This Week in Anime – The Deep Themes of Orbital Children – Anime News Network

After more than a decade away, fan-favorite creator Mitsuo It is back with more sci-fi shenanigans. However, behind its "kids in lost in space" surface is a much deeper treatise on humanity's relationship with tech, nihilism, and fighting your fate.

This series is streaming on Netflix

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.

I was excited for this series just for the fact that I'd have another opportunity to peer pressure friends into watching Den-noh Coil, hands down one of the best anime of the century and a criminally overlooked classic. But it certainly helps that Orbital Children is a mini-series basically made for me.

I haven't watched all of Den-noh Coil myself so I recognize I'm totally part of the problem. (In my defense, I own the Blu-ray). From what I know about it, The Orbital Children really does feel like a "spiritual successor." It's using kids to explore hard sci-fi ideas with a playful and adventurous heart.

Having technology both socially and physically embedded in you comes with its weaknesses too. After winning a contest, three Earth kidsMina, her little brother Hiroshi, and Taiyouall travel to a commercial space station, Anshin. They meet our main character, Touya, who lives there in order to undergo physical therapy before immigrating to Earth. He and another girl, Konoha, were both born in space and had microchips implanted in their brains in order to survive. This apparently comes with some issues that we'll go into later, but as stuff goes down we see how these kids are helped or hindered by technology.

Also, while all that Seven stuff becomes important later, my favorite early detail is that they can't even get compensation for the faulty brain implants because the company that made them filed for bankruptcy. Even in the future, tech companies just waltz through loopholes.

They're good kids.

It's not an entire swing into leftfield. All the elements of this are there throughout, but it goes from the background to the forefront.

Oh yeah, not arguing that it isn't some Giga-brained Big Thoughts! Stuff is a real trip, veering from the realistic tech and into spiritualism related to tech and its future. It's pure conspiracy, but it also represents another very real way that people interact with technology where they think it's infallible despite being made by extremely fallible and limited humans.

I shotgunned this series like a three-hour movie for the purposes of writing, but I still had to take a few breaks just to sit and think about some of the concepts. Furthermore, it's revealed that even though Second Seven is intelligent, and may be able to predict some things, it's still limited. Konoha refers to it as a child. When the John Doe group made it, they constructed it using very select sources of information. They didn't even let it have a frame of reference for humans vs the whole of humanity, limiting what it could actually know and what conclusions it could reach. Why else would it determine that the only way to save humanity was to destroy so many humans?

What resonated for me was Konoha's line about escaping the cradle of "Fate"embracing an uncertain future for the possibility of better things, rather than the insulating comfort of an immutable destiny. And also I assume she kicked her gacha game addiction. Good for her!

Anyways, The Orbital Children is a wonderful little show that will blow your mind, while also being pretty safe for most people to dive into. It's a solid, well-executed, and well-thought-out package that is definitely worth your time.

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This Week in Anime - The Deep Themes of Orbital Children - Anime News Network