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You are now entering a spoiler- and Muse-joke free zone. If you'd like to discuss things that have happened more recently in the manga, please use the manga thread here also, I call a freebie on that one in the title.  Knights of Sidonia is an anime adaptation of a relatively recent Mecha manga by Tsutomu Nihei. It's being done by Polygon Studios (Tron: Uprising) in full 3DCG, which is an interesting and divisive choice. The last remnants of humanity have fled Earth on a massive, self-sustaining, and primarily Japanese colony ship named Sidonia after a mysterious, quick to evolve, and nigh indestructible alien species called the Gauna destroyed Earth. As our story begins, Sidonia has already been on its journey away for over 1,000 years. But even this great span of time has not put them out of range of the Gauna. In order to deal with the demographic stresses caused by deadly Gauna attacks over the centuries, humanity has embraced human cloning, genetic modification, photosynthesis, transsexualism, and even bear bodies. That's not a typo.  Nagate Tanikaze is a bit of an outsider to Sidonia, which is rather strange considering it's the last known bastion of humanity left in the universe. He's spent many years of his life in the underground sections of Sidonia with his now deceased grandfather, training to become a Guardian pilot on a forgotten simulator, with no other human contact. When he runs out of food, he ventures too close to the surface and ends up on the wrong end of a veritable slapstick conveyor belt that takes him directly to the captain of Sidonia, another mysterious woman who nearly always wears a mask and was apparently familiar with Nagate's grandfather. She allows him to stay on the surface on one condition: become a Guardian pilot and defend the ship against Gauna attacks.  Along the humiliating and painful way, he meets Shizuka Hoshijiro, a Guardian pilot trainee. She seems to take an immediate liking to him. She's also one of the most skilled Guardian pilots- which isn't saying much, because Sidonia hasn't seen a Gauna in over 100 years and the Defense Corps has grown somewhat lax on its readiness.  He also meets Izana Shinatose, another Guardian trainee and his new best friend. To his confusion, Izana isn't actually a boy or a girl, but a member of a new hermaphroditic gender that can change sexes to adapt to any chosen partner.  On the other end of the spectrum is Norio Kunato, the best Guardian pilot in the class. He believes that it's his destiny to pilot the Tsugumori, A greatly upgraded version of an old Guardian unit used by an ace pilot during the last Gauna war 100 years ago. He's quite mad to discover that the Tsugumori has been assigned to Nagate, who was trained on the old simulators and could not adapt to the new control scheme of modern Guardians. He's kind of a dick, in the Iceman-ish sort of way. At first. Then he becomes a dick in the dickish sort of way. Nagate is excited about his first sortie, even though it's a simple ice mining operation.  Correction: Was excited. The Gauna are back. Why should I watch this? I could answer your question with things like "Amazing robit fites" or "Beautiful Art" but those are phrases used to describe almost every decent mecha anime nowadays (i.e. not daimidaler). Instead, I'm going to let this picture tell you all you need to know:  Where do I watch it? Officially, Netflix is subbing and releasing it exclusively on their service. However, in true Netflixian fashion, they're posting the series at the end of its run sometime in the summer so people can bingewatch. In the meantime, several groups (Underwater and I think one other) are subbing it. Use the regular distribution methods. NO ONE'S GONNA TAKE ME ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE Triggerhappypilot fucked around with this message at 08:45 on Apr 12, 2014 |
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Apr 12, 2014 08:42
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Depending on how far they get into adapting the manga, it could get quite entertaining reading the reactions of anime-only viewers in this thread. 
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Apr 12, 2014 12:18
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Very much looking forward to this. I'm a longtime Nihei fan who never got into Sidonia for some reason. It should be a real treat to see the incomprehensible landscapes and enormous wide shots that he's so well known for coming to life.
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Apr 12, 2014 13:20
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Enjoyed pretty much every thing about the first episode apart from the look of the CGI people, which is a shame because Arpeggio didn't bother me at all but anything alive looks way worse in this.
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Apr 12, 2014 13:22
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Sakurazuka posted:Enjoyed pretty much every thing about the first episode apart from the look of the CGI people, which is a shame because Arpeggio didn't bother me at all but anything alive looks way worse in this. I felt similarly. I'm a fan of Nihei's old work and I think that the team did a good job of making his crazy hyper-detailed megastructures more comprehensible and visually digestible but the people looked horrible. It's really clear they animated the people around 30fps and dropped frames to make it "look more like anime" which resulted in the super jank-rear end animation for the entire episode. Mechs and aliens looked aight though.
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Apr 12, 2014 13:36
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I really enjoyed the hard scifi feel to this and that cool OP. The animation bothered me when it was the main character alone at the beginning, but for some reason with multiple characters I didn't notice it as much. The battle scenes are a little hard to take with the unnecessary choppiness. I think I can endure it for now, but I will have to check out this manga after this season is finished.
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Apr 12, 2014 14:33
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Man the low framerate and really plasticy character cg kills this. It's extremely distracting.
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Apr 12, 2014 15:50
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It looks like a PS2 game.
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Apr 12, 2014 15:54
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The CG looks plenty good to me and doesn't bother me at all, I am happy to see it animated.
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Apr 12, 2014 18:57
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The CG in this is pretty good, leagues better than Arpeggio. The framerate thing still bothers me a bit, but not nearly as much. However, the art feels very... stale is the word that comes to mind. It's either a bit over saturated with bloom or there's something wonky with the lighting; I can't put my finger on it. Maybe there's just way too much white, or maybe it's the really plastic-y feel of the character models. Still, I liked this episode overall, and I find the whole third gender stupidly amusing.
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Apr 12, 2014 22:20
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I was kinda looking forward to this since I heard the source material was good and the studio had worked on western CGI stuff. The background art is pretty much the only good thing about that episode. The character design is bad and the animation is terrible or nonexistent most of the time. Even if this had truly stellar animation I would really hesitate to give it chance. The storytelling is really bad, and the story elements seem way worse. There's an illuminati meeting discussing their newest conspiracy. There's also the chosen hero protagonist who only knows combat, which combined with the OP and the dumb peace activists who don't want to live under martial law makes me hope this series is satirical. And someone said there's harem elements, so I guess that explains the dickgirl. Edit: Grammar Mercrom fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Apr 13, 2014 |
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Apr 12, 2014 22:51
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ViggyNash posted:The CG in this is pretty good, leagues better than Arpeggio. I honestly thought the opposite, the background stuff was nice but the characters looked way more obviously CG than Arpeggio. Mercrom posted:The storytelling is really bad, and the story elements seem way worse. There's also an illuminati meeting discussing their newest conspiracy. There's the chosen hero protagonist who only knows combat, which combined with the OP and the dumb peace activists don't want to live under martial law makes me hope this series is satirical. It's trans-humanistic Starship Troopers. Whether it's played straight book Troopers or Verhoeven satire movie Troopers remains to be seen. Sakurazuka fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Apr 12, 2014 |
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Apr 12, 2014 23:40
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Sakurazuka posted:I honestly thought the opposite, the background stuff was nice but the characters looked way more obviously CG than Arpeggio. I'm starting to think my eyes are going bad, because Arpeggio looked ridiculously CGI to me. The characters looked like they were done by someone doing CGI for the first time. Sidonia, by comparison, looks pretty good.
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Apr 12, 2014 23:54
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Sakurazuka posted:I honestly thought the opposite, the background stuff was nice but the characters looked way more obviously CG than Arpeggio. I was talking more about the animation than the models. I agree with you, they didn't do a great job with the models and Arpeggio is somewhat better in that aspect, but the big difference is that when things move it doesn't look awkward as hell. e: Or just mo-cap. Thinking about it, I don't think I've ever heard of mo-capped animations used in conjunction with this cell-shaded style of CG. That would be interesting to see. ViggyNash fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Apr 13, 2014 |
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Apr 13, 2014 01:08
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I enjoyed the first episode, I havent read the manga past the first volume and was intrigued by what I did read. That said, I generally am not a fan of this 3d CGi thing they are doing. The animation seemed very jerky at times and while its a huge HUGE improvement over existing full CGI anime its still not right. It needs to be... flatter than this. If they could get that basic feeling right, CGi anime could be a real game changer. Evangelion gets it right in the films, But they have a giant budget to throw at this stuff. I wonder what it would look like if they used rotoscoping or something similar on top.
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Apr 13, 2014 01:51
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I'm going to watch this simply because I enjoyed the manga and really want to see all of it animated. So many cool things to look forward to. I agree that the animation of the characters is pretty bad. Thankfully the mecha and the aliens look fantastic.
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Apr 13, 2014 11:31
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This first episode felt really rushed - like it should've been a two parter with the first part being Tanizake's escape from the underground and discovering the surface, and the second being introducing the case and his recruitment as a Guardian pilot. Overall it felt like someone was reciting the story of the manga, rather than telling the story outright. It had no room to breathe or set up the atmosphere, instead just rushing from character to character before we even have a reason to care who any of these people are. I mean, I've read the manga and I still feel like I didn't have enough time to learn who the characters are or what their deal was. I feel like the characters should have started out almost incidentally to the setting and atmosphere, in which case this amount of characterization would make sense, but they were the focus of everything instead.
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Apr 13, 2014 14:04
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Pyradox posted:Overall it felt like someone was reciting the story of the manga, rather than telling the story outright. I think you got it in a nutshell there. It's like they're just ticking boxes during production, it's got no spark. And the frame rate, if you can call it that, of the cg animation is lower than that of the actual video, and it's really bugging me.
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Apr 13, 2014 14:57
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I'm guessing it's gonna be one of those one season, rush to fit as much as possible into 12/13 episodes sort of deals.
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Apr 13, 2014 18:59
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DiscoMouse posted:I think you got it in a nutshell there. It's like they're just ticking boxes during production, it's got no spark. It appears it's attempting to less stand on its own and more as an advertisement for the manga. Which is fair I suppose.
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Apr 13, 2014 19:12
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I'm actually digging the super-tight pacing of the show, as compared to the manga. I don't think the meditative slow pace would have worked as well on screen, and hell, I actually let out a small cheer when we didn't have the bog-standard anime-protaganist-internal-monologue-tell-and-not-really-show sort of thing. Also, Zorak, I think your wish regarding fansubs of this show just came true.
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Apr 14, 2014 00:59
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Man, for some reason I was expecting Guilty Gear Xrd levels of pseudo 2D cg animation, but it seems like we got garry's mod here. EDIT: At least now I can sort of understand what structures look like, for some reason Tsutomu Nihei's architecture always confuses the hell out of me. nerdz fucked around with this message at 08:13 on Apr 14, 2014 |
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Apr 14, 2014 07:58
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OWLS! posted:I'm actually digging the super-tight pacing of the show, as compared to the manga. I don't think the meditative slow pace would have worked as well on screen, and hell, I actually let out a small cheer when we didn't have the bog-standard anime-protaganist-internal-monologue-tell-and-not-really-show sort of thing. This is how I felt about it too. The 3DCG isn't quite as offensive as I was afraid it would be -- certainly not as bad as the PVs led me to believe. I'm not entirely sold on any of the characters yet, but the setting looks very promising (both visually and in terms of setting up the political tension and social conditions of the ship) so I'll roll with it for now.
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Apr 14, 2014 13:24
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OWLS! posted:I'm actually digging the super-tight pacing of the show, as compared to the manga. I don't think the meditative slow pace would have worked as well on screen, and hell, I actually let out a small cheer when we didn't have the bog-standard anime-protaganist-internal-monologue-tell-and-not-really-show sort of thing. I noticed at least once piece of quite economical story-telling: When the senior crew are being briefed, the Captain changes the subject to fighting the Gauna. There's a picture of the ice asteroid with a red-highlighted section next to the picture of the Gauna ship. Later, when the trainees are suiting up, you see the Captain's personal tactical display (the asteroid with red "danger" marker) contrasted with the main bridge display (no red marker on the asteroid). The displays then match once the Gauna breaks through the ice. The Captain notes that a century [of peace/complacency/dissent] has just ended. The scene they added with the clone sisters watching the anti-military demo also shows how the trainees are already primed to hate dissent. In the manga, the crazy dude with the sign is delivering a slightly different message to a slightly different audience (and the scene happens much later).
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Apr 14, 2014 21:05
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I like the fast pacing, because obligatory introductory episodes aren't really all that fun anyway. The sooner they get to the really good stuff the better, and it is a seinen so I don't mind having to pay attention. I haven't been following the manga though, so I can't speak as if it is better or worse than the original, but I liked what I saw.
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Apr 15, 2014 00:04
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Hm. They really went for the whole non-linear exposition thing here. Well, I can definitely say I'm ok with that.
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Apr 19, 2014 01:32
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If you like this, definitely check out the manga. The manga is REALLY good.
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Apr 19, 2014 03:32
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I've been holding off reading the manga until I had the spare cash to buy it but I've really been looking forward to this. I watched (hell I own) that incomprehensible Blame! short anime so a little janky CG isn't going to stop me from watching the poo poo out of this.
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Apr 19, 2014 05:25
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I read the first volume of the manga and didn't really get into it. It was like the entire ship was full of insufferable assholes. I still loved the premise so I'm giving this one a shot.
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Apr 19, 2014 11:29
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Alright this episode has thrown me for a loop. I see they are redoing the story a bit to make it better fit the anime.
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Apr 19, 2014 20:45
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The anime isn't inspiring much confidence. Is the manga really as amazing as people have been saying?
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Apr 20, 2014 03:09
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No, it's awful, and it's really hard to read manga to find out
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Apr 20, 2014 03:14
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It does get much better after the best girl in manga gets introduced. You'll know who I mean when you meet her.
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Apr 20, 2014 03:22
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This episode felt like it would have been incoherent as gently caress if I hadn't already read this. Jumped around a lot.
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Apr 20, 2014 06:55
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Sindai posted:It does get much better after the best girl in manga gets introduced. You'll know who I mean when you meet her. Absolutely. This episode had some great visuals (namely everything do do with the Heavy Mass cannon) but it's still pretty unfocused. I'd love to see how they pull off the part you're referring to though. It also feels weird that Izana, who seemed pretty popular in the first episode, has suddenly become lost all semblance of a social life and is now only friends with Nagate. The romantic setup behind it is kind of obvious, and I suppose it's pretty similar to how the manga did it but it feels a lot more sudden and forced when squashed into this series' rapid pacing. Also the fact they keep trying to find common ground but they don't really have any aside from being on the same team. Actually what it most likely is is that they want to get to the mech fights and fanservice as soon as possible before everyone's put off by the weird setting. Pyradox fucked around with this message at 13:02 on Apr 20, 2014 |
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Apr 20, 2014 12:47
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There is... There is fanservice later?  I shouldn't watch this show while eating, should I?
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Apr 21, 2014 01:48
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All the hot hot gauna fanservice you can handle. 
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Apr 21, 2014 06:17
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I like it so far. I had to laugh at an anime character being all "I'm so asexual you can't tell my gender" when that's basically an industry staple.
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Apr 21, 2014 12:28
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The OP really really grows on you.
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Apr 24, 2014 20:23
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Oh Snapalope posted:The OP really really grows on you. This has been a great season for OPs in general. Stand Proud is great, and I'm eagerly anticipating the full versions of this OP and Ping Pong's.
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Apr 24, 2014 20:25
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