Anime Talk Weekly - Knights of Sidonia

Going once again into mecha styled anime series, today we will talk a little about Knights of Sidonia. This series was released on April and the first season went up to June with a total of 12 episodes. Right now the localized version of the series (by Polygon Pictures) is been shown exclusively on Netflix and available in all its territories and regions. Right now the people behind this series are working on a second season, but first, before it is ready for release let's see what this series is all about.

Gotta love the Garde design, it looks powerful, yet vulnerable at the same time.

Knights of Sidonia
Genre: Science Fiction
Themes: Aliens, Mecha, Military, Real Robots, Space Opera
Objectionable content: Intense

Pilots look like they don't have it easy do they?

The Story

Knights of Sidonia is a sci-fi anime series in which the story goes around the whole human race having to leave the earth and live on giant spaceships made from the parts that were spared. The reason for leaving the planet was a terrible invasion by an alien species called Gauna. This alien species came with their gigantic size and shape shifting abilities and basically destroyed the planet, forcing mankind to escape to the stars.

The Gauna are not only enormous in size and able to shape shift at will, but they also have an almost indestructible material protecting their core or "heart". This material is called the "Placenta" or "Ena" (which is basically a reference to the placenta in humans). Nobody knows why the Gauna decided to invade the earth, but what the humans do know if that the placenta is removed from the Gauna then the core can be damaged and that will kill the creature, so there is a fighting chance.

Most of the plot in this series happens in the biggest of all the giant space ships where humanity escaped into. This ship is called Sidonia and it is protected by mecha soldiers called "Gardes" which are powered by "Heiges Particles" and are made with a material strong enough to damage the Gauna's placenta and core. our main character is called Nagate Tanikase who is a young man who lives in the underground section of Sidonia. He wants to become one of the Gardes so he trains and trains on an old Garde Simulator (with the help of his grandfather) until he masters it and after his grandfather dies, he goes to the upper sections of Sidonia and succeeds in becoming a Garde, in order to defend humanity against the Gauna. After that it is all a matter of battles, intense moments and drama.

A game based on this series would probably look like this.

The Mood

The mood in this series goes a little off the known atmosphere that mecha anime series are known to have. Knights of Sidonia goes more into the serious side of things. Reflecting on how humanity would react in such a scenario with all the social, political and survival issues that are apparently than what we live right now on the planet. Thie reflection comes with a good emphasis on the setting and humanity itself rather than focusing on the main characters only. The Garde thing is also treated quite seriously and even if it is not as flashy as other mecha anime series, it has its own charm sort of like the old Gundam series (before Wing).

As in any anime series (or anything like it) romance is never out of the equation.

Wrapping it up

Knights of Sidonia seems to be an anime series mostly made for people who have been watching anime for a long time. Don't get me wrong, newcomers can also be very entertained by it, but still the maturity shown in this series is a big hook for those who were looking for something a little more serious, sort of like the anime of old times. Either way, if you have a Netflix account or just like to watch anime online, you can't miss it.

Knights of Sidonia promo video (English)

Source: Anime News Network