The Orbital Children

Well. Lots good, lots bad, and lots missing.

Feels like a rushed Dennou Coil.

Plus Orbital Children has several added issues Iso's first original anime did not have, namely some aspects of the very end I found eye-rolling, a few mildly irritating references to his former work, and the obnoxious streamer character Mina (I do appreciate the pun, but not the annoying vocal execution of it, or the eye-rolling character writing of Mina).

The breathing room of Iso's former work is missing, the time to properly build up the mystery is missing, the slice of life antics that properly utilise technological integration within the world is missing, and the more in-depth characterisation is missing. It also retains the biggest issue I had with Dennou Coil, exposition and technobable, yet missing those extras is what is the problem, because these harder to deal with aspects are then not diluted, not spread out enough to sink in, to form part of a mystery, to work. If this had been longer than six episodes, which I don't doubt Iso would've wanted, then I imagine a lot (but not all) of my issues with it could've been dealt with.

Ultimately, I still enjoyed this. I was able to follow along with the exposition and technobabble well enough, possibly because of previous experience on Dennou Coil, it basically just formed part of the pacing for me, and I was easily able to discern what was and wasn't important and what I needed to remember. It was also very well animated, and had cool colour design. Importantly it definitely had some extremely interest sci-fi world building and utilisation, and some intriguing philosophical musings based on its high concept ideas, especially at the end in places (even if some of the philosophising still fell flat for me, and some felt a tad cliche).

I had a good time with this.

Anyways.

You want high concept sci-fi shenanigans? Dennou Coil has that, but better, more spread out, and linked to it's great mystery aspect running throughout.

You want better character writing than the mostly plain writing here? Dennou Coil has you very much covered there.

You want breathing room and slice of life aspects to be able to fully take in the science fiction world and see its implications on more day to day aspects and so on? Dennou Coil aces that in its first half and some later individual episodes.

So yeah. I enjoyed this, because what others took issue with in terms of exposition, I was able to deal with pretty well, and I found the overall concepts and ending ideas and philosophies interesting (but not all of them). However, there are way too many issues for me to have enjoyed this any more than a 7. But I did like it.

So.

Watch Dennou Coil.
/anime/2164/dennou-coil