The Orbital Children

I think not.

I've never gone out of my way to rate a show if it was less than 5 stars, let alone leave a review. And one too many times, unnecessarily negative IMBD reviews tarnish my experience with a series before the half way point.

Don't let it happen to you.

As some reviews here show, this is not for adrenaline junkies, those looking for giant robot / space battles, or prefer simple plots. This is a rare and well-done mixture of cerebral story-telling along with enough suspense to keep the audience interested. I binge-watched all 6 episodes in one evening.

The animation accomplishes what is required. The story, direction, voices and general plot are quite good. While the concept of an AI predicting even tiny details of the future is a little jump the shark, the story is done well enough that one can easily let that bit of improbability pass. It is after all, fiction.

Overall an interesting series that is a bit different from typical anime. There's no nudity, unnecessary violence, gore, or over-the-top absurdity. The characters stay true to nature. The character of the Net Celebrity added a bit of comedy throughout to help break up the tension, while other characters held the plot together. I really enjoyed the concept of the SMART Internet glove. A simple bit of tech that added to the plot.

For a short 6-episode anime "mini-series", this was well done. I would like to see more anime series like this.

......to what's going on here, you will be amazed at how incredibly well-written the screenplay/storyline is in "The Orbital Children"!

To think I would discover an anime as complex as this, it's as if I was watching an animated version of a film by Christopher Nolan!

The characters were a bit cliche but not completely 2-D as each person played a pivotal role throughout the series as the animation itself literally lights up your screen into a dazzling, awestruck color pallet of light and dark! Meanwhile, the music elevates the mood into the atmospheric proportions that this show is making an effort to achieve!

However, there are some things that hold the show back from gaining steam with the mainstream audience: 1.) It's main subject: To create something as ingenious but complex as this and transform it into a form of mainstream media, like anime, takes guts. That's because the audience can either look at this genre of storytelling two ways; Either it amazes you as you immerse yourself in topics that hover beyond your wildest dreams or it confuses you as complex vocabulary and high IQ screenwriting cloud your sense of understanding as you attempt to figure out what on earth is going here. Thus, this original idea of a complex space voyage turned completely on it's head is ironic. Not to mention, it acts as a double-edged sword in terms of either the idea as a whole sticks with people as they fully immerse themselves for more a breathtaking, adventurous experience or the idea doesn't stick and people find themselves confused, not being able to follow along the story as complex authoring of said context could turn out to appear incomprehensible to some.

2.) The characters: Now, I know I said that this cast as a whole isn't 2-D since everyone pretty much had a role to play when it came to how the show transpired from episode 1-6. However, character development only went so far for Toya, the MC, and Konoha, his fellow partner as the story progressed. There were some other characters that I felt curious about learning as well, such as Chief, when you find out more than what what you originally assumed. Yet, even though it wouldn't be such a bad idea to expand on this, I can't trust that Netflix will continue with this story as they tend to create more new anime shows rather than continue off of some pretty solid content, such as "BNA". Speaking of story.....

3.) Clifhanger?: The story doesn't seem to end by episode 6, even after the story reaches it's main resolution; as long as the staff, actors, and the many people who were originally on board still hang around for a continuation of the series, with the backing of Netflix of course, there could be a chance of them furthering their storyline. However, as I've said before, with the issues of a double-edged plot alongside the inconsistency of Netflix-produced anime, I highly doubt that they would even think about something like this as Netflix moves on with other plans.

Nevertheless, this show is for those who wish to expand their thinking and perspective of how an anime is made as "The Orbital Children" really checks of all the intellectual boxes. Otherwise, if you're looking for something simple that goes off a genre that has already been utilized, this isn't for you. However, it still wouldn't hurt giving this anime a try as you find the moral of this story touches reality in more ways than one!

Soundtrack, animation, ger dub, Story everything is more than just good. But the best was for me the end i loved it. The idea behind the ai, seven and the second try what is best for humans, I loved it, can't remember something similiar and I'm a Sci-fi lover. But still there were so many things that bothered me, nasa, the limiter, the social Media part and the p2p connection. A 7* Rating is kinda high but for 6 Episodes and the quality it is fair.

I really enjoyed The Orbital Children. It has the adventurous spirit of old fashioned science fiction, but takes place in a futuristic high tech setting. The story focuses on a group of kids who find themselves in a difficult situation inside a space station orbiting the earth.

Visually it is excellent, as you'd expect from Mitsuo Iso, an absolute legend of Japanese animation. Really nice painterly backgrounds, interesting shot choices, cool designs & high quality animation. Storywise there are a lot of technical details to absorb, but it worked for me. I liked the characters & found it very engaging. Tonewise there was a nice mix of seriousness & silliness.

You could safely show this to kids without worrying about the kind of violence or sexual content which anime often contains, but the only issue might be the density of the story. I imagine it would be hard for the average kid to process. In that regard Orbital Children is similar to Iso's previous anime show Dennou Coil, which is also a brilliant piece of work, but requires a good attention span to enjoy fully.

If a highly detailed, wholesome, space adventure anime is what you're after then Orbital Children is for you!