Maybe the rarest thing in following anime is for a project you self-hype ridiculously to live up to the buildup. Amazingly, Chikyuugai Shounen Shoujo is doing just that and more.  If I have overhyped this thing, I think I have a damn good excuse – it’s been 14 years since Iso Matsuo’s last original work.  That was Dennou Coil, a great and timeless series from a year that had a preposterous number of them.  When auteurs like Iso and Akane Kazuki finally give you something new, it’s an event of extreme importance for anyone who loves anime as art.

It’s never been 100% clear just how long a project The Orbital Children was going to be.  We know Iso-sensei originally wanted to do a TV series, couldn’t get the funding, and would up re-framing it as a pair of movies.  Netflix ended up signing on (though there will be a Japanese theatrical release), and the total running time wound up at about 190 minutes over six episodes – somewhere between 8 and 9 episodes of TV anime.  That’s actually not as bad as I’d feared (though I’d kill for more).  And while Akane-sensei got 12 eps for Hoshiai no Sora, he actually got the worse deal – because he was promised 24 and stabbed in the back mid-production by the production committee.  At least Iso knew what he had to work with and could frame his script to fit.

Whenever a series gets the Netflix dump treatment, it forces a tough decision on me as a blogger and as a viewer.  I’m not a binger by temperament where TV is concerned, anime or otherwise (though the temptation is so very strong here).  At least Chikyuugai got a worldwide release, so I don’t have to decide whether to blog it before much of my audience can legally see it.  Nevertheless I don’t want this thing to be over in one night – yeah I’ll re-watch it, but I still want to make it last.  So for now, it’s the first two episodes and we’ll see how I feel like playing it from there.

One quality of Iso’s work is that he manages to be ahead of his time, timeless, and a throwback all simultaneously.  His favorite themes are all on glorious display here – technology and its impact on our lives and the secret world of children mainly.  That’s classic anime, and as great as it looks Extraterrestrial Boys and Girls could easily have aired in the 80’s op 90’s.  Children marooned in space is a theme we’ve seen anime utilize often, because it gives the writer a chance for some serious psychological exploration.

The titular children here are aboard an orbital space station in the year 2045.  Technology has certainly advanced from where it is at the moment (more so than it likely will have, I suspect) but all is not bread and roses.  There’s a tension between “Earthers” and those who lived in space – on the moon specifically – including the few born there.  10 of those 15 children died in infancy, and the remainder received an implant in their brains to regulate the hormonal imbalances caused by human growth in zero or minimal gravity.  But those implants were defective, designed by an advanced A.I. called Seven that went rogue and was “euthanised”, taking its technological secrets with it.

It seems as if the decision has been made to recall the remaining lunar residents to Earth, as the current Japanese government is cutting the science and technology budget.  One of them is Sagami Touya (Fujiwara Natsumi, great as always), a 14 year-old deeply resentful of Earthers and their laws (including one to limit AI progression) and a social media celebrity.  He also has a secret online identity of a subversive nature, and harbors deep affection for fellow “moon child” Nanase Konoha Б (Waki Azumi).  Her implant is in even worse shape than his, and Touya has been secretly working on his own – largely, one assumes, to try and figure out how to fix Konoha’s before it’s too late.

The three other children are all winners of a “go to space” contest.  One is Youtuber Misasa Miina (Akasaki Chinatsu), on-board with her little brother (divorced parents) Tanegashima Hiroshi (Kobayashi Yumiko), a Touya (and his secret account) fanboy.  Then there’s Tsukuba Taiyou (Ono Kenshou) – who’s actually a narc, sent by the UN to keep an eye on things and look for violations of its anti-technology laws.   Iso seems to be doing an intentional Dennou Coil homage here to an extent – Touya is rather Daichi-esque and the siblings look quite like Fumie and Akira, and Kobayashi-san even played the otouto in both series.

One thing you know is this: when Iso Matsuo calls colleagues and offers a gig, the answer is pretty much always “what time should I be there?”  The staff list is full of big names like Yoshida Kenichi, Inoue Toshiyuki, Yoshinari Yoh, Ito Hideki, and Ikeda Yusuke (some of whom worked on Dennou Coil, unsurprisingly).  These first two eps look fantastic, full of wonderful details and fantastic cinematography.  And when things go wrong – the result of a comet being illegally towed to Earth for mining being blown up by a nuke and leaving a mess of space debris – things get very creepy and oppressive.  There’s an instinctive terror of dying in space – cold, lack of oxygen – that science-fiction has been tapping into for many decades, and Iso and team do so beautifully here.

All of that is interesting and important, but I think the main reason both Chikyuugai Shounen Shoujo and Dennou Coil work so well is Iso’s unsurpassed authenticity when writing children (the only prominent adult is the memorably-named medic “Nasa Houston“).  He doesn’t romanticize them too much – these pubescents are all annoying in their own way (especially Miina and narc-boy) because, well- kids that age are.  But they’re also not depicted either as miniature adults or as “adults, only stupider” – as real kids tend to be, they’re smart but look at the world differently than adults do.  And their emotions drive them in a more direct way, often to their own frustration.

I could easily have blown through all six episodes in one sitting – I was completely hooked by ten minutes into the first.  But if I’m waiting fourteen years for an Iso Mitsuo original, I’ll be damned if I’m going to blow through it in one night.  Watching The Orbital Children really is being in the presence of greatness, and what anime fan wouldn’t want to savor that experience a little?  Sometimes with creators we admire we’re guilty of inflating expectations to the point where they’re almost impossible to meet, but happily that’s not the case here.  Call it an ONA, a movie, whatever – if the last four eps are as good as the first two, Chikyuugai Shounen Shoujo will surely be some of the best anime we get in 2022.