Sidonia no Kishi – Episode 2: Starry Sky

“A mere two Gauna slipping past our defenses nearly wiped out Sidonia.” – Izana Shinatose

Impression:

 Following on quickly from episode 2, we return to the battlefield on the asteroid – Nagate is unconcious/dead, Yamano is ‘in the red’, and the rest of the mining team can only watch as a Gauna prepares to pummel their asses… It is then that we receive Yamano’s back story. Personally, I think this couple minutes of character building was necessary as it fleshed out a character whom we really new nothing about other than…well, that she’s a bitch to pretty much every character we actually like (“Don’t get in my way,” she says…). Turns out that she’s just a hard worker who finds the fact that Nagate fast-tracked his way to the front line intolerable. I guess that’s fair. In fact, that’s probably the general feeling among all of the trainees, and if the fact that Kunato was totally blown off by the Elite Four in favor of Nagate shows anything it’s that everything the trainees thought they knew about their hierarchy has been thrown into chaos by Nagate’s appearance… I don’t think Kunato’s going to be forgetting that insult any time soon (especially since it looks like Nagate’s about to ‘steal‘ his girl as well).

 But let’s forget about that: the battle. So yeah, we received what some might construe as a ‘poor’ attempt to fluff up and flesh out a character moments before they die, but I feel as though it allowed for the moment to hold more impact, throwing the viewer back into reality with an ‘oomph‘ as Yamano screams and is torn out of her Guardian, then being eaten (by the tentacle monster!) It’s then that events are set into motion and questions begin to arise. So Nagate ‘revives’, coming from a reported dead state to full action mode merely seconds later, and, honestly, I’m not sure how to take that. If I’m to be lead to believe that Nagate died and was then immediately able to burst back into action – no. However, if I believe that Nagate is maybe one of these ‘immortal’ beings as the leaders of Sidonia seem to be, then it all begins to make sense…that, or he’s a Gauna…or, he’s some new invention created by the Sidonian military… With science fiction, the possibilities are endless! Let’s neuter the conjecture there, eh? Nagate Super Soldier, Saviour of Sidonia, springs back to life and initiates close combat with the Gauna, allowing for everyone to make their escape whilst the Captain (who seems to know a lot about Nagate’s battle capabilities) launches a Heavy-Mass Cannon from Sidonia. And what a Heavy-Mass it did deploy! I’m not quite sure if the asteroid was small or if Sidonia’s just large, but that ‘mass’ decimated the Gauna and the asteroid in turn… I mean – boom!

 Naturally, the mining team escaped, thanks in no part to Kunato, but not before the Gauna, having now consumed Yamato, morphs in the latter female. What the hell is going on? Was it a scare tactic? A, ‘you can’t hit me, I look like your former companion!‘, sort of thing? Or is that just what Gauna do; take the form of whatever living thing they consume? I’m surprised nobody really made that big a thing out of it, but I suppose they on Sidonia do know quite a lot about the Gauna so…maybe…this is something they’ve seen before? Again, that’s just me speculating, and I guess they weren’t really allowed to talk all that much about the mission and I guess Nagate did have that nightmarish…nightmare… So, yeah. The Fourth Gauna of Sidonia was mentioned quite frequently in this episode, giving the series further depth as we delved further into Sidonia’s history, photosynthesis, it was revealed, coming into the pictyre 100 years prior due to food shortages caused by the siege, meaning that Sidonia’s further generations only needed to rely on one meal per week to survive… How…convenient? This reveal was made ever more interesting by the crews treatment of Nagate, who apparently smells because he eats. What a quite frankly odd thing to bully someone about! Distant future problems, eh? Clearly no ones thinking about how they’re doing on Africonia…

 “Stop eating food, loser!” – Greatest insult of all time (also, never thought I’d hear someone go into such specifics when telling someone to die…)

 In more light hearted news…the ‘safety belt test’ scene. This was a scene that, in the manga, came prior to the events of the battle, but it was welcome in episode 2 all the same… Now that’s a pervert punch! As Nagate tests out his safety belt, we see him accidentally wander into the girls chancing/photosynthesizing room, staring dumbly until one of the albino sisters Honoka sisters strikes him down! I have a feeling that ‘fan service’ is going to slither its way into this series and that’s fine with me – it’s infrequent, it’s in the manga, and it’s actually pretty damn funny most of the time (I allude to the catheter scene, of course (which, by the way, was a great way to comically deliver some world building!) So, yeah.

 Other little tid-bits that we got in this episode were the appearance of Yuhata, the green haired girl looking for Nagate and the fact that, either the Captain is doubling as nurse in her spare time, or, the Captain has a clone, or, the Captain is a closet cosplayer!… I’m thinking the former? And, on Yuhata herself, I feel as though she’s not as bad as her researching Nagate might make her out to be. You know how it is, the bad guy always wants the deets (pardon the colloquialism) on the protagonist so that they can stop them (and rightly so!), but I don’t think Yuhata’s like that…unless she’s undercover, which is equally, if not more so, feasible. Ah well, just another mystery to ponder until episode 3 rolls around.

 To conclude, episode 2 was pretty darned excellent, showing us  that we have here a show that has the potential to be great if the plot point are handled carefully and if it doesn’t devolve into your atypical battle anime. The CG, by the way, worked perfectly in the episode early battle scene, the robotic movement of the Guardians having been accentuated by the CG itself whilst still managing to remain fluid, fast, and action packed. ‘Twas lovely indeed. I can see a love triangle forming between Izana and Hoshijiro, which will be interesting considering one of them technically isn’t female (have to wonder where that catheter goes in her…him…it, eh?)…

– Chris.

Preview: