I first watched the two seasons of this anime time when I was just 15, and really enjoyed them. Luckily I had no prejudice against its 3D animation, which even today is better than the CGI of many modern anime despite being like the FIRST ANIME made entirely in CGI, and hadn't even seen Attack on Titan or another series remotely similar to it at the time, so it was my first time with a story like this. And I loved it. I rewatched the first two seasons before watching this movie -luckily I had forgotten details after all this time- and I can say it again: they're great. Not masterpieces, but pretty great. You can see the love and dedication that was put into the project in the subtle details, in the choreography synced up with amazing music, in the epic 30+ minutes season finales, etc. But what about the movie?
Visually, it has improved. While the character design may seem a bit lazy (10 years passed in the history since the end of the S2, but they all look either the same or unnecessarily different), in terms of fluidity of animation, choreography, atmosphere/setting, etc. is fully up to the technological advances in CGI. The same can be said for the soundtrack, which is at the level of the anime series, with a main theme (Hikari no Disco) that is appropriate despite not being from the great Angela as in the original seasons. The problem with this movie is in the story and development.
Sidonia's anime promised a great AoT-level secret behind the true nature of the Gauna. And a good reason behind the actions of the mysterious scientific genius Ochiai. And a recurring sub-theme of the series was the possible understanding between humans and gaunas, brought out by dialogues of important characters like Hoshijiro and the mere existence of Tsumugi. However, (really minor spoiler ahead) none of this will be fulfilled in the film; the Gaunas are just plain man-eating aliens, Ochiai is just an evil mad scientist, and the only option for humanity's survival is to destroy all the mindless Gaunas. What happened to the depth of this show? Even mysterious actions of characters, such as the strange blind obedience of the Captain towards "Kunato" in the S2, have been forgotten. Sidonia has always preferred to leave out the political subplot to focus on the fights, but this time, that has been taken a bit to the extreme.
Another great aspect of Sidonia, for better or worse, was the harem-ish theme. Especially in the S2 several characters presented themselves as potential romantic interests for the protagonist, with different levels of development in their relationships. I'm not going to spoiler, but in the movie, this aspect is left aside, focusing only on a single character, TOTALLY obliterating any important dialogue or obvious feeling that the other characters, the forgotten ones, could have had in the anime series. Come on, even the screen time of those characters during the film was minimal!
But not everything is bad. It’s evident that the film suffered from a little rushed pacing due to its short duration and the introduction of unnecessary new characters, instead of focusing on existing ones. But you can really tell that the team made an effort to answer as many questions as possible. In some cases the answers were not at the level of what we expected, yes, but at least we had answers. And, in reality, we should thank the fact that this film even exists. After years of postponements of the promised S3, this story could've been lost forever. But it wasn’t like that; there was a movie, a film that tried to give an adequate closure to the ambitious and misunderstood project that Polygon Studios had started, and to fulfill the promise that it had made to its fans 6 years ago. Even actively supervised by the original author of the work. And considering the end of the manga is even more criticized than the end of this movie, I think that the existence of this film has merit in itself. I've gotten emotional a couple of times while watching it. And I've been on the verge of tears too. I have returned to feel a bit of the love that the staff had put into this project in the first two seasons. I think they tried to do everything they could to give us a good ending despite the limitations of the medium, and the terribly low popularity this franchise has had, due mostly to mass prejudice towards its different animation.
Final score of the film: 6.5; more than fine.
Final score of the anime seasons: 8.4 each.
In short, this saga would receive a 7.76, a more than decent grade, which allows me to openly recommend it to anyone.
Watch Sidonia no Kishi, it's definitely worth the ride.
See you, space knight.
