MovieChat Forums > Sidonia no Kishi (2014) Discussion > Season 2, Mega Topic (SPOILERS)

Season 2, Mega Topic (SPOILERS)

posted 9 years ago by Legendary_Badass
2 replies | jump to latest

So many questions, so few answers given in the show. I say show because I don't believe one should have to have already ready a comic/manga to make sense out of a presentation on another medium.

Anyhow, and I'll probably be spelling a bunch of names wrong, I just finished my binge viewing of season 2. I'm ok with the show. I don't love it. I do find it derivative of just about every giant-robots-piloted-by-youth series. You have the reserved guy with the raging hormones that every girl he knows secretly wants to fight over. Battle come down to screaming names. Of course you have a villain that giggles during these battles.

I find it exceedingly hard to keep track of a show presented in these binge friendly ways that Netflix is akin to. If you watch all the episode within a week, by the time the next season hits you're going to be approximately 12 months removed from viewing. Plenty of time to forget just about everything. With Knights of Sidonia, I was fortunate to have remembered many of the elements that weren't redrilled. Such as Izana being able to choose her sex or that everyone save Tanakazi can absorb sunlight instead of eating.

Season 2 feels both jarring and smaller. I still don't understand a lick of what happened at the start. Two character open a sealed door. Ant-Man slices off a girl's finger, now everyone is getting possessed by a nematode, but this plot point is basically forgotten by midseason. No resolve, no mention of it ever again.

Tsumugi just confuses me. I was under the impression it was constructed out of the gauna replication of the Hoshijiro that had been floating about. If this is is the case maybe more of Hoshijiro will shine through later. I still don't understand why she/it needs a pilot when it's a being.

Very little transpired this season compared to the previous. Nagate and Izana hung out, a lot. Tsumugi is introduced. They bond and fight together. I don't really feel like I've seen 12 episodes of this season, but I have.

As for unanswered question. I realize this has been addressed in other threads, but that bear should have been explained ASAP. It's just as puzzling as the Watchmen movie. If a story takes place in the real world and one of the character has a blue tiger-like pet, maybe that should be explained in said movie instead of relying on the audience having read the source material. Same goes for bear woman.

I find it super difficult to invest in the enemy. They are gauna-number-this and gauna-number-that. Granted, I haven't read the manga, but it would appear that at some point the show has them pushed aside and it's made obvious to the pilots that the captain is the new evil. That would be a good angle for season 3, but the drama that's kind of setting it up is so murky in season 2 and difficult to make sense out of. There's a vote between the immortals, the captain kills them off, this probably doesn't effect any other characters as they don't even know about those guys.

There's a lot on display that I think would please anime fans, if not for the sake that it's so similar to stuff they already like. It's a decent show and judging by the way this season ended I'm not so sure Netflix is giving it another. I do hope so.

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[–] x1nd0lent 9 years ago

Season 2 feels both jarring and smaller. I still don't understand a lick of what happened at the start. Two character open a sealed door. Ant-Man slices off a girl's finger, now everyone is getting possessed by a nematode, but this plot point is basically forgotten by midseason. No resolve, no mention of it ever again.

It is mentioned, but not directly. It's a great instance of "show, don't tell", which more series should try.

Kunato Norio was at the end of his rope at the end of the first season, having lapsed into suicidal depression after being eclipsed by Tanikaze. Kunato was from a famous family of scientists and engineers, and heir to one of the two biggest weapons/technology development outfits on Sidonia. But he had no interest in it, because he had dreams of glory in combat instead, which never worked out.

The lab he and his friend (sister?) wandered into was explained to be the sealed lab of the infamous scientist Ochiai. Probably the greatest of their scientists ever who was also a twisted freak and nearly destroyed Sidonia with his Gauna experiments. The season 1 flashback to the aftermath 100 years ago was his doing. He is the guy Kobayashi keeps in stasis with the crazy electroshock thing above his head - because his brain is needed to access the Sidonia databases. And Kobyashi keeps an altered, subservient clone of Ochiai as her servant.

When the Kunatos finally broke into Ochiai's secret lab, they were attacked by the blood nematodes, which are special symbiotic organisms which puts the host bodies directly under Ochiai's control. So from this point, Kunato Norio (and his assistant/sister whose name escapes me) basically ARE Ochiai. This is why he finally stops brooding over not being the ace hero pilot and starts developing sick superweapons, which only Ochiai knew how to make. Such as the Gauna hybrids, artificial kabi, and the graviton beam emitter. All of which were seriously illegal, due to being too dangerous. Sidonia is a seed ship, so their mandate is that the safety of the inhabitants is paramount, not combat against Gauna.

It has never been shown how much Kobayashi knows about Ochiai's takeover of Kunato. Does she assume that Kunato is smarter than he let on? That he discovered secret plans? Or does she know that he is a proxy for Ochiai? Maybe she lets him stay at it because she like the results of having his weapons, and thinks it is worth the risk. After all, when he got out of line last time, they defeated him. Having the Ochiai clone kill the rest of the immortal committee was a bold move.

Incidentally, I haven't read the manga yet, but I hope to. It will keep me busy while a season 3 is hopefully made.

[–] x1nd0lent 9 years ago

Tsumugi just confuses me. I was under the impression it was constructed out of the gauna replication of the Hoshijiro that had been floating about. If this is is the case maybe more of Hoshijiro will shine through later. I still don't understand why she/it needs a pilot when it's a being.

Tsumugi is technically the daughter of the placental Hoshijiro, and Kunato/Ochiai. He explained that he impregnated it himself. And in one scene, they actually show placental Hoshijiro floating in a tank, with the hybrid growing out from between her legs, which was rather freaky. So Tsumugi is a lot like Hoshijiro, but not a copy. Also, Kunato explained specifically that Tsumugi >does not< need a pilot. I think the pilots only are there to give her advice in the field, since she is a child who is essentially a few months old. Also, it was how he convinced Kobayashi to allow the project, when others were afraid that a Gauna hybrid could not be controlled.

Very little transpired this season compared to the previous. Nagate and Izana hung out, a lot. Tsumugi is introduced. They bond and fight together. I don't really feel like I've seen 12 episodes of this season, but I have.

A fair amount has happened. It sounds like a case of where the viewer dismisses much of the story as "filler" based upon it not being a story which interested them.

As for unanswered question. I realize this has been addressed in other threads, but that bear should have been explained ASAP. It's just as puzzling as the Watchmen movie. If a story takes place in the real world and one of the character has a blue tiger-like pet, maybe that should be explained in said movie instead of relying on the audience having read the source material. Same goes for bear woman.

I disagree. Most movies and television do this, which I think is a lazy spoon-feeding way to tell stories. I prefer stories which inspire more questions. It is kind of a mental crutch to require certainty in order to feel comfortable. All explaining things does is soothe people who lack patience and/or imagination. But, unfortunately, many people expect this. Real life tends to offer no explanations, so they sound like staged exposition in stories. Maybe there is more information later which helps make sense of things, but there is no reason to assume that the explanation should come when you want it. Sci-fi is especially corny because of this, because when you build an elaborate future or extraterrestrial world, most of what happens there should be obvious to the characters. Like in "Interstellar", where they explain relative time dilation for the audience, when everybody there should have known about it already. And if you didn't know already, then you learn by seeing it happen, instead of being told about it.

I like that Tanikaze is just >a little bit out of touch< with Sidonian culture, by 100 years or so. So he functions as the stereotypical "audience surrogate character" - but only to a certain extent. He is still 1000 years more advanced in his understanding than the viewer, so doesn't need some things such as Gardes, kabizashi, Gauna, and apparently Lala's looking like a bear, explained to him. If he was contemporary with us as viewers would be too "Buck Rogers", require more explanations, and eliminate the whole story of Saito - Tanikaze's "grandfather" having a shared history with the other characters.