-Tsutomu Nikei, Anime News Network (2016)-
For large, visually immersive and expansive worlds Tsutomu Nikei never fails to create something special whenever his imagination is put to pen and pencil. Knights Of Sidonia was the next elevation into the mind of Nikei.
The next phase in his evolution as an artist and world builder was Knights Of Sidonia. For the confinement that is Sidonia it is at once a world that is vast, complex and seemingly unending in itself.
As an animation Knights Of Sidonia is at once unique and unusual and yet there is a kind of accessibility to the series that seemed elusive in Tsutomu Nihei's' disconnected, isolated, unending world of Blame!.
Blame! involved the story of an interminable city world, but there was a kind of obtuse, impenetrability to the seemingly wordless manga as well as the adapted Netflix film. Personally the manga is jaw-dropping and essential.
The Blame! manga was truly a glorious masterpiece to this writer though maybe not for everyone. The artwork is a truly stunning exercise in artistic vision that seemed an endless labyrinth into an artist's mind. Nihei brilliantly executes idea and concept to paper to create a fresh unseen universe to the human eye.
Knights Of Sidonia on the other hand captures the beauty and the essence of that endless world within its self-contained Sidonia seed ship universe. Though finite the ship seemingly goes on forever inside and once again Nihei staggers the eyes of a reader's imagination.
Both series are explorations in isolation, but there is a humanity to Knights Of Sidonia that gives it an accessibility perhaps absent from his masterpiece. Nevertheless all of Nihei's creations are intertwined. Blame!, Knights Of Sidonia, Biomega, NOiSE, Abara and APOSIMZ all live comfortably inside of Nihei's master plan. There are linking elements to all of his world-building. This is mythology and world-building at its finest.
The creators of this series, Knights Of Sidonia, have done the manga justice much more so than Netflix did with its more humanist interpretation of the Blame! manga. Everything that was wrong about the Netflix film created from the lengthy Blame! manga series is right about this more faithfully adapted series from the Knights Of Sidonia books.
So we continue with our own personal resolve to explore the remarkable, inspired world of Sidonia with Knights Of Sidonia, Season One, Episode 7, Resolve.
The series continues its seamless movement between cel-like animation and computer-generated creations. Perhaps the bulk of it is created on computers, but the look of the animation is gritty and detailed and nearly as good as some of the finest animation ever created in anime.
As a science fiction it's easily as exhilarating as a thrill ride as Ronald D. Moore's Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009) and just as emotional. As exciting as the visuals are Nihei has a a lot on his mind in creating the world of Knights Of Sidonia and it is a fascinating excursion and escape into that place. Just as impressive as its world is Nihei's surprising attention to character which translates wonderfully to screen.
Resolve opens with a thrilling effort by the garde to take out an alien gauna. It ends with criticism of pilot Nagate Tanikaze's failure to dismember the gauna resulting in the death of Shizuka Hoshijiro. But is she?
Tanikaze discovers the outcome of that assault in flashback. Further, it's not just told to us or talked to us (as some anime will often expound about events) but it is visualized.
The beautiful thing about Knights Of Sidonia is how as a science fiction it weaves elements of horror and dramatic subtext into its story so effortlessly. It's at once gritty and disturbing with nearly equal parts heart wrenching character moments. But the story never backs down from its own unique identity as an anime and that is in large part due to Nihei's intelligent ambitions as a writer. The animators here, too, deserve a lot of credit for bringing his vision to life whereby Blame! has yet to be fully realized as it should. Instead of a single film that manga must be a series. Knights Of Sidonia is given a chance to alternate between place and character to its pacing success.
Nihei's world involves a labyrinthine structure compounded by interpersonal human relationships, politics, and public opinion all within the mighty seed ship Sidonia. Activists are anti-military and naively believe the guana will leave them alone if they disarm. They would also like to leave Sidonia---why aren't these people shown the airlock already?
Further Nihei's creation, Knights Of Sidonia, is a self-sustaining work and self-contained science fiction work within a larger and even more complex multiverse of manga and literature as noted earlier. Nihei continues to astound this writer as a lover of science fiction himself.
Nihei's ability to weave and interlock these wildly interconnected and beautiful worlds through character and mythology or haunting structures from his own limitless personal imagination is staggering and something to behold. This writer continues to be lured into his unique, original storytelling gifts for science fiction. Nihei indeed shows a personal resolve creatively that is uniquely his own.
Resolve propels the story forward and is dramatically as quick as a propelling garde unit with a mission through space.
Though it's Nihei's passion, it's not just about the sights in Sidonia.
There is much more than meets the eye.
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