Knights of Sidonia, Volume 1 by Tsutomu Nihei

I tricked her into reading Knights by saying how little I cared for the genre and then expressing how excited I was to read future volumes.

2 2 Or at least one particular example of the genre.įor a reluctant reader such as myself, 3 3 Or even moreso, like my wife who is still less willing to pick up sci-fi than I am. After all: I am now someone who reads and enjoys mecha manga. So when I sat down and read Knights of Sidonia and had my worldview shattered? That was a feeling both delicious and terrifying. 1 1 I mean, not really, but that’s the feeling I always had for mechas and giant robots, kind of a reverse nostalgia.

Also: though I read comics all the time and spend at least six hours per week writing about them, at least I don’t read the ones with big robots on the covers because that’s infantile. I haven’t questioned my belief that mecha stories are substandard fare because, well, primarily that would give me one more direction in which to apportion my already far-too-small disposable income. Of course, that doesn’t stop every last one of us from building lives on irrational presuppositions and convenient generalizations. It’s easy to propose-on purely rational terms-that prejudices are always unfair. Obviously, this was unfair and premature-like saying I don’t like country music just because I haven’t heard any country music I’ve ever appreciated. Around 2003, after about a ten-year abstinence, someone convinced me I should give Neon Genesis Evangelion a shot-that didn’t go so well and I basically gave up on mechas for good. Throw in some Battletech gaming as well as all the giant-robot stuff that littered the culturescape of my youth ( Transformers, Tranzor-Z, Johnny Sokko) and it might not be difficult to see why I might weary of the stuff. Two series of Voltron and a religious devotion to all three Robotech seasons left me a bit spent. Besides not being particularly interested in battle comics, I think oversaturation in my youth led to mecha-fatigue. While I do occasionally dabble in the sci-fi genres, I tend to avoid anything involving mechas.

Knights of Sidonia, Volume 1 by Tsutomu Nihei