Forum - View topicShelf Life - Fight to Survive
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partially
Posts: 702 Location: Oz |
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Characters, he barely has any! In fact as a character roster I think Sidonia beats all his other works combined. 
That said I do wonder if it has changed from the manga then? I have not yet actually watched it. In the manga though I barely recall much in the way of humour nor harems in it at all. They were there but very, very low key. I haven't read it in a while though. |
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CoreSignal
 Posts: 727 Location: California, USA |
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I really enjoyed Knights of Sidonia. Great world building, atmosphere, and some spectatular mecha battles. I got the collector's edition and it's decent. The art box looks good and the poster are nice but the artwork postcards make me wish we got an artbook instead.
@Agent355 and Themaster20000, totally agree. As much as I like KoS, the show is ultimately held back by the out-of-place harem elements and mostly cliche characters, humor, and slice-of-life stuff.
While I'm still looking forward to s2, I've heard these complaints as well. I guess I shouldn't get my hopes up.
Nihei isn't known for his characters, but at least the characters in Blame and Biomega had a sense of mystery to them (and at least they looked interesting). Tanikaze and the rest of the cast are pretty bland and the bland character designs don't help. I'm not totally caught up on the manga either, (only read up to vol. 6), but most of the humor and harem stuff is in the manga as well. I do think the anime exaggerates it a bit. Maybe just because it's animated? |
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CrownKlown
 Posts: 1762 |
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Id personally much rather have harem elements than yaoi. I can't think of how many shows ended up having limited appeal despite being very good due to implied or actual yaoi. Kyou Kara Maoh is one in particular that comes to mind that is actually a really good harem style fantasy, I would say on par with Slayers almost in terms of the fantasy aspect but so many people I know are turned off by the yaoi. Cluster Edge, Ghost 7, etc. You also have the same thing with show with too much yuri that would have otherwise had much broader appeal.
For the record I still think those shows were good, I am just saying they yaoi/yuri hurt the show more than it helped. Regarding sidonia I have only read the manga, and I think the harem is rather downplayed although it exists, and at least Sidonia throws a huge monkey wrench in the mix by making one of the harem members a hermaphrodite, which I honestly have never seen in harem. |
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Mikeski
Posts: 608 Location: Minneapolis, MN |
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The box is 2 cm wide. (and 19.5 cm deep and 27 cm tall.)
"Brother-blue" instead of "brother-love"? Freudian slip of the year! |
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DangerMouse
Posts: 3984 |
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Yeah, I really enjoyed it too (and Mardock Scramble). A small artbook instead would have been fantastic, perhaps with notes on the tech and stuff. |
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Merxamers
 Posts: 720 |
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This may be an unpopular opinion, but if the anime goes long enough, the harem stuff will be AMAZING. I don't like harem stuff at all, but i love KoS (the manga) because of how friggin weird it can be, and the 'harem' subplot is it's most gloriously bonkers aspect. Nihei is not a standard anime writer, and it's fascinating to me when he tries to use tropes used in more mainstream shows (@partially the anime presents this more straight, but IMO the early attempts at humor in the manga feel like an alien trying to replicate 'earthling humor' based on a wikipedia page or something). KoS is by far the most mainstream work Nihei has done, and i like his odd take on common genre conventions when he uses them, which isn't as often as you would think. I was pleasantly surprised at how season 1 of KoS turned out, and i have the special edition ordered already (wanted the fancy box  ) I can't wait for season 2, when it gets to the good stuff 
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WingKing
Posts: 617 |
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I've never heard anyone have much good to say about the Sacred Blacksmith anime, and I haven't seen it, but I quite liked the manga when I read a few volumes of it several years ago.
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partially
Posts: 702 Location: Oz |
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I think the main issue with Nihei is the character visual similarities. In his previous works it didn't really matter as there were rarely multiple characters in the scene. Sidonia though has a large cast that all look very similar. It is why I have been slow on the manga, it is so hard keeping track of who is who. I found the characters seemed interesting personally, but it was ruined by the fact it was impossible to keep them differentiated.
I enjoyed it. I think most peoples problem was they were actually expecting something to happen! In all it is a pretty uneventful show. Add to that it portrayed itself as a fantasy adventure, yet they never actually go anywhere. There are barely more than like three settings for the show really. I enjoyed it, but yeah can't say I loved it. It never actually tried to do anything at all. |
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Zoneflare
 Posts: 521 |
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Picked up Oniai. $15 for twelve episodes of cheap laughs. I can handle that
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kevinx59
 Posts: 959 Location: In sunny California |
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Yeah. I mean, say what you say about the sparse release and the case quirks, the S.A.V.E. editions are still pretty fantastic deals. And like Barbobot said, almost all have a reversible cover to get rid of the banner (aside from Suzuka, the only other one I've seen so far without that feature is Air: The Movie). BTW, I see American Splendor on your shelf. Nice. On the opposite spectrum, I want Yuki Yuna, but its too expensive.  Luckily there's Neptunia to cheer me up. Have yet to watch Sidonia, but I hear good things about it. I have seen the first Mardock Scramble movie. I really love the art style, but its run-time is way too short. I still need to finish the other two movies, but I don't really like the way they are broken up. It may take 3 hours, but I probably would've preferred if it was just one long movie (or maybe two). Like the review says, the breaks between the movies are awkward. They don't really work standalone.
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Cptn_Taylor
Posts: 925 |
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Nihei is one of those rare manga artists that knows how to draw scenes full of detail. Witness Blame. He could have drawn Knights of Sidonia with the same kind of detail he used in Blame if he had wanted to. But he made a conscious decision to go the other route. The scenes in KoS are mostly "open lines" and the viewer is required to fill in the detail. And I agree that it makes the manga difficult to follow. There are times where all the lines mix together. The animated version is a great great improvement on the graphics detail. Unfortunately not so much for the characters but you can't have it all. |
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Hameyadea
 Posts: 3679 |
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Sidonia no Kishi's OP was among the Spring Cour's best, IMO. And the show's sound effects are truly top-notch.
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6873 Location: Kazune City |
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justsomeaccount
 Posts: 471 |
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As a Tsutomu Nihei fan who loves Blame and really likes Biomega... I didn't like Sidonia. I agree Nihei is a world-building and inmersive visual author, not a writer, character or plot one, and when I heard Sidonia had more of those (plot and characters) I first thought "yei! He never did that before! I wonder how he will do with that with such interesting style and setting?", but seeing the result full of characters with barely development, so bland that they look like puppets (the CG models kind of fit with that feeling) who, yet, have a lot of scenes that make most of the show very boring, and a messy plot where events happen whenever they want; I prefer the Blame approach where the plot and characters were so minimal they were kind of avatars to walk through the amazing backgrounds, oppressive atmosphere and totally insane awesome fights in-between, no more, no less. The setting is still really great and interesting and all those details, but when you have such an emphasis on totally mediocre characters and plot and sooo many scenes with them, the setting cannot redeem it.
I also checked out the manga if at least it had better aesthetic than the anime but nop, as Cptn_Taylor said it's a style much less impressive, there can still be some nice drawings but it's not as worked out as the others (although the anime looks fine if we don't count the characters). Kind of a pity to be honest, I would like to mix Nihei with a talented sci fi writer and both take the best out of each other. |
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Cyclone1993
 Posts: 947 |
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Knights of Sidonia is in my top 3 favorite mecha anime, easily, and I watch a lot of mecha anime. The world building and the science behind it is what really pulls me in, plus it has some unique characters. Even if there is a harem element, its one of the most interesting harems I've seen. Sure, it doesn't always fit the plot, but its still entertaining.
I've been holding off on the second season until Netflix gets it. But I have read the manga, and while I enjoy the manga, the anime really helps express the ideas that are difficult through manga, and static imagery. I have not yet bought Knights of Sidonia, but I definitely want to! |
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