Delightful! Orbital Children takes inspirations from some of the best sci-fi narratives in the industry, and dilutes it into something fresh and unique. This series really wears its inspirations on its sleeve. It's a little bit Interstellar, a little bit Gravity, and a little bit of Her all wrapped up into one complete package.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70467917/01_The_Orbital_Children_main.0.jpg)The best part about Orbital Children is its pacing. Lots of people complain about this, and I can't fathom why. Orbital Children has a very brisk pace, at only half the episodes of a normal anime. Because of this, it stays quite focused on its core premises. It's a bit of an survival story, followed by an action romp, and then explores some deeper philosophical concepts.
This does mean the core story is fairly derivative; you've seen these stories before elsewhere, and probably have seen them done more competently. But originality is dead, and blending these concepts isn't something I've ever seen before. So the bravery of the show to try to tackle all these concepts at once is ambitious and interesting.
A better criticism is whether it explores these concepts well. And that's to be debated. The survival and action portions of the show are well done in my opinion. They use legitimate science fiction concepts to explore the ideas in the early portions of the show. Although they take a lot of liberties (this is more science fantasy), I appreciated a lot of the little details that other shows might miss: lots of logical talk of trajectories, gravity, pressurization, and more are all nice touches, especially in anime, which really enjoys hand-waving more scientific concepts. Because it doesn't take itself too seriously, it also means the scenes are fun. It's neat to see the kids solving puzzles for their own survival; it really feels like the deck is stacked against them any time a new problem emerges, and either by dumb luck, smart thinking, or good teamwork, they're always able to pull through to the next challenge. It really makes you as a viewer root for them as a group.
The show falters on its more complex and philosophical notions. Part of this comes from the concept itself. It wants to explore these deeper ideas of AI, sentience, and thought beyond the human consciousness; however, it also wants to explore ideas like God, fate, and purpose. These are really awesome ideas, and they were entertaining throughout Orbital Children's runtime. But you can definitely feel that the screenwriters were struggling a bit on how to accurately express "11th dimensional thinking." The complexity of these more complicated topics which you would see in something like Interstellar slip here; whereas Interstellar focuses its entire premise on these broader philosophical goals, Orbital Children has a much more limited time frame to explore the same ideas, and it shows in the delivery. There's a lot more hand-waving, stunted screenwriting, and slimmer resolutions to issues than I would have liked. It feels like characters lose a lot of agency around the climax, and that a lot of what ends up happening is no longer really in their control. It's still entertaining, but especially when the entire series up until the final bit is built around a team of quirky kids scraping by, the ending can feel like a jarring change of process.
That doesn't mean it's not entertaining though, or that the exploration wasn't sufficient. Beyond the slightly vague ending, it felt like the show said everything it wanted to say. The only struggles on display are what the show wants to be. Does it want to be a cute sci-fi featuring anime kids? Cool. Does it want to be a fun action romp in space? Cool. Does it want to be a philosophical musing? Cool. The problem is it tries to do all these things at once. It sticks the landing, in a way that many of its peers are unable to do, but it's fair to say that you could get a deeper experience if it focused on one of these higher-brow concepts more than one of the others. It spreads itself too thin; a piece of toast with a thin layer of jelly is still tasty, but it does leave you yearning for a little bit more.
Overall though, Orbital Children is criminally underrated. It's definitely worth the time, especially because it respects the viewer and doesn't waste any time getting to all its diverse points. It says what it needs to in half the time, does so adequately, and remains entertaining throughout. You can't ask for much more from a piece of media.