would wanted them to. the first time i watched the series was when s2 released and i liked it quite a lot, on the second time i enjoyed it too, especially s1 and s2 sometimes, movie sucked.

The second season of Knights of Sidonia feels like a significant departure from what made the first succeed in both vibe and storytelling. It upholds the solid action scenes and space dogfights that made the first season so great. In that regard, it maintains the gold standard; however, in all other aspects it feels like a downgrade that finds itself severely lacking in cohesive storytelling and as a series as a whole. Fortunately, the drop in quality has nothing to do with the animation that so many anime season 2s' often suffer from, nor was the change in writing so bad that I felt like I should have just dropped the series. But it feels like the anime tried to tell multiple lines and multiple stories at the same time, and doing so required bunching each arc back-to-back before they could start something new, which often led to significant plot points being dropped to the wayside. What I mean by this can be seen by the tonal shift the series takes. Season 1 focused heavily on how unfavored the fights were between the gauna and pilots, with each encounter being a make-or-break moment for humanity, and along with that the atmosphere the series took was often very tense between the characters, and the main focus on everyone’s mind was getting through to the next day and surviving. Even when we saw characters interact with each other during their downtime on the base, the series made sure to stress how temporary the peace was before thrusting us into a major battle where anyone could die at a moment’s notice. And so, reasonably, the first episode starts off by showing what happens after opening the vault at the end of the season, and instantly the stakes are raised and you’re introduced to a sense of dread. You’re made to believe that now suddenly humanity is at risk because of the new character who’s introduced and that now we’re going to follow the battle on both sides; only for that to not happen. Instead, suddenly the series spends the first few episodes on the action and atmosphere of season 1, only to transition into a “will they, won’t they” romcom harem bit for nearly half of the show. It ultimately ends with the entire “romance” (if you can even call it that) arc going nowhere: no major change in the relationships, no real confessions, moments of intimacy, or interaction between any characters beyond several hours of blushes and your regular anime harem tropes. And then it cuts back to fights for the last 3 episodes. And that massive reveal at the end gets brought up out of nowhere, despite the anime actively having spent the last 11 episodes telling us that,, this evil person actually isn’t evil and is helping fight the gauna rather than help them. Although it’s frustrating seeing this happen, the issue isn’t the writing itself (although the writing majorly needs reworking). It’s the fact that every point the series tries to make needs to happen isolated from another. Much of the series would flow much better if they instead told the overarching plot of evil governments and space conspiracy in the first half of an episode alongside the fights, and then during the downtime after they come back from missions they could explore the romance aspects, in the second half of the episode. Yes, this approach doesn’t fix any of the plot holes or statements made between characters clearly alluding to a larger subtext between them which go unanswered by the time the series rolls around. But the choice to cut off arcs often feels like you’re being hit by a brick wall between major story beats. Ultimately, I don’t “hate” the new season, nor do I think it was bad. But if you absolutely “loved” the first season, you’re going to just “like” the second. Watching the second season doesn’t feel like it’s something to regret, but it feels like I’m just watching an anime to continue season 1 rather than watching something because you can’t wait to see what’s next.

Did you enjoy first season? Well, be prepared for a slight downgrade to an otherwise very interesting space anime. Also prepare your air drums because they will burst, sound design in this anime is among worst, up there with Berserk 2016. While the grand story takes the backseat in favour of more character driven story this time, it does not fit well with the overall setting, at times it feels forced, other times its weird alongside the pacing which can leave you wondering, and a bit confused between episodes. The biggest drag however is the sounds, there way too much cling, clang, zwaap, zchwiing, iii, aaa what? Think I lost my hearing.