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 (The process of which is explained in Eleven Arts' twitter thread here). 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't seen 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.