Orb: On the Movements of the Earth

So this is a Fall 2024 anime and I just finished it like 2 weeks ago, long overdue. For some reason I took two big breaks while watching it, and that's going to affect my review because I'm starting to forget things about it already lmao.

One thing I can remember though, is that my opinions on this anime have actually been a whirlwind since the beginning. The approach it takes with no true main character is interesting, as well as making the choice of having the "villain" outlast the protagonists for most of the series.

The quick summary of the plot is as follows - we follow an everchanging group of protagonists through their journey for the truth, specifically them questioning geocentrism and trying to prove heliocentrism. The show is set in the 15th century in Poland. Hijinks with the church ensue.

Before I continue, I want to bring up someone else's review I read on MAL when the show was at around episode 2-3. Usually I tend to not read what people are thinking about the things I'm watching in the moment but this negative review caught my eye and it's very tied into the whole setting and how the story was executed. This show isn't historically accurate, and the reviewer was really pissed off about it, I remember he was going off about how the heliocentrism was never really treated this way by the church and the show is just grossly inaccurate and so on. And yea, I agree with that statement. Often times certain things about the past get flanderized and I have no doubts it probably happened with this topic too. However, I think the anime did a good job of not falling into the pitfall of historical inaccuracy/pure fanfiction by explicitly stating that it's pretty much just a self contained microcosm in which that specific (fictional) church/town is approaching the topic of heliocentrism, effectively making it so that reality in which the show is happening could very much be the reality we live in. I think it's a neat enough way of setting a show in our reality while making it fictional but not painfully so. It's also a way of making the protagonists kind of insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and I like that. Not everyone is important and the clear focus in this anime was on the journey and the idea, not on the characters themselves. Anyway, I wonder if that reviewer continued watching and how he felt when that revelation was made. I went back to try and find his review but I think it was deleted lmao.

Beyond this, I don't have toooo many good things to say about this anime. I really disliked the constant dark scenes. I also read somewhere that they were going for "realism", but realistically the moon light and night stars bring a lot more light during the night than it's shown in this anime. I don't like staring at a black screen for solid 15 out of 20 minutes lmfao. Despite this show being a seinen more catered to adult audiences, I didn't find it as poignant as it wanted to be. A lot of reviews will have you believe this is an extremely philosophical and hard to digest anime but... it's really not... However, I really liked the plot thread with Jolenta and Nowak. Out of all storylines that one was executed the best and it's the highlight of the anime for me. The rest of the characters didn't leave too much of an impact.