English Dub Review: The Orbital Children Season One

 

Overview:

In the year 2045, the internet and artificial intelligence have become widespread in outer space. Following a massive accident at a space station, a group of children is left behind. Using narrowband and SNS, low intelligence AI, and smartphone-controlled drones, they overcome numerous crises.

Our Take:

This is a hard show to review. Mainly because it was both really good but also kind of bad. Why exactly is that? Well, kind of like last year’s Godzilla: Singular Point there is a lot of technical jargon that makes zero sense to me and I got lost quite a bit. The last thing you want is to lose your audience.

I do want to praise studio Production +h because according to My Anime List this is their first show ever. So congrats on that but also if there is one thing I had no issues with it was the animation. The zooming through space, the action scenes, and all the zero gravity was animated so amazingly. When I checked the studio I thought there would be a lot of credits for them but to my surprise, there weren’t.

The voice actors were all awesome and well cast but there are three I really need to talk about. First I always love what Cassandra Morris brings to the table. I was a little worried her character wasn’t going to be involved too much after the first episode but luckily her character was pretty prominent after that. She always brings the right amount of quirkiness and cuteness to her performances. Then Abby Trott played one of the most nuanced characters in the whole show. I loved her performance and I don’t think the character would have been the same without her. Finally, we have Tara Sands who played Mina. Or should I say, Mina Mina… MINA! Honestly, the character was constantly live streaming and kind of annoying but in an endearing way. I loved how Tara played the character.

The world of The Orbital Children is really unique and interesting. Touya and Konoha are two of the last children to be born in space and they have some interesting personalities, it makes you wonder what that would be like for humanity and especially children to experience. Mina, her brother Hiroshi, and Taiyo were some children that won the chance to visit the station. There are some really cool twists and turns that set up some really cool things I don’t want to spoil but you won’t be disappointed with how these events play out.

Really the only bad thing is how it ends. It definitely sets up more things and with it only being six episodes it felt more like it should have been a twelve-episode series. With how well Netflix has handled its animated properties I am hopeful that this will get a second season or something but for now, it just feels a little unfinished.