Knights of Sidonia quick anime and manga review

Still easing myself back into watching and blogging about anime regularly. Gundam 00 really did a number on me. From now on I will know better than to marathon a drama-heavy show, and if the fandom says to stay away from a movie I will consider their responses more carefully. Today, let’s talk about Knights of Sidonia. I watched both seasons of the anime and finished up by reading the manga, which was only 78 chapters long and thus a quick affair. The ending was… umm… Well, we’ll talk about that in a bit. First the summary:

Knights of Sidonia (シドニアの騎士) is a mecha manga series by Tsutomu Nihei. After destroying Earth many years ago, the alien race Gauna has been pursuing the remnants of humanity—which, having narrowly escaped, fled across the galaxy in a number of giant seed ships. In the year 3394, Nagate Tanikaze surfaces from his lifelong seclusion deep beneath the seed ship Sidonia in search of food on the upper levels, only to find himself dragged into events unfolding without his knowledge.
When the Gauna begin their assault on Sidonia, it’s up to Tanikaze to defend humanity’s last hope for survival, and defeat their alien foes.

What I liked about Knights of Sidonia
  • It’s short. You can marathon both seasons of the anime.
  • The enemies are truly threatening. Although Tanikaze starts out overpowered, he can’t keep up with the Gauna’s speed of adaptation so he’s almost always in danger. This isn’t one of those “Boring Invincible Hero” shows.
  • That said, Tanikaze is a pretty boring typical shonen hero who tries to save everyone all the time. But he’s a nice, earnest guy and easy to root for, which is more than I can say for many protagonists.
  • There’s plenty of action in every episode. Sometimes it gets a bit much.
  • The ending is happier than I would have expected, given the overwhelming odds they face.
  • It seems to be a love-hate kind of thing, but I rather like the CG art style. It’s different from the other stuff I’ve been watching.
  • She takes some getting used to, but Tsumugi-chan is kind of cute. Best girl ftw!
What I didn’t like about Knights of Sidonia
  • Some of the gauna are kind of gross.
  • Some of the scenes are kind of gross, like the living catheter (ick) and the romantic piss-drinking (double ick).
  • A little too much time is wasted on romantic hijinks halfway through the show/manga. It brings everything to a screeching halt to have girls fighting over the hero when the world is collapsing around them.
  • I don’t approve of certain relationships in the ending (to explain would be to spoil, but it is an abomination).
  • Some of the characters look a little too similar, which makes it hard to tell people apart at first.
  • Certain characters get away with murder, literally, and are quickly and easily forgiven. Like it’s not even an issue.
To watch or not to watch?

It’s probably faster to read the Knights of Sidonia manga, since it’s only 78 chapters. But the anime isn’t bad at all, plenty of action and tense moments and the body count of a small civil war. There are many unanswered questions at the end concerning the origins and intentions of the gauna and the history of the world, so this probably isn’t for anyone who likes complete closure. For anybody else, y

Watched Gundam 00 Season 2 + the movie

Yes, I said I would watch it and I did… and it almost killed this blog. Was it bad? No, honestly I enjoyed most of  Gundam 00 Season 2 more than the first season. The ending was highly implausible and a little overly optimistic given the nature of human beings, but it was… serviceable. Acceptable, even. The movie, I shouldn’t have watched. It was exhausting, pointless, aliens? in my Gundam? It’s more likely than you think! And by the end I was all Gundammed out. Not just Gundammed out but anime-d out, it took me two weeks to touch any episode of any other show.

Final thoughts: I marathoned both seasons so fast that they’re a blur now. I want to forget I ever watched any of this stuff. It was such a cheerless, joyless, tedious show. At least I did learn that I prefer the Gundam Seed/Wing-type BOOM POW KAPOW overpowered Gundams to these useless weaklings with their ridiculous ideas and incompetent leadership. So from an anime watcher’s point of view it’s good to know what you like and what you don’t like.

Apart from that, I’ve got nothing left to say about Gundam 00. It’s good to get it off my backlog. It doesn’t mean I won’t watch any more Gundam. And it got me pretty involved when I was watching. But… now that it’s all over… what did I watch it for? It was so crappy, so unsatisfying, such a waste of time… *sigh* I want those 2000 minutes of my life back… <— That’s how I felt when I finished the whole show + the movie.

Oh. I supposed I’d better comment on my wishlist from last time:

The overall story needs to make sense – It did, more or less. I won’t spoil. I don’t care enough to spoil

Better planning, strategy and reconnaissance from all parties but especially the Gundams – NOPE. There were flashes of brilliance here and there, but everything always fizzled to naught. Nobody ever had a backup plan in case the first one didn’t work, it was just ridiculous. And I lost count of the number of battles that turned into skirmishes – you hit me, I hit you, we kill a few grunt pilots, everyone retreat!

More Tieria back story – This we got. Pretty straightforward stuff, and Tieria becomes much less of a jerk and much more of a useful, sympathetic character as the show progresses. This part I enjoyed.

Less Saji and Louise – Ha. No.

Less Setsuna, less Mari-whatshername – Ha. Of course not, Setsuna is the main character. But there was less focus on Marina and she didn’t turn into the second coming of Lacus Clyne, so we should be grateful for that much.

Enough talking about Gundam 00. It wasn’t bad but it made me feel bad. It’s that kind of show. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to hunt for something light and fluffy and actually interesting to clean the bad taste from my mouth.

Gundam 00 first season impressions

Gundam 00 is the first Gundam series I’ve watched seriously since Gundam Seed Destiny ended. I loved the first two-thirds of of Seed Destiny, btw. How did it fall apart so horribly? But that’s a story for another day.

After Destiny ended, I watched the movies of the original Gundam 0079. Interesting stuff, especially for the similarities and differences between it and Seed. And watching Amuro getting Bright-slapped is probably the most satisfying thing in all anime. So that was fun, but not a full series. I followed it up with Zeta Gundam, but I’d downloaded only 5 episodes. Once I ran out I couldn’t decide whether to continue it or not, so I put it on hold… about 7 years ago. I’ll make it my next mecha project after 00. It had potential and I liked Camille.

After Zeta I tried Turn A. Watched at least 10 episodes but it was slow. Really slow. Too much drama, too many cross-dressing shenanigans, nothing I wanted to watch was happening. I skipped to the last episode but obviously it didn’t make much sense. That was it for me and Turn A. Most recently I watched an episode of Victory Gundam… or was it Gundam X? The one with the little boy. Didn’t catch me but I did mean to try a little more.

What’s the point of this long lead in? Nothing! I just like to write. And it does show that I’m not a Gundam hater, no matter how critical I am of it in this and subsequent posts. I watched Gundam 00 because I wanted to enjoy it, and for the most part I did. It had a lot of flaws (dumb protagonists being number one) but I’m only halfway through. That’s why I’ll save judgment until I finish the whole show. A few impressions plus wishlist for season two.

Impressions of Gundam 00 season one
  • gundam 00 animefangirlThe slow build up was a bit frustrating, but the upside is that it helps to keep all the parties and characters distinct in my mind. You’re never left guessing who is who or who is working for who, it’s very easy to follow.
  • The story, such as it is, is easy to understand. More questions have been raised than have been answered so far, but the timeline is clear, the general aims and objectives of the different parties are clear as well. It’s very straightforward.
  • The Gundams aren’t quite as cool as I’d been hoping for. They look decent enough but outside of a few early scenes they don’t act very cool. They get beaten up a lot, which any wrestling fan can tell you reduces your cool factor by 0.1% for every blow. Their weapons are either not interesting (yawn beam saber) or are rarely used even when they should be (Dynames’s long-distance rifle, Kyrios’s pincers).
  • The Gundams need more strategy. The enemies seem to do a lot of planning and thinking about how to take the Gundams down. The Gundams just rely on luck and their superior firepower and armor. That makes some of the battles hair-rippingly frustrating (episode 15!!).
  • setsuna is such a weaklingI can’t decide whether I like the relative weakness of the Gundams or not. On one hand it’s a nice change from the KIRA STOMPS nature of Seed/Destiny and the AIEEEE IT’S A GUNDAAAM nature of Wing. On the other hand, I watch Gundams to see stuff getting blown up, pink explosions everywhere, so 00 is a little dull so far. Ask me again at the end of the show.
  • It’s great how the enemy combat leaders are seasoned and competent and give the Gundams (a.k.a. Gundumbs) a run for their money. TBH I often found myself rooting for them, especially for Sergei of the Human Reform League. Smart, compassionate, skilled… why couldn’t he be the main character?
  • Seeing the tables turned on the Gundams in the last few episodes of the season was GLORIOUS. Smarts + firepower trump simple firepower every time. QED.
  • The last episodes of the season were a huge disappointment. Enemies coming out of nowhere and attacking with very little motivation, unimpressive final boss, ugly mecha, wasted buildups etc etc. But to explain would involve spoiling so I will refrain.
Wishlist for season two
  • The overall story needs to make sense. They’re doing well keeping things logical so far and I’d like them to keep doing so. That’s my main wish.
  • Second biggest wish: better planning, strategy and reconnaissance from all parties but especially the Gundams. They approach battle like they’re in Gundam Wing but they have all the might of an light novel protagonist in front of a truck. Their piloting skills are only so-so so they need to compensate with brains. That goes double for you, Ms. “tactical forecaster” Sumeragi.
  • More Tieria back story. Horrible fashion sense aside, he had the most professional attitude out of all the Gundam pilots. Everyone else got their flashback, now it’s Tieria’s turn.
  • Less Saji and Louise. Please.
  • Less Setsuna, less Mari-whatshername. A forlorn wish, I know.
  • Cooler mecha. I can forgive it in Knight’s & Magic and Aldnoah Zero, but Gundam is the mech show. If the lead mecha don’t make me go “I want all of them!” something is wrong.

That’s it. A very short wishlist because there wasn’t that much wrong with the show apart from the lack of strategy in the battles. Trying to shoot your way out of everything against enemies that are more experienced and better prepared than you doesn’t work very long, which the show illustrates well. And now that they’ve illustrated it, I’d like them to do something about it. Let’s see if they do.

Reread Dune – Quick book impressions

It’s been… I want to say 20 years but possibly more since I last read Dune by Frank Herbert, a classical work of science fiction. I still remembered a lot of the main points of the story but the finer details had long since been lost to history. After watching several anime series with overpowered main characters (Sword Art Online, Log Horizon, etc) I decided to return to a much earlier example just for kicks. Go on, Paul Muad’Dib Atreides, show those amateurs how a real Gary Stu does it.

BlurbSet on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who would become the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib. He would avenge the traitorous plot against his noble family—and would bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.

A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what it undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.

It IS indeed a stunning blend of adventure, mysticism, environmentalism and politics. For once the blurb did not lie. I stayed up to like 3am reading it and continued the next day until I finished. There are plenty of hair-raising will-they-make-it adventure sections, way too much BS psychological mysticism, enough environmentalism to make you develop an interest in desertification and its reverse and, of course, politics up the wazoo. The politics was the most interesting part IMO, there should have been way more of it.

So is Paul really a Gary Stu? You betcha! He’s sooo smart and sooo strong, and sooo psychic, he can do at age 15 what thousands of predecessors have failed to do, he learns everything so quickly, and on and on and on. There are suggestions here and there of the probability that he might fail at something, but of course it never comes to pass and he always sails through just fine and comes through even stronger.

That’s okay with me in the earlier parts of the book. It’s justifiable to have a super-strong, super-perfect character if the alternative is certain death. Of course he’s strong, if he weren’t strong he’d be dead. It’s the later parts of the story where he’s no longer in any danger but continues to get even stronger and even more perfect to the point where almost nobody in the whole universe can hold a candle to him physically, psychically or mentally that made me think, oh brother! Frank Herbert really laid it on thick.

To his credit, the negative side effects of his perfection do trouble Paul quite a bit. He gets fear, worship, reverence, fanatical devotion and even love in spades, but all he really wants are friends. He’s also worried by persistent visions of a universal jihad caused by his followers – an eventuality he seems to stop fighting after a while because, *shrug*. Dunno why, he just does.

It also bothers him how little he feels even when tragic things happen. Or so he says, anyway. Frank Herbert was probably trying to soften the super-perfect, super-competent image on Paul, but it backfires a bit, IMO. It just makes it much harder to get under his skin or relate to his feelings as he gets more and more prefect. Which is kind of the whole point of his dilemma so it works and yet doesn’t work at the same time. Very… complicated.

I also enjoyed the fact that Dune doesn’t start out focusing exclusively on Paul Atreides. Sure it’s his story, but there’s plenty of time spent developing characters like his doomed father, his mother, retainers like Thufir Hawat and Gurney, and even side characters like the geologist Liet. When you watch anime or play games about a prince taking back his kingdom, the kingdom is usually lost pretty quickly. Sometimes it’s lost even before the story starts. Dune, on the other hand, takes the time to sketch out the previous status quo and show how and why things went wrong. It’s very enjoyable stuff and I’m a little sorry other series haven’t imitated that approach since.

So, as I’ve bseen saying all along I had fun rereading Dune. It’s not a perfect book, though. When I was younger I found the swashbuckling adventures in the desert to be the main point of interest. This time I enjoyed the social and political intrigue and found the geological and ecological details to be far more interesting than the “Paul does something awesome yet again” parts. If I had to find fault with anything it’s that there wasn’t half enough attention given to those sections as there should have been.

For example Herbert portrayed Baron Harkonnen as a sneaky, wily, highly competent foe early on, but then the character vanishes for a while and the next time we see him he’s just a fat buffoon. There are attempts to build Feyd Rautha up as Paul’s ultimate rival but not only is he out of focus for most of the book but when we do see him he’s just a spoiled brat. Same goes for the emperor, who is never given a chance to show us what, if anything, qualifies him to rule the known universe. The supposedly powerful Guild is yet another example. It’s not that they aren’t all powerful in their own way, just that Paul is portrayed as so much stronger and smarter and more determined that they might as well not bother. I would have enjoyed a bigger focus on all of them, but it wouldn’t affect the ending in any way so I guess it’s all the same in the end.

Long story short, Dune is a great read/re-read for fans of overpowered main characters. There’s a lot of new terminology thrown around but you can usually figure it out from the context without referring to the glossary. And the story is just plain interesting and easy enough to follow without being simplistic. Good books are just good, you know, Gary Stu or no Gary Stu. I’ve never read any of the sequels because I hear it’s all downhill from Dune Messiah, but I’ll give it a chance anyway. Looking forward to it!

One Punch Man anime review

I’d heard a lot about One Punch Man before watching the show. I figured it was just the usual internet hype about any slightly good show and basically ignored it for a while, but eventually the title sounded intriguing enough that I eventually tried an episode. And then another episode. And then another. I was kinda busy so it took me several sessions to get through the first 6 or so episodes, then I marathoned the last few in a night. Verdict: One Punch Man is actually really good!

Story summaryOn an Earth-like supercontinent planet, strange monsters have been mysteriously appearing and causing disasters resulting in the world’s superheroes rising to combat them. Saitama, the protagonist of the series, is the strongest hero alive who easily defeats the monsters or other villains with a single punch. However, due to his immeasurable strength, Saitama has become bored with his power and is constantly trying to find stronger opponents who can present a challenge to him.

one-punch-man-saitamaThe show is exactly what it says on the tin: superhero beats villains and monsters alike with a single punch. You might expect a show like that to get boring pretty quickly, seeing as you know the end of each monster even before it shows up, but they managed to keep it fresh at least for 12 episodes. Much of that “freshness” comes from sub-protagonist Genos and other superheroes who act as cannon fodder to show how strong the villain-of-the-week is before Saitama smashes it to show how much stronger he is. If you’ve watched Dragonball Z you know the whole mechanic.

Part of the fun of the show comes from the variety of monsters and superheroes. What kind of bad guy is going to show up this week and what ridiculous powers is s/he going to have? A Godzilla clone, a skyscraper-tall bodybuilder, a giant beetle, a gang of lazy slackers in power suits, and on and on. Of course their doom is assured, but it’s fun watching them have their little day in the limelight before they’re polished off. As a bonus they often get to voiceover the next episode’s trailer for some final lolz.

As an action show, One Punch Man doesn’t pull out any big surprises and doesn’t contain much tension due to the aforementioned foregone conclusion. What little excitement comes is from watching the supporting cast attempt and (usually) fail to deal with the problem. Then Saitama comes in and ends things with a single punch. The viewers who will get the most out of this show are those who enjoy destruction on an absolutely massive scale – cars overturned, buildings sliced in two, half the city blown up every episode and, of course, the giant blood splatters and ludicrous gibs that come with the territory when you exterminate a giant monster with a single punch. There is some good choreography on some of the fights, but really it’s usually people jumping around and somersaulting and getting smacked to the curb repeatedly, not much more than that.

Rather it is as a comedy and a parody of superhero shows that One Punch Man comes into its own. After all, genre savvy viewers know that no matter how many blows the hero takes, he’s always going to vanquish evil in the end. So why not cut to the chase once all the messing around with minor lackeys is done? As a result, the viewer ends up watching the ridiculous hijinks of the villains with a kind of spiteful glee. Oh boy, you’re really gonna get it now, just wait till Saitama gets here!

one-punch-man-mangaAs a result I’m a little on the fence about the show’s occasional attempts to humanize Saitama and the rest of the cast instead of just letting them be delightful caricatures. Things like the weaker heroes trying to stand up to the bad guy didn’t really add anything because of the foregone conclusion. Though I was a little touched by the unlikely camaraderie between Mumen Rider and Saitama, it was offset by Saitama’s unusual… niceness, shall we say, when it came to taking the blame and making the other heroes look good. Like, was it established already that he’s the kind of guy to care about such things? His character is a little hard to pin down, and the excess focus on Genos’ point of view of things doesn’t really help.

But anyway, I’m not here to analyze One Punch Man, just to wax on and on about how much and I enjoyed it and how you should totally watch it or read the manga. I think the anime is more fun, but the manga covers way more ground and the show will only leave you wanting more (Season 2 can’t come quickly enough) so go for both if you can. It’s a great show, memorable characters, funny premise, lots of actions, good ending, the works.