Sidonia no Kishi – 01

“You escapist fools.”

This is how Kunato, a Sephiroth-looking stick-in-the-mud, voices his disgust to a meager but passionate group of protesting pacifists, but it could also describe me. I’ll fully admit it: I’m a bit of an escapist fool. Sometimes I blithely ignore reality entirely preferring to dive into new worlds and new systems. Due to its very-similar but better-executed cel-shaded animation style (still clinical and stiff, but also warmer and grittier), I’m reminded of a world in which humans battled sentient Machiavellian sexually-frustrated naval vessels.

After just one visually impressive episode of Sidonia, this looks like a show I can really sink my escapist fool-teeth into. Like the third Eva film, it starts promising, in the midst of heated action: a young lad named Tanikaze Nagate pilots a mecha through space and defeats one of the alien monsters called Gauma. But then his score is tallied—a perfect 99999—and he emerges from a pod; it was only a simulation. It’s a clever way to serve up a brief taste of the action that’s sure to come.

After a stirring OP, accompanied by an equally stirring national(istic) anthem, the show zooms out on Tanikaze’s small, dingy, isolated world deep within the bowels of a much larger world, Sidonia, a huge, hive-like mass of civilization with a highly militarized population. Tanikaze goes through quite a bit of physical punishment until he ends up spat out into the society he’d long avoided, where his latent skills as a simulation ace will be almost immediately put to the test.

Along the way Tanikaze meets the friendly, third-gendered Shinatose Izana (Toyosaki Aki) and the friendly, definitely-a-girl Hoshijiro Shizuka, quickly establishing a potential love triangle. (There are also a great deal of Kitamura Eri clones!) Tanikaze totally bombs in a simulator for the new and unfamiliar Type 18 frame (I can relate, having to adjust from a Gen-6 to Gen-8 Civic!), but when he’s called to sortie on his first day—he’s given a legendary Type 17 frame that Sephiroth Kunato was itching for, thus instantly establishing a rivalry.

The frames are very cool looking; everything is very cool looking, come to think of it. Like Blue Steel, if this kind of animation turns you off, it turns you off, but I loved the vivid hyper-reality of it all. The episode also lies in wait with a truly holy-crap-this-is-awesome moment when the frames launch into space and we finally get a good look at Sidonia: an insane-looking hexagonal beam thingy stuck through an asteroid, hurtling through space. And of course, what should be a routine mining mission turns into the first real Gauma attack in a century, with Tanikaze right in the thick of it.

If you visit RABUJOI frequently you’ll notice I haven’t gotten around to Captain Earth’s second episode. There’s a reason for that, while it was a great-looking, competent anime in the best Bones tradition, we found ourselves weary of delving into something we’ve seen so often in the past; something beautifully executed but lacking in the originality department. After this first episode, Sidonia was even better-looking, but also bolder and more inventive, at least to this escapist fool’s eyes.

 

Black Bullet – 03

Just as I’d hoped, Satomi and Enju reunite quickly, when she goes to school again, trying in vain to fit back in. But the truth is, none of the kids at that school are her friends anymore; they’re too blinded by hatred of anything to do with the Gastrea. She’d refuse to give in, but it’s no use, and and Satomi knows it, which is why he suggests they change schools; start over where the kids don’t know what she is, because frankly, it shouldn’t matter.

Still when Satomi and Enju are helicoptered to the location of the Gastrea with the case, Enju exhibits superhuman powers that are always going to turn off or frighten “normal” humans. Little girls aren’t supposed to be able to leap out of helicopters and kick giant spiders into a fine paste. Indeed, the bitterness of having her normal school life sabotaged seems to fuel her attacks. It looks like Mission Accomplished…until Kagetane and Kohina show up.

Satomi is roughed up badly, run through by katanas, and launched off a cliff into a river to die. Had he been a normal human like I thought, he would have died. But we learn the creepy sensei who eats terrifying-looking food did…something to Satomi years ago, and as a result, he’s…something more than human, much like Enju, which explains why they get along so well. They’re bound not just by the promoter-initiator contract, but by the fact they learned to become human together. They’re family.

The same can’t be said of some other pairs; notably Ikuma Shougan and Senju Kayo, with the former treating the latter as nothing but a tool, and Kayo following orders, even those to murder other Civil Officers so Shougan can get to Kagetane first. When Satomi and Enju find her wounded in the woods, she admits to feeling like there’s “something wrong with her” if she’s okay with such killing, and that she envys Satomi and Enju’s bond.

Of course, with that cushy bond comes great responsibility: it’s entirely possible they didn’t meet by accident, and despite not ranking high on the official scale, it’s hinted that the two of them are the only ones who can stop Kagetane from summoning a city-destroying Stage Five Gastrea. despite how briefly they lasted in their last battle. Also adding texture to the proceedings is the mention of zealots who consider the Gastrea God’s punishment for the sins of mankind; and the cursed children as messengers between the two; Angels, in other words.