Knights of Sidonia – 06-07

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Easy come, easy go just about describes these latest episodes of Knights of Sidonia.

Sudden Loss

Shizuka’s fate.

So obviously the big shocker here is that Shizuka is dead. I’m honestly surprised because I always thought she had some pretty thick plot armor thanks to being one of the most important characters as well as Nagate’s primary love interest. Part of me still wants to believe that perhaps there’s something amiss here and she’s actually OK. But it’s pretty hard to argue with half a dozen or so tentacles violently eviscerating her body, so I guess Shizuka really is gone. In retrospect, her being the main character’s love interest is a pretty big death flag, especially considering the relatively dark tone of the show. Surely her demise will push Nagate to fight even harder against the Gauna, perhaps even turning him into a cold, emotionless weapon, which would be right up the top brass’s alley. Fortunately though, it looks like Sidonia is dodging this development by simply passing him through a depressed and withdrawn phase, from which it appears he has now recovered.

And they were so cute too… =(

I would also like to add that there could potentially be some intentional link between the bathyspheres and death. With few notable exceptions, everyone who has ridden the bathyspheres has died soon after. These exceptions include only Nagate and Izana to my knowledge, and their continued survival is exceptional so they might as well be disregarded as inevitable anomalies; Nagate is the main character and thus has the ultimate plot armor, while Izana hasn’t even been given the chance to sortie so gravity disasters aside (s)he isn’t likely to kick the bucket. That said, this kind of speculative observation should always be taken with a grain of salt because there is no real evidence that this was the author’s intention and not some random coincidence.

What An A-hole

New pilots.

Moving on, I think it best to discuss Norio for a bit since he is to an extent indirectly responsible for Shizuka’s demise. I wasn’t holding my breath about his supposedly turning over a new leaf, so I wasn’t too surprised when he soon found the chance to screw over Nagate. But did he really have to do it in such a risky way? Understandably, the quickest way for him to humiliate Nagate is to have him commit some grave error on the battlefield. And clearly, it worked pretty well. But at the end of the day, the little game that Norio played actually cost many others their lives and could have potentially put all of Sidonia in harm’s way. I can’t believe he could let his egotistical desire to see Nagate removed from stardom compromise the mission like that. It’s almost selfish beyond belief.

Yuhata’s promotion.

I’m also surprised that no one has discovered the foul play yet and called him out on it. Not that this would bring back any of the dead pilots, but it would just be satisfying for us viewers to see him brought to justice. I can’t imagine that the private line is really that private given the imposition of martial law. So surely the right personnel would have access to records of Norio’s borderline treacherous actions. Heck, I was even sure that Yuhata would uncover the plot and expose the guy for the unsavory character that he is. She’s been shown to be capable of illicitly obtaining and analyzing military records. And now that she is officially an executive officer, there wouldn’t be anything questionable about her reviewing such records and holding Norio responsible for the lives lost. But anyway, I guess (and hope) that the show is just saving Norio’s justice for another episode. If TV tropes has taught me anything, it’s that one can never, ever escape karma.

Communication?

Planet killer.

Before wrapping up, let me revisit the topic of the Gauna and the war in general. Previously, I had hypothesized that perhaps the Gauna are chasing Sidonia because it houses the Kabizashi that pose a threat to them. Seems I wasn’t the only one who thought so, as the anti-war protesters are also saying the same thing. And they also proposed the same “solution” of throwing away said weapons to throw the Gauna off their tail. This is nice and all, but as I concluded in the end, it ultimately leaves Sidonia vulnerable to any attack and thus isn’t a feasible course of action. Captain Kobayashi goes even further by saying that mankind cannot rebuild its homeland until the Gauna are eradicated. Now, assuming she is not misinforming us or has been misinformed herself (unlikely since she would seem to be one of the best informed characters in the show), it would suggest that the Gauna are in fact pursuing humanity for other reasons.

I think the resemblance goes way beyond just being grandfather and grandson.

So in the end, it all comes back to what the Gauna are after. If they’re not just reacting to threats, why are they still chasing mankind? Surely they’re not “waging war” because “negotiations” broke down during the first encounter. That seems a rather shallow and dissatisfying answer. So then perhaps they’re still attempting communication of some sort? I believe there was a legitimate attempt at communication during the first encounter since that Gauna purposefully took on a humanoid form. And so far they’ve repeatedly mimicked humans and human creations in pursuing mankind. Forgetting the fact that they bring death and destruction with them, the straightforward conclusion to reach is that they are trying to “talk” to us. So it might just be some sort of cliched development, like them not having the same concept of life and death that we have. Or, they could just be titans trying to eat us all.

It took Knights of Sidonia eight episodes, but finally we get to see some real mecha-on-mecha action. The sparring contest a few episodes back doesn’t count because, well, it was just sparring. I’m curious to see just how effective the “zombified” Gardes will be since they are on a whole different level than anything that the Gauna have attempted to mimic before. Considering the mecha has a human user-interface, one has to wonder if the Gauna will just go about manipulating the mecha directly or if it will construct some humanoid core to “pilot” the undead mecha. The latter could give rise to plenty of drama if the humanoid cores just so happen to mimic the dead who used to pilot the respective mechas.

What do the Gauna have in store next week?

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