Interest Stacks

In America, the anime sadly never took off as intended due to music licensing issues, low sales of the released DVD sets, and being released at the tail end of America's anime boom, which was still mostly dominated by action series (shonen, magical girl, mecha, seinen and mon series). Its overly kid-friendly aesthetic in contrast to the other shoujo series that was shown at the time, and being cel-animated at a time when that form of animation had been phased out possibly contributed to the series being ignored by the mainstream. However, it's thanks to those very same things along with having a surprisingly good English dub, and the announcement of Discotek acquiring the distribution rights of the series and re-releasing it that has recently given the anime a small uptick in popularity in the US.

This Is the Classic Example of a Anime Get Threatened as a Generic Run-of the Mill Fantasy Anime by Animation Age Ghetto Despite Goblin Slayer Contain Grizzly Violence.

Osamu Tezuka While he's considered nothing less than the God of Comics, a good amount of hardcore anime and manga fans who might have encyclopedic knowledge of 2000s anime only associate his name with Astro Boy. And since its main target audience is children, "mature" anime fans don't look further. Interesting example of Animation Age Ghetto among people who defy this.

Even though the TV series can get kind of bloody and thematically heavy in the later episodes of each season, and it was infamously one of the series featured in the "Best of Japanese Anime II" video subscription which touted itself as being "for mature audiences only", Enoki Films lists the target audience as kids 8-12. In Japan, the first three seasons even aired in the same timeslot as Hamtaro and reruns of all five seasons of the TV anime play on kids channels like Cartoon Network in Japan.

Pretty Cure isn't exactly hated internationally but it's not half as popular of a magical girl franchise as it is in Japan. In Japan it is an absolute powerhouse of a Cash-Cow Franchise and the most iconic magical girl series out there being even more popular than the likes of Sailor Moon. Outside of Japan it has a fairly devoted and sizable following amongst magical girl fans but is seen by mainstream anime fans as "just another magical girl anime". The series suffers from Girl-Show Ghetto (ironically, one of the franchise's main goals is to avert this trope) as well as most of the series being unavailable outside of Japan, thus English speakers are more likely to have seen Tokyo Mew Mew or Sailor Moon than most Pretty Cure series. There are exceptions though. For example, Italy absolutely adores the franchise. English speaking audiences did have some dubbed experiences of Pretty Cure (the original series (not aired in US), and Smile and Doki Doki (under the title Glitter Force), but they weren't very well received for various reasons, unlike America's attempt with Toei's other Tokusatsu franchise. Other English speakers dislike it because of Sweetness Aversion.

This and Fushigi Yuugi were given an "Appropriate for all ages" rating by Animax Asia thanks to the Animation Age Ghetto. Yes, because the gritty world of modelling and a high school girl being courted by an adult man is totally family friendly material.

Averted in The United States and Europe where the manga was rated "Older Teen/16+", however played painfully straight in South and Southeast Asia. When the anime aired in that part of the world in the mid-2000s, it was classed as "appropriate for children/all ages" thanks to the Animation Age Ghetto. This resulted in a generation of kids being squicked and traumatized because they were exposed to graphic sexual material at an age when they were too young to witness it. And the original manga was published on a Shojo magazine.

And let's not mention the "omg Castle in the Sky should be Castle Laputa". This was changed because "Laputa" happens to resemble the phrase "La Puta", which means "The Whore" in Spanish, a language that more people in North America are likely to understand than in Japan. What would you think if you saw a film on shelves that was called "Castle The Whore"? Would the Animation Age Ghetto cause you to think it's a stupid cartoon kids should be watching, or would you actually wonder why the hell it's called "Castle The Whore" when it's pretty PG-rated (at worst)?

Anyone that tells you Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, Naruto, One Piece, Yu-Gi-Oh!, or Tokyo Mew Mew were shows for teens or adults that were "kiddified" by their English dubs. These are all, in fact, shows for children, general audiences, or at most young teens. Sometimes these complaints are justified, such as only airing Sailor Moon during timeslots for pre-schoolers or severely censoring the content, but sometimes they seem to stem from a mutation of the Animation Age Ghetto in which the fan doesn't want to admit they're watching a kids' show. This could also stem from the difference in cultures between what Japan/whatever country permits in Japanese kids' shows, when there's usually no way they'd appear in many Western shows made for the same age group.

It's no doubt that The Vision of Escaflowne really wouldn't fit on a Fox Kids timeslot, but some people actually find the dub's theme song to be better than the original. When said about a soundtrack by Yoko Kanno? This is quite impressive.

The fastest and simpler way to summarize this anime, and from astronomi experts it's also unavoidable, is simply by recognizing that it's only and purely ideology, childish, bad digested, moldy and thoughtless ideology, a hollow husk that echoes the emptiness from Uoto's(author) mind. A work without quiddity, why someone should even bother watching this crap? Everything in "Orb" conveys in the most artificial and robotic way to transmit the author's own philodoxy.

Characters look like the most annoying and lifeless npcs from any AAA cashgrab games, they are homunculi from an apprentice alchemist(such a mess that not even the immaturity of Elric brothers could produce), never attaining vivacity, the dialogues could easily be mistaken from Dragon Age Veilguard or something similar, there is no real development neither in the setting nor in the personalities, characters just move from point A to B following the volition of their creator meanwhile rehearsing big speeches for the audience(often being very boring monologues), empty speeches thrown to the wind meaning absolutely nothing, like some sophistic babling just dropping names and terms to look smart but really without any substance.

Is not delve much further in the historical inaccuracies, honestly I can only hope for the people who really loved this to research on its own and see what is lacking, but I'll have to point briefly that is at least very awkward that a show that tries so hard to commit through its speeches about themes such as the "truth", being grounded on a fraudulent view of medieval history. Every polish friend of mine that happened to watch "Orb" felt personally offended, for me it was only a disappointment but not a surprise. Okay, it's not a documentary, but given its limitations, the lack of verisimilitude, all the previous failures mentioned above, truly a monstrosity without a soul(something so grotesque and so bland as a Golem), the show fails miserably being entertainment too.

The plot ends up being very clunky, the mindset of the characters are way too "bazinga", seriously, any random dude walking down the street with a shirt written "I fucking love science" could be in this show, that being said at first the author seems to want to spare some vague notion of faith while sticking with that very poor and flanderized criticism of institutional religion, but later in some kind of quid pro quo the people fighting against the church in pursuit of "truth" turned into some other sect, as if now there is a new breed of saints and martyrs of this newly created odd secular religion whose god is Heliocentrism.

Maybe this is not the epitome of the failed anime industry but is certainly a clear signal of its downgrade, very weird that it was produced by Madhouse, if this was 20 years ago it would never be accepted even in the shitiest doghole studio given both the horrible art of the manga and even worse plot, for the audience to accept something or anything it will always be somehow understandable even more considering the Overton Window, but it is really a mistery to me on how anime was so ruined after 2010. To conclude this review, I would like to be helpful and recommend Galaxy Express 999 for anyone who is truly interested in astronomy.