They’re not exactly stealing the moon, but they are liberating it.
What They Say:
In a not-too-distant future, humanity has established a loosely organized world government with everything managed by an international AI network called Sapientia. People live peaceful lives by loyally obeying its rational decisions. However, Sapientia’s lunar development project, which sends criminals and pollutants to the Moon to maintain Earth’s peace, creates disparity and poverty on the Moon, sparking a catalyst for war. Jacob “Jack” Shadow gets caught up in this conflict after losing his family to a terrorist bombing by the Moon’s rebel army. Vowing revenge, Jack joins the Earth army as a scout on the Moon, only to discover an unexpected leader among the resistance forces.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
I’m always somewhat wary of Netflix anime projects for a few reasons but my curiosity inevitably draws me in. Moonrise does what I don’t like in dropping a complete eighteen-episode run at once because it’s just kind of overwhelming and kills weekly discussion. But this is a big project that I do think works best binged, even if I’m not doing that. Based on the novel by Tow Ubukata, it’s certainly a passion project as it’s written and directed by Koizuka Masashi, who worked on a ton of Attack on Titan and several other projects, including The One Piece. It’s also from Wit Studio, which means it looks pretty slick across the board, but part of that is just adjusting to what it’s trying to convey with its style and getting into its rhythm. There are still things in so many anime projects that I wish they wouldn’t bother with 3DCG for and just animate it traditionally so that it blends better, and that happens a lot in science fiction anime.
I will say that this series is one that’s definitely best to watch at least the first two episodes together before making any real decisions on it. The structure of the first couple of episodes are a bit rough as it moves back and forth in time a bit, and the opening action sequence doesn’t actually engage you all that much. The general premise behind the series is that we’re in a distant future where mankind has built a space elevator that allows for travel not just to orbit but an additional connector series of rings that lets people go to the moon easily. There are a lot of people on the moon, and an elevator there that goes deep underground to Copernicus City. It’s not a rinkydink situation in the first years of setup but something long established. And there are, as always, tensions between Earth and the Moon as you have a military presence by Earth and a number of folks on the Moon resentful of how they feel like they don’t have much control over their own destiny.
It’s not presented until the second episode, but we learn that there’s been a plan for well over a decade to liberate the moon that’s ostensibly being led by Bob Skylum. Skylum is working with a number of children in order to make them into the people he needs to achieve this and we see this through the friends Jack and Phil. They live a normal but separate life on the moon being trained in a lot of things but not explicitly about revolution or anything – though it’s seeded there. We get a good look at their lives and friendship in this sizable group in the second episode but everything gets upended when something happens to their base and the pair discover that they’re actually on one of several ships in space. That their lives have been manipulated and they’ve been lied to is a huge shock and that has them in the chaos, and seeing other disturbing realities, that they have to escape. Especially when Skylum, who they view as their father, has seemingly gone a bit mad.
It’s chaotic but Jack is able to be sent to Earth in an escape pod, but it’s kind of grisly. When he and Phil were escaping, Jack lost an arm along the way and just before leaving, Phil has his own arm sliced off and reattached to Jack so that a part of him will always be with him even as Phil opts not to escape. It’s just a messy situation, but we see how Jack ends up surviving reentry to Earth and is discovered by the Shadow family, who take him in. That takes us back to near the beginning of the first episode, where we’re introduced to Jack as a college kid close to graduating who is part of this very wealthy family that has been invested and charged with a lot of the tech involving the elevator and moving humanity into the future. There are seemingly a number of adoptive children in this family and the dynamic we get for them as they all get together at the family home as they prepare to go out to an event ship near the space elevator in the nearby bay for an event is fun. You get archetypes to be sure but it sets a lot of the things in motion for the family dynamics, and it quickly humanizes a lot of them.
This all takes us back to a lot of family light drama and all as everyone gets together to celebrate a corporate event, but it’s also when Skylum launches its attack which has a deep moment with Jack as it unfolds. His seemingly being visited in his mind by Phil, who has aged as he has, confuses him but then the orbital part of the space elevator breaks apart and falls to the planet. This leads to a lot of great chaos and material planetside as over the next two weeks we see the destruction and fallout, and how when Jack wakes up from being unconscious, he can’t get in touch with anyone and is now finding himself being blamed by the military for what happened. And at the same time, Skylum and his people have captured more and more of the Moon and are cementing their control of it, adding to the larger tensions.
I get the appeal when writing projects like this to do the back-and-forth approach to storytelling but sometimes I wish it was just told in a linear manner for the setup at least. You can introduce more backstory later, but if this had gone in a linear fashion it would have been a lot more engaging and interesting. That it starts with an event at least a year after the destruction of the orbital element of the space elevator, and is just action, did not enamor me to the show as I was close to calling it quits just from that. But once it shifted back a year and got into the characters, I was pretty engaged. But then it delves into Jack’s past that he does seemingly remember now which goes back twelve or more years or so, and has you wonder if it came up before and, if so, why nobody took it seriously. I really liked the backstory but if we had started there I would have felt even more invested in his story in the present through the accident and then into the action sequence as he and others are now going to the Moon to liberate it from the liberators. I mean, terrorists. It’s just structurally not something I enjoy but the actual material and the scenes themselves are really quite fun and enjoyable.
In Summary:
The nature of dropping an eighteen-episode anime series at once is a kind of frustrating thing, and is exactly why it’ll get lost among “hardcore” fandom but may do well among those that more casually watch anime on Netflix. Perhaps it’ll get a weekly broadcast run in Japan in the future and I do see myself watching more of it, but it’s the kind of thing where it has to fit into a schedule because it’s not a scheduled show. And the further you get away from its release the less inclined a lot of people are to watch and keep working through it.
All of that said, I do think it’s a really strong production with some great things to work with. I can easily see it being billed as in the vein of The Expanse with what it’s going, but just on a smaller scale. The basic concepts here are interesting, the characters work pretty well once you get past the opening action sequence, and while you have to throw in a healthy suspension of disbelief for some of the science fiction concepts, that’s a given for enjoying something like this and just chalking it up to “science solved it” and moving forward. It’s a slick-looking production with appealing character designs and the kind of science fiction storytelling I wish we’d see more of. Definitely looking forward to more – at some point.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Netflix
