When I watched
Knights of Sidonia over the summer, the first thing that stood out to me was
the bear the CGI.
A few episodes in, I realized that there was a odd difference between anime sameface and CGI anime sameface. Everything looked too perfect, too smooth. Something just felt wrong about the way the characters moved. As the show went on, I got used to it and focused on the story instead, but once the details about cloning and genetic alterations popped up, I started to wonder. Maybe the oddness in the CGI was deliberate. I mean, these were people who didn’t eat, but could photosynthesize. Maybe we, the viewers, were supposed to view them as alien, as something ‘other.’ What does it really mean to be human? What are the required traits that makes someone ‘human,’ and where do we draw the line?
But then Ronia the Robber’s Daughter came out and I realized that my theory was wrong. This was not a deep commentary on the nature of humanity. It was just the CGI house style at Polygon Pictures.
That said, I still think that the uncanny valley feeling works in
Knights of Sidonia‘s favor. The questions I mentioned above tie in to a lot of the themes that the show explores, and it’s pretty interesting that some slightly unsettling CGI helped me tap into that. Intentional or not, it did make my first viewing of
Knights of Sidonia a lot more interesting. CGI in anime may still have some kinks to work out, but if it can add something to the story the anime is trying to tell, maybe it’s heading down the right track.
