Knights of Sidonia S2 ep5: our tentacle monster splooges humanity

I’m finding myself a little puzzled as to what’s going on in this recovery and intermediate phase in the show. On one hand, we’re left to watch Izana and Shiranui recover from a harrowing battle. On the other, we have to watch the shadows for any signs of what’s going on in the background from the people who actually have knowledge and power. So this whole episode, I just found myself wondering, “am I really supposed to just sit around waiting for this alien tentacle monster to climb through some pipes? Is this really the highlight?

This show has one of the weirdest love triangles/harems.  Nagate is just a weirdo caveman basically in this world; full of poop smell and gross food eating habits.  And he finds himself drawing the romantic fawnings of a hermaphrodite, a genius strategist, a Gauna clone of a girl he used to like who is now long dead, and a tentacle monster.  And sadly, the genius is the most unlikely of shots in this group.  If Nagate got impregnated by the tentacle monster, it would be a more likely pairing!  And in this episode, things just get more weird and complicated.  With Shiranui getting gravely injured (as reported, 90% of her body was destroyed), and Izana being horribly maimed, we see Nagate treating Izana like the best buddy.  And then we see Shiranui being treated as something “more”.  Both of them recover fully, though Izana ends up receiving mechanical prosthetics, and we find the three of them becoming this trio of good friends.  I guess in this situation where you can die the next day in the void of space, just getting quiet time to hang out with friends is pretty valuable.

We do see at one point that Nagate still dreams of the long dead Shizuka, his longings for her likely prolonged by his visits with the Gauna clone.  It will be interesting to see how he reacts to the knowledge that that clone is the mother of Shiranui.  It just makes these relationships so much more awkward to piece together.  Nagate still longs for Shiranui’s mother’s original, while having a relationship with the chimera that seems to have a crush on him.  How the hell does the storyboarding for this work out?  Do the writers ever look around and laugh at how screwy this has all become?  It’s like Shizuka’s soul has been chopped and dispersed into this world in so many different ways.

And that’s mostly about it for this episode.  Most of the more important things seem to happen in the background.  The Sidonia is taking its place in this new star system for its seemingly doomed attack on the massive Gauna hive cluster.  As Yuhata remarks at one point, it doesn’t seem like they have any shot at victory, even with Shiranui.  This leaves me thinking that Ochiai must’ve shown Kobayashi something amazing to make her take these bold steps.

It is interesting to see the show’s attempts to humanize Shiranui more and more each episode.  Before, she was a completely alien and terrifying presence.  This recently revealed “cute” form of her’s is bridging that gap quite a bit.  And her actions in the last battle have started to win over the Sidonia’s populace quite a bit.  I still don’t understand how she fits into Ochiai’s end game, but for now she’s proving to be a nice addition to the cast.  Her, Nagate and Izana make this nice, really adorable group of friends, and they bring a nice bit of humanity to this cold show when together.

Further Reading:

• Knights of Sidonia S2 ep3 & 4: read the tea leaves