Sidonia no Kishi: Ai Tsumugu Hoshi

After the Earth was destroyed by mysterious alien lifeforms known as the Gauna, surviving remnants of the human race escaped to space in the enormous generation ship Sidonia. Having drifted through space for millennia, the Sidonia found itself once more under attack from Gauna for the first time in a century.

Once again facing the threat of extinction, a temporary victory against the Gauna was eked out thanks to the human-Gauna hybrid Tsumugi Shiraui and ace Guardian mech pilot Nagate Tanikaze.

10 years later... The people of Sidonia enjoy a brief respite. Peaceful days pass, during which Tsumugi begins to realize her feelings for Nagate, who is now celebrated as a hero of Sidonia. However, as Captain Kobayashi has always known, as long as the Gauna remain, peace cannot last.

The decision is made: a final battle, upon which rests the fate of humanity's last survivors. As the end approaches, will the crew be able to protect those they love?

(Source: Polygon Pictures)

Shinatose, Izana Main

Toyosaki, Aki Japanese

Shiraui, Tsumugi Main

Suzaki, Aya Japanese

Tanikaze, Nagate Main

Oosaka, Ryouta Japanese

Hoshijiro, Shizuka Supporting

Suzaki, Aya Japanese

Kobayashi Supporting

Ohara, Sayaka Japanese

Hiyama, Lala Supporting

Arai, Satomi Japanese

Midorikawa, Yuhata Supporting

Kanemoto, Hisako Japanese

Honoka, Ren Supporting

Kitamura, Eri Japanese

Ittan, Samari Supporting

Tanaka, Atsuko Japanese

Kunato, Norio Supporting

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Herek, Samantha Assistant Producer

Seshita, Hiroyuki Director

Yoshihira, Tadahiro Director

Reviews

Feb 11, 2023

Marco_Yooo

Recommended

THIS IS A SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

"Knights of Sidonia" has always been a special little show in the anime world. The fantastic first season introduced a dark, grim and interesting post-apocalyptic sci-fi world. The story was engaging, and felt a lot like if "Attack on Titan" was set in space. After the second season, the series took a huge pause up until now and decided to end it with a movie titled "Love woven in the stars". This is the final entry in the franchise, so i was eager to get back into this world.

Story - 7/10

Well, this series has had an insane amount of wasted potential. ... The setting was literally perfect for the story they wanted to tell, but this movie runs into the problem that a lot of these kind of shows run into : rushing an ending. A lot of stuff that has been a mystery up to this point gets kind off just glossed over in here. The pacing is incredibly fast, i have never seen a single movie move this quick in it´s storytelling. The events of this movie take place in the span of 6 months (!). This is problematic because this movie has a romantic subplot that definitely needed a bit more time to be fleshed out properly.
However, aside from all the negativity, this world still managed to pull me in just as it did in the first two seasons. The whole design of everything, the vibe, the mechs and everything else is exactly what i look for in an anime. The best thing about this show is how it portrayed the space battles. The fights are HUGE and spread over various front lines all over the galaxy. It can be a bit hard to keep up, but i think the movie gives just enough information for you to be able to follow the insane battles that take place. The stakes are bigger than ever before in this franchise and the movie conveys that very well from it´s first moments.
I also have to say that although the ending was rushed, i am still glad we even got one. This is definitely not a mainstream show, and for them to even put out another movie after so many years deserves some admiration. I can now safely say that Knights of Sidonia is finally a complete story.

Art - 9/10

Well, lets talk about the most obvious thing : this movie is entirely 3D animated. This is what in my opinion turned a lot of people off this show, because CGI has somewhat of a bad reputation in the anime community. However, Knights of Sidonia has always been the one show which i always thought would actually be worse if it was hand drawn. Listen, of course the character models can look a bit off, but the main point of this show is the space battles, and everyone who looks at the animation of this show and thinks it is not perfect for this kind of action has absolutely no idea. The insane angles, the fluid movements, the amazing effects and the sheer speed in which the mechs twirl around each other would be absolutely impossible to recreate with classical animation. This truly is mecha action from another star. The insane feeling of adrenaline and speed the show gives you is in my opinion unparalled in mecha anime.

Sound - 9/10

As always with this franchise, a lot of time has gone into the sound effects and you can hear every single beat of it. I highly suggest you watch this movie with headphones or a very good stereo setup to appreciate the immaculate sounddesign. This takes the fights to even higher levels. The music itself also makes a strong return with both new and old tracks thrown into the mix here. Of course the very first opening theme (Which is an absolute banger btw) gets used during one of the most hype scenes and it was just perfect.

Characters - 6/10

To be honest, this is the category that hurt this movie the most. The fast pacing and the fact that 70% of this movie is just one insane action scene leads to incredibly underdeveloped characters. Tanikaze, our main hero almost feels like a side-character in this movie because for some reason the movie decided to introduce not one, but 3 completely new characters into the mix and although they are all likeable, it takes the spotlight away from the already established characters. Hoshino, (the best girl of season one!) does not even make an appearance. The only characters that developed in interesting ways were the captain and Kunato. Kunato especially had an insane redemption arc and the final moment between him and Tanikaze was a big nostalgic high point of the movie. The main villain also falls a bit flat to be honest. He needed a lot more development and ended up just being evil for the sake of being evil.
I do have to say however that the characters were never the strong point of the franchise but a bit more time for the villain, and a stronger focus on Tanikaze and his romance could have made the movie a true classic.

Enjoyment - 8/10

Although this review should have made clear that i am still a massive fan of this franchise, you can´t deny that it could have been so much more and i know for sure that it will probably never get the recognition it deserves. But this show has what many anime don´t have and that is an ending.
I recommend "Knights of Sidonia" to everyone who likes "Attack on Titan" , "Darling in the Franxx" as well as "Gunbuster" and to everyone else who wants to see a truly good use of 3D-Animation.

-Marco_Yooo

FINAL SCORE - 8/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jan 9, 2023

robert788

Recommended

Sidonia no Kishi: Ai Tsumugu Hoshi (2021)

Didn't get around to watching this until the start of 2023 and honestly, you'd think it came out today. This is an end-of-an-era anime because the animation style is just godly and beautiful as is the soundtrack. I haven't seen shows do it this well in a long time in its specific way apart from the obvious ones like Blame! which is over also.

The story continues on from last time and I have seen people go into this fresh which is fine but don't deduct because of that, please! I can honestly say that like the manga the ... ending is not really what I wanted because both are kind of rushed but then it was animated beautifully.

The art is unbelievably gorgeous, for me, this is the pinnacle of current CGI usage. Like Blame! it looks incredible and just feels so real and not so animated. Odd to say I know!

The soundtrack keeps the old and adds the new in the right places. It does what things like Attack on Titan missed with reusing old pieces of music at the right time instead of new ones to bring that sense of nostalgia.

I love the clone girls, and I love the cast generally but no one will replace Shizuka Hoshijiro who even in the end was the most important girl and one that drives so much of the story.

Whilst in her human form she was cute I never really got the crossing boundaries for Nagate Tanikaze to fall in love with Tsumugi. I also much preferred the way she was drawn in human form in the manga with the odd eyes. Nagate is on a ship full of people that choose their sex and change based on their partners through choice, fantastic! so why did he go for the one girl that is Tsumugi. Whatever it is fine, I guess he can't get over Shizuka because I definitely didn't.

The show could have had a better ending but I respect them for sticking to the manga the best they could considering the factors behind it all. One thing the show did change slightly as I am sure they go to see if they can find the other seed ships, not just new horizons. Regardless, I will always love this show.

10/10. Deserved.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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May 1, 2024

hexashadow13

Mixed Feelings

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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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	Anyone still watching this?? GERANSASAKI - Nov 8, 2023	2 replies	by zckfox »» Nov 8, 2023 4:26 AM
	Poll: Sidonia no Kishi: Ai Tsumugu Hoshi Episode 1 Discussion jjrocks24 - Sep 15, 2021	26 replies	by ChiefStilicho »» Jan 16, 2023 2:48 PM
	Where can I watch this? Kirukato05 - Dec 25, 2021	8 replies	by ZGUEGCHOV »» May 30, 2022 6:51 AM
	Poll: Do you think the big finale should be changed? (manga spoilers) raull127 - Dec 31, 2020	10 replies	by nyugvo6 »» Dec 9, 2021 6:28 AM
	It Lives as a Movie! 64BitRatchet - Jul 2, 2020	17 replies	by Kendoka76 »» Aug 8, 2021 1:54 PM