Tsutomu Nihei’s Knights of Sidonia Is Coming to Netflix This Summer

Kotaku recently published their massive guide to this spring’s anime titles, and it runs the gamut, from supernatural horror to high school comedy, from historical action dramas to lots of mecha action. Needless to say, I immediately began noting promising titles, and one title jumped out immediately: Knights of Sidonia.

Now ordinarily, the story of a young loner learning to pilot a powerful mecha to protect the few remaining fragments of humanity from a powerful alien force wouldn’t necessarily pique my curiosity because — let’s face it — we’ve seen it before. But Knights of Sidonia is based on a manga by Tsutomu Nihei, and that’s enough to interest me. Nihei is best known for the cyberpunk/transhumanist/post-apocalyptic titles Blame! and Biomega, which leads me believe that this’ll be something more than just your typical, run-of-the-mill mecha series.

Seth T. Hahne, who normally dislikes mecha titles, reviewed the first two volumes of Knights of Sidonia and had this to say:

Remember that when I recommend this, I’m a reader who’s just as invested in mechas as I am in bicycles or tricked-out lawnmowers or tandem strollers or any number of other things I don’t care about at all. This is a mecha book that doesn’t really feel like it’s about mechas. Knights of Sidonia feels like a series of character studies in what would be a drastically different social environment from our own, only punctuated by colossal acts of violence. And so far, it’s pretty keen.

Also, Knights of Sidonia will be streaming on Netflix this summer rather than Crunchyroll or Hulu, which is pretty interesting news. I’ve always been disappointed by Netflix’s anime offering, especially in light of Crunchyroll’s service, so it’s nice to see them acquire something like this (if only to offer some competition to the devoted anime streaming services out there).