thoppe - 2015-05-11 07:50:05

Space is vast, cold, lonely. A person witnessing it surely experiences it in silent awe, reaching back towards any feeling of familiarity he could grasp. Often, one might think that anime directors, artists, experience this fear when they try to depict space, such that they need to plant their feet deep in epic narratives and synth pop soundtracks. That's no knock to Gundam, which are excellent explorations of human ideals, but Gundam in comparison are relatively contained. Sidonia no Kishi is vast.

By what do I say that Sidonia no Kishi is vast, although it only takes place on a spaceship, while Gundam spans multiple star systems, colonies, and Earth? It isn't the physical world that captures our imagination, but the silence. Just as in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, it's the silence, as the characters are floating in space, that make us feel the space. It's the lack of an epic soundtrack, the lack of great, familiar art, that makes Sidonia's space relevant, as opposed to Aldnoah's play-space.

To that end, Sidonia no Kishi will kill off main characters, keeping the main character in silent agony, as he carries the weight of the last remnants of humanity against a backdrop of politics and space battles. It is what Suisel no Gargantia should've been, or a Voices of a Distant Star without the melodrama. Those who don't feel this introspective atmosphere will see it as a cliche, space anime with low production value. Those who do will reflect on what they have.

sarai.bauch - 2015-04-21 08:49:23

Animation takes some time to get used to/ but aside from that, this series is pretty enjoyable. Not completely original, but great nonetheless. The best things about this series is one, the mysteriousness of the "enemy"; two, minimal but present politics; three, presence and proper handling of realistic aspects with a scientific base; and four, the design of everything, from structures, to the mechas, to the suits. The only exception would be the faces, some being redundant or easily mistaken for others, but justifiable in-universe. The particle effects were also pretty cool.

kling.eda - 2015-03-29 21:17:43

The 3D-ish art style of this show is rather realistic when it comes to the controls in the mechas for example. The characters however are horrible in my opinion. The battles are fast-paced and due to the extreme design of the aliens a bit hard to follow sometimes. I couldn't really stop watching it, because the story went in an interesting direction!

luettgen.elmer - 2015-03-15 18:41:17

How do you summarize Knights of Sidonia to someone who's never viewed it? Well, you take an irritatingly perfect chick-magnet protagonist like Kirito Kirigaya from Sword Art Online, throw in some plot from Attack of Titan, a dash damn good animation, and mash it all together in space. There it is. That's Knights of Sidonia.

Story: 'It's like Attack on Titan...but in sPACE!!!' 

So the story followers the hopelessly clumsy teen, Nagate Tanikaze, and everything that follows him after emerging to the surface of a futuristic earth stuffed into a giant ass gun barrel. We learn that future earth gun barrel thing, aka Sidonia, has been floating around space for hundreds of years, constantly threatened by a mysterious alien species known as the Gauna, big ass creatures with tentacles that would but the hentai industry to shame. 

Kirit- I mean, Nagate, it turns out, turns out to be a big shot when it comes to busting up Gauna after years of training under the surface of Sidonia. His only good attribute, it seems, given his klutzyness and overall blandness as a character just makes you want to punch this guy in the face. 

He's so good, in fact, that he ends up piloting the most badass mech Sidonia has, the Tsugumori, which is really effective in killing Gauna.

There's awesome battle scenes and character interaction that makes you want to kill yourself all building up to the final battle of this big ass Gauna that, whoop-de-doo, is destroyed by none other than Sidonia's finest.

You win some, you lose a lot, that's KoS.

Animation: 

Joking aside, Knights of Sidonia had some fine ass animation- let me tell ya. Never have I seen an anime use this much CGI and damn was this shit good. Fighting sequences were so fluid and gorgeous and the environments of this show were just great. Even though it's a step away from traditional animation and the characters lacked some depth visually, Knights of Sidonia didn't fuck around when it came to animation.

Sound:

While the sound wasn't as memorable as the animation, it was still pretty great. Nothing that stands out to me, however. Good OST is good OST.

Character:

Oh boy here we go.

Let me tell you something, if Knights of Sidonia had a big flaw, it was these fucking characters. Now, don't get me wrong, Nagate wasn't so bad. Sure, he was breaking a new bone every episode, but his dorky personality was somewhat enjoyable.

But seriously, we couldn't go five minutes into the first episode without seeing this shit.

stillgivesmechills

Honestly, it was the female characters that got to me holy shit.

First, let's look at the only character that, I believe, is worth givin a shit about: Izana Shinatose, aka my agender baby.

What I find beautiful is that, yes, Izana doesn't identify as male or female.(although she prefers female pronouns) She is one of Nagate's love interests and serves as his first companion in the series. She's sweet and loving and adorable, but seems to always gets misgendered as a male and brushed off to the side by other female characters who are interested in Nagate- I mean just look at her adorable jealous face.

if you don't think she's cute than fUCK YOU OKAY.

Then, you have Mary-Sue, aka Hoshijro, who dies midway through the show (to my content)

Alien Hoshijiro.

and this bitch.

That's it that's everyone, moving on.

Enjoyment: I had a love hate relationship with this show, always expecting it to get better than it was- but I can't deny that this anime gave me thorough entertainment and didn't leave me on the edge of my seat.

Overall, Knights of Sidonia was an experience, and is definitely worth checking out. 

marilou70 - 2014-12-25 18:39:45

The last of humankind lives on a space colony that's under attack by aliens.

Do you know what makes great entertainment? When there's something at stake. When there's tension. When the main characters could actually lose and fuck up.

This is my biggest issue with the superhero genre. You know Superman or Wolverine are never going to lose. If they die they'll just come back because nobody stays dead in comics. Your toast getting burnt is more inconvenient.

This video does an amazing (and hilarious) analysis about the Death of Superman.

When you know your heroes will win or won't die then any excitement is gone. What's the point of watching? It can still be entertaining, but it would be much, much better if there was tension.

This is what I liked about Knights of Sidonia. It's been a long time since I've felt excitement and fear whenever the characters fought the enemy. The aliens are very strong. The characters' mecha suits don't do shit. To kill the aliens you need to use a very specific weapon and to hit them in a very specific body part.

Every time they went out to battle there would be casualties. Someone always died. It could've been a minor characters or some cannon fodder, but someone died.

Plus, the sci-fi setting is interesting, and I'm a sucker for interesting worlds.

What's stopping me from giving this a fresh, fucking 4 stars is that the characters aren't that engaging. It's ironic considering how much tension the show can build.

The bear took up most of the animation budget.

The main character is boring. He's never excited or ask questions for us to learn about the world. The minor characters are a little shallow, but they work enough. Also, the CGI animation makes everyone look the same. It was jarring at first, but you get used to it. And you'll maybe find someone you like to get invested with.

I know I did.

walsh.brendon - 2014-12-23 18:05:49

          In terms of the western market, the anime industry has been accelerating at a rapid rate since the reintroduction of Toonami to the television lineup in 2012. On the TV front, we had the first instance of a dub premiering at the same time as its original subbed version with Space Dandy at the beginning of this year, and even more progress has been made with the introduction of FUNimation's Broadcast Dubs this Fall, allowing fans access to the top dubbed series months before they would normally premiere. Even those outside the industry are beginning to invest in it. For the first time, Netflix has acquired the exclusive license to stream a certain anime title in the West, and it has already displayed plans to continue this trend in the future. So, how did the very first "Netflix Original" anime fare?

          As for what type of science fiction this series goes for, it takes on the mantle of very straight and fact-based sci-fi, and the laws of physics and nature come into play very often. Ideas like propulsion and acceleration become key concepts when determining how battles sway and how life prospers on board the "Sidonia," and this ends up making battles a lot more thrilling and exciting because the lack of fantastical plot armor creates some extremely tense situations and often results in extremely high death tolls during battles. This turned what would have otherwise been an extremely generic plot into a captivating experience.

          That being said, the truly generic nature of the plot itself is nearly unbearable at some points, and I found myself making a gagging motion whenever the standard dialogue clichés started popping up. There were also a lot of points where things just didn't make any sense. Without spoiling anything, there comes a point where Nagate messes up during a mission and it causes a big problem. Then, after the mission, one of the other soldiers actually beams him in the head with a rock. Now only was this infuriating on the level of "this crap probably wouldn't fly in an actual military," but also on the level of "here's that clichéd plot point where everyone hates the main character after he messes up, but then he does really well in the next mission so they're ok with him again." And, I kid you not, there is actually a montage scene where they flash between different moments on Nagate's rise up in power and respect within the military. This is just a sample of the unbelievably terrible writing that takes places between the epic thrills of each battle.

          Characters really don't do much to differentiate themselves from their standard tropes either. Nagate is probably the most fleshed-out of the cast, but even his background of living in the underground alleys of "Sidonia" felt a bit generic. From there on out, between token love interests with no personality other than "love interest," and a quite literal bully character with very few redeeming qualities, the characters really don't do much to make themselves stand out. Character interactions also feel a bit forced at times, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the fact that there are enough main characters fawning over Nagate to fill a small harem for any other anime. By the time they had added a fourth love interest, my eyes were about to swivel back into my head so hard that they'd fall out of their sockets.

          And then, there's the bear. There is literally a talking bear with a robotic arm that actually gets to be a main character...just let that sink it for a minute. I don't know if this was their attempt to insert some kind of comic relief despite the fact that the bear never does anything comical, but if it was, then it worked just about as well as every single forced comedic relief scene in this series.

          The animation was produced by Polygon Pictures, and to my knowledge, this is the first television anime series to be animated completely in 3D rendered models. This ended up creating an incredibly stark contrast in animation quality. On the plus side, the action sequences were some of the best I've seen from this year, with every single movement choreographed and animated to near perfection. The heavy attention to explosions and particles effects also added a great deal to every fight, though some felt less realistic than others. On the reverse side of this category, any animation that wasn't a fight sequence ranged from incredibly mediocre to unbelievably awful. The characters have an extremely limited range of facial features, blushing and crying looking extremely jagged and unnatural, and any sort of body movement looks severely robotic and completely destroys any attempt at immersing you in this story.

          On the dub front, I actually couldn't tell you who exactly dubbed this series, but I can tell you that we have definitely found a fundamental flaw in Netflix's business plan for original anime series. I do have to give credit to Johnny Yong Bosch and Todd Haberkorn (credited as Todd Stone) though, but saying that those two were good in a dub is practically unnecessary since they've been voice acting legends for at least the past decade. Unfortunately, aside from a minor role by Spike Spencer (Shinji of Neon Genesis Evangelion), I did not recognize a single name on this dub cast. Upon further research, I discovered that a good portion of them had never even done any anime voice acting before they were cast for this series, and the effects of this were plain to seen. I personally was able to slosh through the dub because it's a heavy action series and Bosch can in fact carry an entire cast by himself, but I would not blame you in the slightest if you switched to subbed while watching this. Hopefully Netflix will learn from their mistakes before they begin their work on The Seven Deadly Sins.

          The music was composed by Noriyuki Asakura of Rurouni Kenshin fame, and his mastery of soundtrack composition has certainly evolved since the late 90s. Battle sequences were always accompanied by grand and epic orchestrations mixed with heavy guitar work and electronics, while more intense non-battle scenes often carried creepy electronic elements; I will say that I felt somewhat unmoved by some of the softer tracks though. The opening theme "Sidonia" was performed by angela and plays us in with a heavy techno beat back by a march-inspired feel, while the ending theme "show" by Eri Kitamura plays us out with a heavy rock track. Additionally, both of these tracks are available for purchase on iTunes, and I would definitely recommend checking them out.

          Overall, I'm once again left in a quandary over whether or not to recommend Knights of Sidonia. There are a ton of really, really awful moments in this series, yet I was still able to watch the next episode without any pause for a break. Ultimately, I'm feeling a bit generous towards it since it's the first anime exclusively licensed by a streaming company outside the direct anime industry, and any attempt to promote and expand anime in the western market should always be given a chance.

          If you like heavy action anime, then definitely give this one a shot, but otherwise stay clear of it.

aufderhar.efrain - 2014-08-07 21:56:11

jackson.kassulke - 2014-07-11 03:30:23

Future humans, as far as we know, only exist on one space station called Sidonia. The Knights are mech pilots, the mechs in this series are called Garde units.

The MC Nagato Tanikaze, as we first meet him, is someone who's been kept away from the rest of the society on Sidonia. But we see immediately that one thing he wants to do more than anything is be one of the pilots whom protects Sidonia from their gravest enemy.

The Gauna, are an alien species who are responsible for the current situation humanity finds themselves in. Unaware if any other space stations are still operational the citizens of Sidonia carry on with the belief that they are the last of the human race.

I found the story made me question just enough of it to keep me intrigued and it didn't take long for me to realize I enjoyed the questions it made me ask about the world.

The animation style may be off putting but I honestly like the look. It's different enough so it doesn't look like every other "mechs in space" anime. The action looks beautiful though I did lose some movements/actions from time to time. Things like collisions and movements in some parts are well done while in others it may seem a little exaggerated. e.g. when Sidonia is firing it's thrusters to change course i was like

I love the sound design and I found that the effects did not subtract anything from the experience for me. I listened to the first few episodes with headphones on and only took them off because the clamping force got a little too much. (They're new-ish headphones)

I found the characters to be comfortable but not safe. Meaning they were archetypes we've seen before but they didn't feel like they were lifted whole-sale from another show/manga. Besides Nagato and the Bear Chef, Izana was my favourite character because sometimes trying to tell someone you like them is hard, you know?T.T

All things considered this anime is fun as hell and I can't wait for more... there's going to be more right? PLEASE TELL ME THERE'S MORE!!

cartwright.julianne - 2014-06-28 22:13:37

At first I was turned off from the show based on the animation style but you still shouldn't stop you from watching it. I wouldn't say it is the best anime this year (bc there is still more to be watched) but it does have it own uniqueness to it. While the animation does have its flaws here and there it is consistent throughout the shows run. As for sound the only song I can remember it the opening which is what made me come back for more when the animation was pushing me away. Characters were pretty basic with not to much stray from cookie cutter besides having a 3rd gender which was basically tomboy girls. For the season so far I will say it is worth the watch if you can get passed the animation and it is a new studio that from my knowledge shows some promise.     

mcrooks - 2014-06-08 20:57:11

My first impression of Sidonia no Kishi was mixed, I wasn't a huge fan of the whole "CG characters on drawn backgrounds" approach and the character animation can be pretty lackluster at times.Despite these drawback I still enjoy the show, the characters are pretty enjoyable. The plot is something I haven't seen before and the monsters are both interesting and scary at the same time.It's definitely worth a watch!