An alien race called Gauna has destroyed Earth leaving humanity struggling to survive, aboard the spaceship Sidonia. Even though it’s been a century since the last encounter with the Gauna, military service is mandatory. For Nagate Tanikaze, whose grandfather secretly hid him in the forgotten bowels of Sidonia, it’s a strange new world as he’s forced to come to the surface. Yet his recruitment comes just in time, for the Gauna have suddenly reappeared.
Source: Sentai Filmworks
Novelty
The world-building is just dynamite here. Knights falls completely in the real robot (as opposed to super-robot genre), but it doesn’t feel stuck within any particular paradigm. It is wild how inventive some aspects of the show are — one specific example is how the colony ship’s thrusters work. Every time the colony is forced to move to avoid peril, loose items throughout the entire colony start tumbling, causing colonist injuries and deaths. It’s a detail you don’t see often.
Plot
There is a lot going on in twelve short episodes and, thankfully, there’s another season and a movie to conclude the story. The enemy, the Gauna, are still a nebulous mystery at this point. There is a distinct possibility that they’re just a virulent space organism, but it’s looking likely that they’re similar to Evangelion’s angels: organisms who are evolving to communicate with humanity. On top of that, there’s also the Eva-like element where the Sidonia leadership itself may reveal itself to be the real villain.
Design
I know that there’s a lot of controversy about the CG-styled animation. It bears a similar vibe to Star Wars Resistance, which I hated. The muted colors in Knights makes the style quite a bit more passable.
Characters
You will likely cling to a couple characters here. Shinatose and Hoshijiro are the MVPs here, though the main character (Tanizake) is not terrible. A note that it’s hard to distinguish the team in the earliest episodes, as they’re not distinguished by pink hair or weird weapons. Often you’ll have to run to wiki to remind yourself who is who. The positive effect of this, though, is that it does make it easier to recommend this series to non-anime fans. It takes itself much more seriously and straightforward than the standard anime fare.
There were points where this season could have gone off the rails, but it stuck the landing. Looking forward to more.
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