Knights of Sidonia vol. 8

This volume focuses on the adventures of a boy, a hermaphrodite and a tentacle.  That’s not to say that this series has turned into a hentai manga, but you’d be forgiven for thinking that since Tsumugi is now represented by a phallic-looking tentacle.  It’s an amusing development in what turns out to be one of the series’ quirkiest volumes so far.  After introducing its moe-by-the-way-of-H.R. Giger human/Gauna hybrid Tsumugi in the previous volume, mangaka Tsutomu Nihei finds a way to anthropomorphize this multi-story killing machine by allowing her to interact with clueless ace pilot Tanikaze and his ever-hopeful pilot-in-arms Izana.  This leads to weird scenes like Tanikaze requesting a new residence on Sidonia that’s full of ducts — to allow Tsumugi’s tentacle to visit, showing the hybrid the sights of the ship via her tentacle along with Izana, and the two pilots letting the tentacle sleep next to them in a futon.  It’s utterly bizarre to see it from my non-tentacled-life perspective, but thoroughly amusing to see how Tanikaze and Izana treat this strange thing as if it were no different from them.  Which is a remarkably deft message of tolerance now that I think about it.

Meanwhile, the main conflict between the humans and the Gauna continues on much as it ever has in this title.  We get surprisingly little fallout from the Captain’s actions in the last volume, Kunato/Ochiai’s sinister(?) plans continue apace, and the Sidonia finds itself in the position of having to bail out the idiot colonists who departed from the ship a couple volumes back.  It’s business as usual until Izana winds up in the scouting group assembled to inspect the Gauna threat towards the end of the volume and… well, things don’t go well for her.  This does lead to a team-up between Tanikaze in the latest Garde mecha and Tsumugi to go bail her out, so it goes to show that all of the interacting the three did during this volume wasn’t all for nothing.  Whether or not what looks to be a more action-centric vol. 9 is going to be more entertaining than seeing a tentacle crawling through the ducts to say “Hi!” to her two friends is up in the air at this point.  You still won’t be able to see anything featured in this volume anywhere else in comics and that, along with its endearing weirdness, is plenty to keep me reading this title.