Sidonia no Kishi: Ai Tsumugu Hoshi

This is a direct continuation of season 2 and concludes the story. Though it takes place 10 years in the future, the time skip only serves to display some new minor characters. The main characters don't appear to have aged or have gained much wisdom. Everything looks slightly better with the movie budget, and improvements in 3D animation technology from 2014 to 2021. The choppy framerate, which was the largest criticism of the TV show, still appears at times, though this seems like a stylistic choice as there were some scenes that were animated smoothly.

Sidonia S1 was a bombastic marvel, and led to many people ... declaring it as Attack on Titan in space. It had the perfect balance of character-driven story arcs and action, and it seemed like a fresh take on the space opera, giving backroom politics a lesser role in favor of the frontline drama. Our hero, Nagate Tanikaze, had to make difficult decisions again and again. But S2 was a strange departure. The immediacy and horror of the Gauna threat took a backseat to rom-com antics with the introduction of Tsumugi. I felt S2 was a much weaker season than S1 and it left many questions unanswered. This movie needed a great payoff and return to the grim seriousness that made S1 so great.

The movie returned to its serious form after a short introduction that breaks the ice a little. But it's a jarring switch, as the rom-com elements were eliminated entirely, and there was no closure to the harem that Nagate accumulated in S2. Instead, Nagate swiftly and suddenly made his choice without too much on-screen brooding. This allowed more time for the space battles, which looked and sounded better than ever due to the movie budget.

My biggest criticism of the movie was that it tried to do too much and juggle too many characters at once. The screentime of the new minor characters took away from what could've been more screentime and development of the characters we were already familiar with in S1 and S2. Nagate himself felt like a minor character, as he wasn't the main focus for much of the movie. Giving a large cast enough time for each of them to shine is an issue that many anime adaptions must deal with. Notably, the two shows in which Sidonia evokes memories for me, Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Attack on Titan, had much more time to develop things. Sidonia had only 24 episodes and this movie. Though the movie clocked in at almost two hours, it really could've used some more time to explore the mystery of the Gauna.

The antagonist had great potential, but he wasn't given proper development. Instead, he ended up acting comical, delivering hammy dialogue instead of being nuanced and making an attempt to convince viewers that his grand plan had any merit. This is a shame, as S1 had the compelling drama and fallout from the fate of Shizuka Hoshijiro. S2 and this movie's writing were significantly weaker. The climax sets up the final battle as the Gauna's last major stand, but with a hammy villain behind it all, I didn't get the same thrills as the climax of S1.

The ending is satisfactory, and it is certainly the slickest space opera production in years. But while everything wrapped up nicely, I can't help but feel that we were cheated out of something completely epic. Nagate needed to be more than just a nice guy with amazing Garde combat skills, and the Gauna needed to be more than just an evil alien force. It's clear that underneath all of the technobabble, the Sidonia movie didn't intend to present a deep, substantial story that will resonate with viewers long after everything's over. But hey, if you want shiny space battles with some of the best sound production you'll ever hear in anime, this movie delivers that in spades.

tl;dr: A film with great space combat mech action but that’s terrible at everything else.

This film is the conclusion to Knights of Sidionia. It’s is a continuation of season two, though there’s a pretty major gap between it and season 2. There was a gap in terms of the anime’s release, wherein the second season was in 2015 while this film was released in 2021, but there’s also a gap within the anime itself, wherein this film chronologically starts ten years after the end of season 2. Despite that, this is pretty much a direct continuation to season 2 that doesn’t do anything dramatically different. ... Hence, it largely still suffers from all the issues of season 2, and even exacerbates them at times.

The greatest strength of this series has been the action, and this season is not an exception. When the action is really going it’s excellent. The horror vibes are completely gone at this point, but the fast paced high stakes intensity is still a great spectacle that’s really easy to get into and enjoy. It takes a bit of time to get into the meaty parts as things don’t really get going until the latter half of the film. And the spectacle was a bit extreme at times, with certain scenes being so busy it was somewhat hard to tell what was going on. Still, all in all I was satisfied with the action.

The plot I was less satisfied with. It’s essentially just a continuation of the plot threads that season 2 started. I found them somewhat generic, and this film doesn’t really do anything to change that. Things proceed in a pretty predictable manner without really any twists or surprises. There’s also essentially no major world building here either. The Guana for example are left as mysterious as they were at the beginning of the series. In broad strokes I would still say the ending to the plot was fine though.

But in terms of characters, things were just awful. The ten year time skip had pretty much no effect on the plot, and seemed to be entirely for the sake of how it was going to handle characters. Or rather for the sake of skipping writing characters and just showing the final result. Primarily in relation to Nagate’s relationships, wherein it the film goes all in on Nagate x Tsumugi and completely ignores the other two that were into him. The previous season didn’t really write them as all that close, and the the writing regarding this season is far from good. Thus everything about the pairing feels incredibly forced, though if you ignore that I suppose it ends well enough. The ending it gives to the other heroines is even more forced to the point of being genuinely absurd. In terms of the rest of the cast, Kunato gets his moment to shine, which did not feel deserved at all. It also did things with various other characters like Kobayashi, Lala, and Ochiai, but it felt pretty half assed and no one was developed well enough for it to matter.

The art and animation were noticeably improved, as one should expect from the advancement in technology that occurred over six years as well as the increase in budget due to being a film. The mech action was somewhat improved but it was already solid so it comes out as great. The parts that were centered around humans in previous seasons were pretty bad, but in this film they’re improved quite a bit to the point of being pretty decent. The soundtrack is pretty solid too, though I would still say the soundtrack of the previous seasons was better. The ED is just white text on black as usual for films, and the song was decent.