The Orbital Children

I’ve been officially ordered to write something about this film, and in the process of doing so, have somehow mustered up enough willpower to slap together my scattered, disjointed thoughts into something vaguely coherent but still not all the way purposeful as a legitimate review of this film. Now, If I’m being honest, isn't that how all reviews should be? You don’t need someone to tell you if a show is worth watching. It’s actually possible to make those observations yourself. I apologize if that sounds abrasive, but I think some of you could stand to be a little more staunch in your opinions onsuch things. Now I'm meandering. On the to review—if you can call it that. Tragically, I’ve made the unfortunate mistake of not watching Dennou-coil before this, and as a result, I’m probably missing out on some referential pay-offs that the majority of you will be finger-pointing and giggling to yourselves over. Maybe that would have primed me towards the more technical aspects of this films world-building? But no matter. It’s not like I came to this film for its writing anyway. The visuals are what really got my attention—which is probably true for most of Orbital Children's audience, however, unlike most of Orbital Children's audience, the one name attached to this project that piqued my interest the most wasn't Iso's, it was Yoshida Kenichi. There’s something deep and primal that fires off in my brain when I see any form of artwork attached to his name, something deep and primal that resonates with my very soul, like the altered fucking beast. It’s hard to describe the exact quality his art invokes. All I know is that it’s incredibly appealing to look at. Take one glance at my list and it becomes clear the effect his designs have on the projects he’s been a part of. Eureka Seven: quite literally the closest thing to perfection in the medium. King Gainer: absolutely gorgeous and highly imaginative. And say what you will about G-Reco, but MAN are its visuals utterly spectacular. Yoshida’s prowess becomes even more obvious when you realize he’s a former Ghibli animator who got handed some of the most impressive cuts for the films he was a part of. His work on the dream/fairytale sequences in Whisper of the Heart is what initially comes to mind and, of course, the infamous Tanuki vs Riot Police scene from Pom Poko. Man is prolific; he's even got mocap credits for some of the Metal Gear Solid games (though, whether that's a mistake or not stands to be disproven, as both IMDb and ANN stand to corroborate the same info). Suffice to say, Yoshida is a master of his craft and his designs for Orbital Children are nonetheless stellar, even if most of them are more Takeshi Honda inspired than anything else, he still brings that patent quality I love his style for the most. By merely looking at it, my brain fires an ungodly amount of neurotransmitters through every possibly available synapse, you know, to really get the action potential flowing. So I hope that gives you an idea of how I feel about this guy's art. And that’s just the character designs. I’m sure no one was expecting less, given this film's incredibly long production cycle. So I’m probably as happy as anyone else to say that Iso delivered on all fronts. Orbital Children is a technical marvel that remains highly consistent with Iso’s usually consistency for consistence. Though, the detailed excellence of its visuals isn't really something I have to explain. It's visual, just look at it, it explains itself. My only complaint would be that there’s a lot of rather unexpected, shoddy character CG. And it usually comes up in scenes I’m sure could have been animated normally. Background character CG is fine, but a good lot of it’s foreground stuff. It’s a bit confusing as to why there’s so much of it, considering just how long the production cycle for this film was and how much of a visual perfectionist Iso is. It’s a relatively small nitpick. But if I had to nitpick about something, that’s what it’d be about. The passive world building and detailed minutia of the film is another high selling point for me. The whole hand-phone thing is ingenious. It serves as a great visual metaphor for a generation literally melding and assimilating with technology, mentally and physically. It also just looks damn cool as well. And the UNIQLO spacesuits are a nice touch; they’re a great way to show the unification of government enterprise and corporate commodification. It’s not even something brought to the forefront of the narrative, but it’s a great detail nonetheless. I love the way the helmets fold, all crinkled like a raincoat hood then expand to form a practical space helmet. It sells the idea that the suits are a fashion accessory second to a workable spacesuit. By far, my favourite aspect of Orbital Children (the fuck was up with the name localization anyway?) was its secondary commentary on streaming and “influencer” culture. Mina is an otherwise perfectly lovable girl. She provided some of the only moments of brevity throughout the absolute slog that was this films plot beats. But put her in front of a camera, and it becomes shockingly uncomfortable how that whole lifestyle has affected her as a developing adolescent. If you take one good look at the current generation, you’ll be quick to realize how many of them have been truly influenced by these “influencers”. It’s not just a goofy name; it’s the most literal definition of what it is they do. They influence. And who’s the most easily influenced group of society? Kids. That's the most unnerving thing these influencers do: they pass on the virus so that these vulnerable kids end up unknowingly repeating the cycle. A cycle that becomes a constant encouragement to broadcast what most closely resembles a twenty-four hour live stream of their lives—as one notable member of that group famously put. You see what’s happening; I’m doing the same thing. Now I’m getting off-topic. Livestreaming—in other words: social media—is a blight that turns otherwise lovable girls into complete and utter narcissists, obsessed with the idea that everyone genuinely cares about every minute, mediocre, vapid detail of their lives. At every opportunity she gets, Mina is compelled to televise her every predicament. Even when she’s in legitimate danger, undermining her life in the process. She’s unwittingly belittling herself for an audience of faceless, invisible nobodies. Who lack the talent to do anything meaningful with their lives, so they live vicariously through whichever charisma vacuum makes themselves the most readily available. Well, in the film, it’s portrayed more in the way of archiving and disseminating an unprecedented global incident. But to Mina, what matters most is if or not that number counter goes up. So, my point still stands. The fact that her name is Miina also raises a few eyebrows. I really don’t have anything insightful, or meaningful, or interesting, or intelligent to say about this film's plot. One glance at it and my brain convinces me that it’s just indecipherable technobabble. Thankfully though, it’s not. There’s quite a bit to look into and interoperate. I can’t say most of it—or any of it—is all that innovative. But the way the concepts are presented makes it feel somewhat fresh. The use of the terms “frame” and “cradle” as analogies for viewpoint and security was odd, but I can appreciate what it was trying to do. A lot of it’s pretty easy to grasp, and I think most people will be able to come away from the film understanding most of its core concepts. There’s a lot of great stuff buried in the script; man-made gods, social malaise, dependence on technology, ideological extremism, foreordainment, predetermination. All solid stuff. Though its notions of utilitarianism feel lifted straight from Char’s Counterattack. But it's fine. Iso dresses it up nicely enough that I don’t care. There are some pretty good subversions too. I originally pinned it to be about the hubris of man and the pitfalls of technological advancement. Only for it to heel turn in the opposite direction and propagate the same idea we’ve all heard so many times before: robots simply need to understand humans and the day is saved. Which I’m perfectly fine with; it was all done in a way that kept me relatively engaged. However, you can’t escape the fact that there’s some utterly retarded shit thrown in there. Science 2.0? UN 2.1? What? That’s some EVA imaginary levels of stupidity. And there’s no way that thinking in the “11th dimension” isn’t satire. It felt like the script turned into needlessly complicated jargon for the sake of having needlessly complicated jargon. Or maybe I really just don’t get it. This is probably what most of you felt like after watching Innocence, which was so frighteningly easy for me to understand, given the fact I enjoyed every minuscule aspect of it. Unfortunately, that’s not something I can honestly say about Orbital Children. Despite everything great going for it, I feel a bit disappointed I couldn’t connect emotionally with any of the cast. There were almost no emotional stakes for me from start to finish. Maybe I’m just not who this film was meant for? Though, I doubt that’s the case. I recently sat through the Moominvalley film, which is ostensibly a series for kids, and found myself in tears by the end of it. So no, I doubt that I couldn’t connect with the cast based on something like wrong age demographic. I can only think of one reason why, and it’s probably because every other aspect of the film was prioritized instead, leaving the cast feeling rather basic, placid and unmemorable compared to everything else the film has to offer. Which is of a constant high quality. I think the issue could have been remedied if Iso gave the project some breadth and opted for an 11-12 episode anime format. It would have allowed for some breathing room and more time to acclimate to the cast and setting. That would have been optimal but in no way discredits the format Iso chose to present his project. It works; it just could have been better. Have you noticed how I’ve been using the terms “film” and “movie” to categorize Orbital children? Y’know, the media format that it is. Well, in Netflix’s insufferable mission to rape any anime they get their hands on (thanks for that one), they’ve completely bastardised the way the film was intended to be viewed. Leaving the already boorish pacing even more of a slog to wade through. It does nothing but damage to the overall product, given that moments of legitimate narrative suspense are cut short and segregated by a fucking ED!? MID FILM!? Maybe once is fine; End of Eva and all. But six times!? Why? I imagine the way Japanese cinemas are airing the film—in two feature-length parts—alleviates most of my issues with Netflix's binge-centric design philosophy. To summarise, I thoroughly enjoyed Orbital Children. It was well worth the wait—even if I didn’t have to wait nearly as long as some people. A lot of my enjoyment can probably be chalked up to my slavish devotion to Yoshida. But disregarding that, the film is genuinely a blast to sit through, minus my aforementioned issues with its pacing. Merely taking in the films mindboggling presentation makes the ride absolutely worth it. The script isn’t anything revolutionary, but it’s competent enough to maintain interest all the way through. I’d say I’m due for a rewatch at some point, just to completely solidify my thoughts on it all. I doubt Orbital Children will be remembered as a modern classic in the same way Your Name or A Silent Voice is. But the bottom line is that it should be. Unlike those films, there's a lot to appreciate Orbital Children for, and I consider it a work of auteurism. Nobody but Iso could have made this, and I'm happy I was able to see it.

If you're one of those people who really likes to study the nitty-gritty of animation, like key animators or in-between animators, you've probably come across the name Mitsuo Iso. Mitsuo Iso is an animator who started out working for Studio Ghibli as a key animator. Iso worked on various animation cuts for Only Yesterday, Ocean Waves, Porco Rosso, Perfect Blue, and even some fights in the End of Evangelion movie. He even did animation for the very first Digimon movie! In 2007, he created his own original anime called Dennou Coil which, while not necessarily a mainstream hit, is considered an underrated masterpiece. I haven'tseen Dennou Coil, but I plan to one of these days (HIDIVE, why'd you have to take it off?!). But after Dennou Coil, Mitsuo Iso didn't try to make other projects since then, as apparently even back in 2007, corporations were apprehensive about creating completely original anime, especially anything not based on an existing source like a manga or light novel. But just this year, Iso made a comeback with a very ambitious set of movies called Orbital Children, which just dropped on Netflix. Fans of his work were excited, and since I found it was only going to be six episodes, I figured this would be a good time killer. I'm not normally into heavy sci-fi stuff, especially if they're filled with a lot of technobabble that flies right over my head (Keep in mind, I'm a 28-year-old woman), but I'm a sucker for good animation and well-developed characters, and Iso apparently did both with Dennou Coil, so maybe Orbital Children would turn out great! ...Yeah, I have words for this. In case you couldn't tell, I didn't like Orbital Children. And I really wanted to like it! It even had a great start! In the year 2045, space travel, AI, and technological advancements are commonplace, and the most recent scientific marvel are children born on the moon, though their lifespan is shortened due to some snags. One day, a group of kids win a contest and get to go to a space settlement to meet the children born on the moon. Unfortunately, a rogue comet hits the settlement, trapping them in space. Although the kids don't quite get along at first due to Touya's insufferable nihilism about humanity, they're going to have to work together if they even have a sliver of a chance of surviving. But this is really an oversimplification of things...mainly because one of Orbital Children's biggest flaws is that it tries to tell a really, really huge story in the span of just six episodes, and it really doesn't work. For one, technobabble and exposition is just dumped on you in literally every single episode, almost non-stop, giving you very little time to even process one concept it introduces before moving on to the next one within two seconds. And this series has a LOT of ideas: Intergalactic terrorist groups, AI comets, moon children, some mystical space prophecy, AI drones, the list goes on! There's just so much this show covers in the span of six episodes, and because they're just thrown at us at a breakneck pace, they're all unable to be really fleshed out, and I couldn't have cared less about them because the show would rather overload my brain with all the concepts and ideas it throws into a blender. Episode 4 in particular is guilty of this, as it just throws concepts at you over, and over, and over, with seemingly no end in sight, making it a real slog to go through! But surely the characters can carry a story like this, right? Well...sort of, at first. Honestly, none of the characters other than Touya get fleshed out beyond one basic character trait they have. Mina in particular is just a social media obsessed teen who's way more focused on getting clout than, y'know, actually giving a shit about her situation, even as she gets locked in a space chamber and nearly dies from lack of oxygen! She does make for great comic relief and has some great funny faces, but that's really all she's good for. None of the other characters have much to their name, and even one of the villains who gets revealed later doesn't do much other than spout a bunch of philosophical babble about some space prophecy she's obsessed with. Konoha is little more than the wise, sickly waif who's there to spout philosophical rhetoric before possibly dying beautifully, and the adults don't do much except worry about the kids. To be fair, I actually did like Touya's progression through the series. He starts off as an insufferable, edgy misanthrope who believes Earth-born humans are inferior to moon people and that they should all die, but changes his worldview throughout the series and becomes nicer at the end. Though I wouldn't blame anyone for dropping the show because of him alone. True to form, the animation is definitely the highlight of Orbital Children, with bright colors, detailed backgrounds, well-integrated CGI, and fluid movement typical of Iso's pedigree. The OST is nice too, if not very memorable. However, other than those two things, and Touya's development, everything else about Orbital Children is a mess. Like I mentioned before, the story is supposedly about space kids overcoming disasters and getting back home to Earth, but most of the meat in this show is taking up by overly pretentious technobabble and philosophical waxing that doesn't get utilized beyond blatant plot conveniences and Deus Ex Machinas to get out of whatever corners the writers wrote themselves into. We never get a sense of what the characters are like beyond their immediate situations because the show refuses to explore them in favor of, yet again, pretentious science and philosophy that's only shoved in there to make the series seem deeper than it actually isn't. Say what you will about something like, say, Astra: Lost In Space, but I feel that show did a better job of telling the story about kids trapped in space and trying to get back to Earth, because it knew to keep that as the focus, and gave a shit about fleshing out its characters, even if it didn't always succeed. Basically, Orbital Children bit off way more than it could chew and suffered as a result. Also, one another thing: Episode 5, did you SERIOUSLY feel the need to shove in a scene where a child accidentally gropes an older woman's boob?! And right in the middle of what's supposed to be a tense, suspenseful scene, at that?! Whose idea was it to throw that in there?! Because shoehorning horny comedy into a serious scene does not fucking work!! It did nothing to further the story, completely broke the tension, and was absolutely unnecessary! It's almost like someone felt scared that nobody would give Orbital Children the time of day unless they put in one scene of a woman's boobs getting grabbed! "Hurr durr, nobody's gonna like this on its own merits, so let's throw in a kid groping an older woman! Heehee, that'll bring in viewers!" IT WILL NOT!! You could cut out that scene and absolutely nothing would be lost! If anything, it'd make the entire episode better because there wouldn't be out-of-place horny humor to kill the tension in what's supposed to be a very serious, tense sequence of kids about to die out in space!! Seriously, why is this even a trend?! The whole boob groping gag needs to fucking die forever!! Okay, that's enough of my angry soapbox. Sorry Mitsuo Iso, I really wanted to like this, and you've made a lot of great things. But Orbital Children is not one of them. Had it cut out a bunch of the useless technobabble and pretentious philosophical bullshit and focused on maybe one or two of the concepts it introduced, it would have been much better. I wanted to care about these dumbass kids and root for them, but I just couldn't. There are reasons why I normally don't gravitate towards hard sci-fi anime, and Orbital Children was definitely a reminder of that. If you like Orbital Children, cool, more power to you, and if the show being on Netflix will get Iso more attention, or even allow him to make more original anime, that's great! Iso has gone on record saying that he had to fight tooth and nail just to get Dennou Coil created, and I'll always have respect for creative people who will fight to the death to make sure their creations are not only made, but seen, even in an incomplete form, no matter what obstacles they had to face and compromises they had to make. We all know what happened with Stars Align. But as far as original projects go, Orbital Children is absolutely not the best Iso has to offer, and probably wasn't the best way for me to get introduced to his directorial work. If you like hard sci-fi, feel free to check it out, but if you're not into lots of exposition dumps, philosophical ramblings, and over-the-top sci-fi that overloads you're brain, give it a miss.

This is a very ambitious first anime from a brand new studio. The setting is very imaginative. What would a world in which the big companies finally got humanity into the great beyond? Where Google, Tesla and Uniqlo are sponsoring trips BACK to Earth to see where humanity came from. It's cool to see what that might look like in the future, while also looking at the consequences of overpopulation and climate change. Besides that, this anime, unfortunately, failed to deliver on everything else. Right from the start, the CGI use will be quite obvious since it's not done very well. I don't fault the studiocompletely since it is new, but it's used very cheaply and as a time-saver, instead of a tool to the story. Outside of that, the production is pretty standard. There are no real sakuga moments and even at the end when they use up all their animation budget, it's nothing cutting edge. It just looks like every other anime and I think this show could have benefited from a unique art style set in such a well-thought-out world. What this anime suffers from the most, however, is the convoluted story and world-building. The closest thing I could compare the ideas presented in this anime to would be something like Blame! but even this does not hold a candle to that. It's unfortunate to see how much exposition was used to explain all the terms, and yet I still don't really understand what anything was about. It comes across as the writer putting all their thoughts they've ever had about artificial intelligence without vetting the ideas first. Not to mention the character really don't add anything nuanced to the themes. Speaking of which, very predictable character actions. The twist reveal is very underwhelming. The characters are just boring, they don't have any depth to them. It reminds me of the underbaked concepts and characters from shows like Japan Sinks and Akudama Drive. Regardless of their first outing, I'm going to keep an eye on this studio because it looks like they have some potential. There seems to be no shortage of AI topic stories in anime and this looked like a serious effort at trying to convey those ideas in a new way - even if they performed poorly doing so.

The Orbital Children is a long-awaited misfire from Mitsuo Iso, the sublimely passionate and creative writer behind Dennou Coil, an underrated classic in terms of mid-2000s scifi anime. Orbital Children takes a great deal of inspiration from its predecessor, which somehow ends up being one of its weakest points; it feels like a heavily degraded version of the show people love. Nearly every aspect of The Orbital Children feels shallow and pretentious, although this could mainly be blamed on the length (or lack thereof) of this anime. Dennou Coil had a fully realised world, likeable and nuanced characters and themes that were explored over a26-episode storyline, while Orbital Children is a theatrical release (or a 6-episode anime if you watched it on Netflix). It’s understandable that a feature-length anime film lacks the burgeoning plot of a two cour television series, but Orbital Children is 3 hours long, and it makes almost no use of that inflated running time. The story is simple: a bunch of generic, annoying self-inserts get stuck on a space station that’s been sabotaged by unknown forces, and they have to work together to escape. None of them progress past being cardboard archetypes for children to self-insert into; rather, they just get more baffling and uninteresting as the show moves on, culminating in an ending that takes wish fulfillment to a new level. Touya is one of the strangest main characters possible for a show like this; he’s nihilistic and cold towards Earth’s humans because he believes they all consider cybernetically enhanced space-born humans a waste of resources, and through some gap in logic he wants to program an artificial intelligence to move past its technological limitations and wipe out the planet. Essentially, he’s Char Aznable but not cool. He gets less irritating later but still radiates preteen angst up until the finale. He gets stuck on the damaged space station with his psychic best friend, a fucking tiktok girl and her easily impressionable brother, and Taiyou, who is the most annoying character in the entire show and an excuse for United Nations propaganda (which still exists in the future for some reason). There are adult characters but none of them have much of an impact on the story outside the incredibly obvious, unthreatening strawman antagonist whose motivations are entirely decided by “it’s prophecy, it doesn’t have to make sense!” which doesn’t make for a compelling adversary, especially when the reveal, 99% of their character development and their death happens in the span of a single episode. There’s also some senile dude in a mascot suit. I think they were aping Pino from Ergo Proxy but I can’t be sure. The Orbital Children tries to tackle futuristic dilemmas such as the nature and evolution of artificial intelligence, space colonization, and humanity’s need to curb their own progress with all the introspection and self-awareness of a fax machine. 99% of the dialogue during “philosophical” scenes is pseudointellectual babbling that amounts to absolutely nothing and comes to a total of zero conclusions about any of these quandaries. There is no wisdom being dispensed here; instead the writing team just wanted to stuff as much fruitless dialogue into the script as possible to sound intelligent so people will go “Wow! It’s just like Evangelion!” which the show actually tries ripping off in the last 20 minutes with an absurdly tryhard ending that would have been profound if anyone involved with the writing of this series knew what the fuck they were talking about. Instead of being like Dennou Coil, which knew when to space things out and keep viewers attention spans, Orbital Children is full scenes of characters spouting their ideologies at each other in the most lifeless way possible. The entire series feels lifeless, as a matter of fact, and I’m not sure what happened. Iso’s input was great in Dennou Coil; we got a feel for the world through the way it was framed, through the energy and color of the series. Maybe it was the 15 year span between the two series, but Orbital Children feels largely like it was put together dispassionately; characters are constantly off-model, the direction and cinematography are bland and colorless and even the soundtrack hardly anything special. Within the first episode I counted at least 10 shots being repeated within the same 3 minute scene with little to no variation. It was just shot reverse shot every time someone spoke for the entire slog of a first episode. Iso is talented, no doubt, but Orbital Children feels like it was something he either worked on out of necessity or something that was completely butchered during production, which seems to be the more likely candidate (14 pages of storyboards were apparently cut from the second half of the show). Even Iso’s attention to detail seems to be missing; how does a man renowned for being so meticulous and passionate about science fiction forget that fires can’t start in space? Half the series feels like nonsense. Rather than a calculated, insightful anime about the near future we get talking AI space rocks, drones firing digital lasers at each other and literal fucking magic for some reason. And I know Dennou Coil leaned into pseudoscience at times, but it felt natural because of the setting. It even managed to inspire real-life breakthroughs in virtual reality because of just how well-conceptualized and intuitive it was. The Orbital Children lacks that kind of prescience. I have to make the assumption that Netflix had a hand in turning the series into the final product we have, because it doesn’t feel right. It feels like something groundbreaking could’ve come from this series, but it was curbed and turned into something safe like the artificial intelligence in the show itself. There’s something strangely ironic about that.