Knights of Sidonia: Love Woven in the Stars
After the Earth was destroyed by mysterious alien lifeforms known as the Gauna, surviving remnants of the human race escaped to space in the enormous generation ship Sidonia. Having drifted through space for millennia, the Sidonia found itself once more under attack from Gauna for the first time in a century. Once again facing the threat of extinction, a temporary victory against the Gauna was eked out thanks to the human-Gauna hybrid Tsumugi Shiraui and ace Guardian mech pilot Nagate Tanikaze. 10 years later... The people of Sidonia enjoy a brief respite. Peaceful days pass, during which Tsumugi begins to realize her feelings for Nagate, who is now celebrated as a hero of Sidonia. However, as Captain Kobayashi has always known, as long as the Gauna remain, peace cannot last. The decision is made: a final battle, upon which rests the fate of humanity's last survivors. As the end approaches, will the crew be able to protect those they love?
I’m sorry, wtf did I just watch? Tsutomu Nihei is an auteur in his own right, but his first foray into “approachable” storytelling is…misguided, to say the least.
His corpus consists primarily of non-verbal communiques: the characters are mysteries that begin to make sense over time without any legitimate exposition. Words are a treat, and are few and far in between in one of his OG mangas. The story is usually driven by hard-to-follow explosions and well-illustrated-but-confusing fight scenes set in a random building straight out of an architect student’s wet dream.
Knights of Sidonia, however, is a step away from his usual genius in favor of actual garbage. This bizarre attempt at turning “Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet” into a harem story is a LONG way away from Blame!.
As a first foray into writing a character-driven story, KoS isn’t bad, but by the gods it isn’t good, either. Tsutomu Nihei should have stayed in his lane and just delivered another arcane epic driven by absurdist architectural backdrops and LSD dreams.
That said I watched the entirety of the show in 4 days. My review is invalid.