Knights of Sidonia begins

Thanks for effective (if deceptive) advocacy by Mauser, I picked Sidonia no Kishi for a watch on Netflix (dubbed, of course). I have to admit, grudgingly, that it's not half bad. Grudgingly, because the qustion of Sidonia is the question of 3D: it's 100% 3D, like the Hollywood flicks. Sadly, its 3D is not at level of Shrek. If I had to level it, I'd place it below Ice Age, although there is a considerable overlap in quality.

When Nova blogged the question, he focused his critique on the kinematics of the 3D models and the bear-mother:

Now, the elephant in the room is the full execution in 3DCG. There’s no sugar-coating the fact that all the people on the show looked uncanny and robotic, and there were some scenes where I really had to look away and not face the machine-generated horror unfold on screen. However, as it was the case with Arpeggio it’s relatively easy to get accustomed to the robo-people to a point that only the Bear caused any serious cringes. This is not how you render a furry thing.

I find that the characters weren't strut-walking as much as those in Appleseed. After a few early episodes to settle the techniques, the motion is not "uncanny and robotic". Still, characters do look decidedly low-rent... right until the moment of Izanna's bath that Mauser used for effect. The jump in quality obviously begs the question just why they did it. Yes, I realize that the answer is "Izanna's boobies", but why did they think it was acceptable to demonstrate that they possessed all the necessary technology, just weren't willing to do right for the viewers until the high-fidelity moment?

In addition to the 3D, the story is fairly dark. People get killed left and right (or worse). It also took me an effort to get used to all the goings-on, and I raged for a couple of episodes until the resignation took over. For example, one ani-nouto was "The shithole cockhead dude is not well realized (Ayaka was better in Stellvia)". Oh well, at least CKS promised a "triumphant climax".

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