Forum - View topicREVIEW: Knights of Sidonia
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ocfilms
Posts: 5 |
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Did anyone else get the vibe that this pulled a lot from attack on Titan and might have been made or distributed based off of its sucess.? A lot of similarities in stories and elements used (last group of humans forced to fight in military society, a monstrous race of bad guys that reappear out of nowhere, some strange genetic link/play between humans and monsters, young cadets forced to bece new pilots,etc)
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Stark700
Posts: 11762 Location: Earth |
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Sidonia is an excellent mecha series with a very interesting story. The concept itself is thought provoking and I liked the overall direction they did with the show. The artwork was not a bother for me at all and the soundtrack was brilliantly done; hell I think both the OP and ED songs are among my favorites from last season.
Can't wait for the sequel! |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18187 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Boy, of the reviews that I've done lately, this was not one that I expected to be strongly contentious.
As Zac and others have pointed out, different graders in each case. I mentioned in the Preview Guide response thread that I don't have anywhere near as high an opinion of SD, either.
And that doesn't make its story any less formulaic and predictable or its cast any less of a disappointment. The main reason I graded it as high as a C+ on story is because it did, indeed, do a very good job of gradually filtering in the details and was awesome with those details. As a more general response: Sorry, but anyone who thinks that there's anything original to the anime version of KoS beyond some of those specific details is either smoking something or is ignorant of the mecha/sci fi history of anime. One or two have questioned where the Macross parallels are? Try Macross Frontier. If you've seen that series than I can't imagine how you can't see a fair number of similarities. Evangelion may, in retrospect, not be the best direct example, but numerous other story elements - the spoiler["I'll sabotage a mission to get back at the new hotshot who's unwittingly stealing my thunder"] ploy, or the spoiler[inscrutable aliens who take on vaguely human forms] gimmicks, have been done in numerous other mecha and sci fi titles. The relationship curves feel like something borrowed from a Gundam series, too, as is the revelation that spoiler[the MC is a specially genetically-engineered individual above and beyond normal genetic engineering (Kira Yamato, anyone?)]. I could probably point to numerous other details if I wanted to spend all night analyzing it, but I have other things to do. So yeah, don't even think about trying to pitch to me about how wonderfully original a work this is. And don't give me crap about how I shouldn't be reviewing mecha just because I'm not a mecha uber-fan. I've seen and reviewed plenty of mecha series in my day, thank you very much. |
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walw6pK4Alo
Posts: 9322 |
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Yes, because Shingeki no Kyojin is the first work in history to ever use those themes, and every anime before or after is just a copy. Gunbuster from 1988? Totally ripping SnK off, Anno's a hack! |
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BluExocet
Posts: 64 Location: The High Mountain |
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I agree with you 100%. I was worried that it would maybe turn out like the BLAME! anime did, and was excited for it because then it would mean that the story would be smoother. I'll be honest here; as much as I love Tsutomu Nihei's work, his pacing makes some of this story lines a little jumbled. Even though they made some minor changes in the anime, it came out way better than I could have hoped. And for that, I am super excited for the next season and eventually owning the series on DVD. The Knights of Sidonia anime has scenes that reminded me of movies like Pandorum, Sunshine, and Event Horizon. Some of the shots such as when they're floating down a hallway, the quiet drifting through space, or any other quiet moment. I believe that was a first for me to feel those atmospheric scenes like that from an anime. However, if I were to have one or two complaints about the Knights of Sidonia anime, it would be that Izana hasn't inflicted bodily harm on Nagate yet with his prosthetics, and the dub voice for Izana could use to be a little bit deeper to make him sound more androgynous. |
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tcdelaney
Posts: 169 Location: Mittagong, NSW, Australia |
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I had almost precisely the opposite reaction to Sidonia that the reviewer had. The non-space/mecha animation and CG almost stopped me from watching the show - I watched it despite the animation because the setting and story hooked me.
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mglittlerobin
Posts: 1071 |
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I was quite pleased to hear Melissa Fhan's voice in this, I don't hear her in a whole lot of anime that I watch, but I always enjoy her when I do.
I almost stopped watching because the CGI is ugly, I liked the 2D animation though, and I thought the story was interesting. |
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Barbobot
Posts: 460 |
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This was my initial response too. I never really completely warmed up to the CGI character animations, but just kinda grew to accept them. Can't say that the story and setting fully hooked me though. While I found it interesting and entertaining enough to keep watching, I didn't find it to be anything amazing. I did appreciate all the smaller hard sci-fi details to build on the setting though. |
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gwdone
Posts: 272 |
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I beg for BIOMEGA to be animated!!
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DangerMouse
Posts: 3983 |
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I second that, would love to see Biomega animated.
Completely agree. Also, yeah, that OP/ED, so good. I'll also echo stuff that Cyclone1993 and DuskyPredator said, I too felt that the elements of this just come together to look and feel ambitious. To me overall the feel of the story, setting, and atmosphere with it's large scale really detailed CG art and design (despite some character CG shortcoming as mentioned in the review and by others), the unique and surprisingly detailed audio-visuals, and that level of detail implied in how things work with the hard scifi elements really made it feel ambitious to me despite any familiar setups. The art, coloring, and lighting did a surprisingly great job adapting that unique artstyle and scale plus was great even in "emptier" spaces like outside the ship like in the space environment such as those vast shots of space BluExocet mentioned, the mecha when out there, and things like the blue propulsion against the stars and black space was pretty eye-catching.
Well said. Last edited by DangerMouse on Tue Jul 22, 2014 6:51 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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ryanvamp
Posts: 416 |
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You mean Kill la Kill & Aku no Hana ? I will say two things though. One, I was on the wrong comparing ONE episode's review with another review about an entire season of a different show. I should've known better. I was only trying to illustrate with a recent example how, like I stated, I grew increasingly tired of some ratings I've seen on this site lately. It's subjective, and it's only my call if I find this review quite flawed. But I am not trying to dismiss the "entire organization", as Zac pointed out. If it came across like that, it wasn't my intention. Two, I could make this even a bigger deal by just mentioning a couple of old reviews (of the same writter) of some series in which the overall consensus is that they have awful characters & storytelling yet received the same rating of C. But I won't because, once again, I wasn't trying to diss anyone's opinion, just stating my own disappointment with how some of you are reviewing things in the past months. Now if you'll excuse me I also have "other things to do" so let's just leave it at "we agree to disagree". It's not my first time disagreeing with a review and it will certainly not be the last, just like most likely I'll keep finding great articles & reviews as well. |
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TheRussianMeatClob
Posts: 33 Location: Wisconsin |
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Sigh... This is why we can't have nice things. But hey we got a second season! Just hope we get that in English too.
Also as for this
Knights of Sidonia the manga came out 6 months before the Attack on Titan manga did. Hajime Isayama is also a fan of Tsutomu Nihei. |
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DangerMouse
Posts: 3983 |
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Agreed, I found it pretty distinctive thanks to that regardless of familiar inspirations (and what doesn't have those in some way), pretty great show. Yeah I don't think I'd mind at all if Netflix continue based on this, they seem to have done a really good job on the show and working with a good dub studio, all on their first attempt, but before I'm totally happy I do hope we see confirmation that Knights of Sidonia will also still eventually get a proper BD release from Netflix/Partner here in the US too to go with it being on Netflix cause I'd like to own it. |
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Lynx Amali
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Aside from the author of AoT citing Nihei as an influence AND Sidionia coming prior to AoT to begin with, it's a horrible comparison. On a personal level, Sidonia was miles better than AoT at handling characters. I actually cared about characters spoiler[so the inevitable deaths were that much close to home which didn't happen in AoT.]
The CGI does improve later on. I think the reason the initial episodes were pretty bad was mainly because they were making the assets. Once they had the assets done about halfway through the show, they could improve and do crazy things with them.
That's still one of my favorite Nihei works so hell yes. I don't know how they could manage to capture the same speed as the manga did though. |
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EyeOfPain
Posts: 312 |
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I actually thought it had a bit of Battlestar Galactica (recent, not original) thrown in myself, which I wouldn't say is a bad thing.
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