The Orbital Children

In 2045, a comet strikes a newly opened Japanese commercial space station in geocentric orbit. When that happens, three gifted children are on a sponsored visit to the station as a promotional event. The station also houses the last two children born in a later destroyed colony on the Moon. The pair, living in low gravity, are undergoing physical therapy with the aim of emigrating to Earth.

Isolated from most of the station’s adult staff, the children navigate the early stages of the disaster using local narrowband connections, restricted-intelligence AGI and drones controlled by dermal devices equivalent to smartphones.[2][3][4] Their Internet connection is severed, the oxygen supply has been cut off, and they soon discover that the station has been damaged by an impact and is leaking air. Sometimes at odds with each other, they confront difficulties such as decompression, EVA with inadequate plastic suits, and runaway micromachines[5] supposedly designed to retrieve water from comets. Looming over these immediate difficulties is the larger threat of a technological singularity believed to have been narrowly averted in the previous decade.

Touya Sagami (相模 登矢, Sagami Tōya)

Voiced by: Natsumi Fujiwara (Japanese); Griffin Burns[6] (English)

The main character and a 14-year-old “edgelord” hacker. One of the first and last human children born on the Moon, the most famous of these “moonchildren”, Touya despises Earthlings and is in turn disgusted by their unwarranted prejudices. He flouts UN restrictions, especially in regard to his personal drone, which he has named Darkness Killer or Dakky (ダッキー, Dakkī) for short.

Konoha Б Nanase (七瀬・Б・心葉, Nanase Bē Konoha)

Voiced by: Azumi Waki (Japanese); Cassandra Lee Morris[7] (English)

14-year-old girl who is Touya's childhood friend. She is even weaker than Touya and accompanied by a medical drone called Medi, which measures her heart rate and breathing. Konoha sometimes feels the image of someone speaking to her, and has a vague nostalgia for it.

Taiyo Tsukuba (筑波 大洋, Tsukuba Taiyō)

Voiced by: Kensho Ono (Japanese); Adam McArthur[8] (English)

14-year-old boy who is a junior UN2.1 official, a white-hat hacker patrolling for illegal activities with a personal drone named Bright. He treats everyone politely with a soft demeanor, but his sense of justice is so strong that he sometimes takes a fierce attitude. He came to Anshin through Deegle's underage space experience campaign.

Mina Misasa (美笹 美衣奈, Misasa Mīna)

Voiced by: Chinatsu Akasaki (Japanese); Tara Sands[9] (English)

14-year-old influencer who calls herself a Space Tuber (宇宙（そら）チューバー) and aims to have 100 million followers on SNS. She constantly talks to her followers in an idol-like manner, but once the Internet goes down, she panics. She dislikes space, but sees it as an opportunity to gain followers, so she visits the space station Anshin in Deegle's underage space experience campaign. Mina has a pink heart-shaped drone called Selfie, specialized for live streaming video.

Hiroshi Tanegashima (種子島 博士, Tanegashima Hiroshi)

Voiced by: Yumiko Kobayashi (Japanese); Colleen O'Shaughnessey[10] (English)

12-year-old boy who is the younger brother of Mina, though their family names are different due to their parents' divorce. He is on his way to Anshin with his sister, and unlike her, he loves space. He is a big fan of the space-born Touya in particular, and is well versed in various conspiracy theories.

Nasa Houston (那沙・ヒューストン, Nasa Hyūsuton)

Voiced by: Mariya Ise (Japanese); Abby Trott[11] (English)

A 21-year-old staffer on the space station Anshin. Houston, who dislikes children, is a reluctant nurse and caregiver to Touya and Konoha, attending to the children invited by Deegle’s campaign and later found to be in the John Doe group. Houston’s hobby is to read the Seven Poem for clues about the future. Her name is similar to the space agency NASA.

Mayor Sagami (相模 市長, Sagami Shichō)

Mayor of Anshin City and Touya's uncle who took in him after his parents died. He has Touya undergo physical therapy to help him withstand gravity in order to get him to Earth.

Isako Darmstadt Nobeyama (野辺山・ダルムシュタット・伊佐子, Nobeyama Darumushutatto Isako)

She is an operator on Anshin and a good friend of Nasa.

Kennedy Uchinoura Johnson (ジョンソン・内之浦・ケネディ, Jonson Uchinoura Kenedī)

He is an operator on Anshin. He is a Harvard graduate, but is rather a musclebrain.

Anshinkun (あんしんくん, Anshin-kun, lit.Mr. Anshin)

A mascot character of Anshin, created and played by Kokubunji, the original chief designer of Anshin before Deegle took over the project. Kokubunji now struggles with old age and dementia.

Twelve

An Advanced general-purpose quantum AI installed on Anshin as its host AI. Its intelligence is limited by the lessons learned from the Lunatic Seven incident but it follows the same ordinal nomenclature.

The Orbital Children takes place in an original setting where commercial development on Mars began in the 2010s. In 2045, the United States and China are aiming for the Moon and Jupiter, while Japan is conducting its development at a relatively safe distance in low Earth orbit.

Anshin (あんしん, Anshin, lit.relief, safety)

The fourth commercial space station in the world, in geocentric orbit at 350 km from the ground. Designed as a space hotel, Anshin is the first station in history to allow minors to live temporarily in space. It was built by Japan, but due to difficulties in design and funding, it is privately operated by Deegle. There are automated shops, restaurants and Internet access like on Earth. As its name suggests, Anshin is marketed with safety as a major selling point.

Deegle

An American technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products. It is also ambitious in space development. Its branding resembles that of Google.

John Doe

A mysterious international hacker group that exists on the Internet.

Seven

A decommissioned AI that is said to have reached the highest level of intelligence in history, which happened in the 2030s. It made numerous inventions in Seven Technologies but was destroyed when it fell into an uncontrollable state.

Lunatic Seven incident

The last phase of Seven’s existence, when it went out of human control. The details have not been revealed. Products developed by Seven in its uncontrolled state caused accidents. The UN considered this to be a critical situation.

The Seven Poem

A mass of data produced by Seven in its Lunatic state. Though it is not literally a poem, its format is cryptic. A semi-religious fringe, including Nasa Houston, interpret the data as prophetic. The majority sees it as occult nonsense.

Intelligence limiter

A means of limiting AI functionality, itself designed by AI and is widely deployed under the laws of UN2.1, which there are 26 limiters in total. It is against the law for an unauthorized person to remove a limiter, as this would risk a repetition of the Lunatic Seven incident.

UN2.1

The United Nations (UN), upgraded for the AI age. The UN believes that the rise in intelligence of AI should be controlled by humans.

Moonchild

The term for the 15 children born on the moon. Of the 15, only Touya and Konoha have survived, because of implants designed by Seven. Moonchild implants counteracted conditions unexpectedly adverse to infants. Most of the 15 never got the implants, while those who did instead died in puberty when the implants partially dissolved, became toxic and a medical liability in their own right.

Oniqlo

A manufacturer of commercial space-survival pressure suits, which are not EVA rated. The name and logo are very similar to the Japanese Uniqlo clothing company.

PeerCom

A fictional technology based on Peer-to-peer networking that allows communication devices nearby to connect directly to each other without going through the Internet. It has become widespread in this world. It is similar to Bluetooth in some aspects.

Smart

Next-generation wearable device to replace smartphones. The screen and computer is worn on the palm and back of the hand, making it look as if the hand has become a smartphone. There is a printed type and an old-fashioned sticker type. In the printed type, the micro-machine self-organizes and makes circuits, which gradually decrease in number, and when they can no longer be activated, the user has them printed again.[12]

Telada

Solid-state battery systems, able to recharge electronics and run emergency systems. Design and logo is similar to Tesla, specifically like that of the Tesla Powerwall.

The film's production was announced on May 20, 2018, followed by the announcement on October 27, 2020, that production started on a full-scale and that the film would be released in early 2022, with investment from Avex Pictures, Asmik Ace and others.[13][14] Signal.MD was originally attached to animate the project, but its production was temporarily suspended. Then Production +h, a new studio established by Fuminori Honda with personal debt after he left Signal.MD, took over the project.[15][16][17] It was later revealed that the film is split into two parts, with the first part premiering on January 28, 2022, and the second part premiering on February 11, 2022.[18]

The project began at the beginning of 2014.[19] Mitsuo Iso, who has been discussing his next work with Avex Pictures producer Tomohiko Iwase for several years, began writing a proposal after watching the film Gravity and realizing that "Space = Science Fiction" no longer the case.[19][20][21] Iso then invited Kenichi Yoshida to create his new work in 2016 and showed him over a dozen candidate projects, and he immediately chose this work.[22] Yoshida was not so much involved in the scenario creation itself, but Iso decided on many aspects, including the roles of the characters, based on his reactions.[23][24]

Iso wanted to make an original work of juvenile fiction, but a completely new and original project in that genre has a very high hurdle to clear in Japan.[19][20] Therefore, Iwase decided to make it for the whole world, thinking that there was still a demand for it overseas.[20]

In the production process, Iso first decided whether to adopt the idea that had flashed in his mind, after listening to the opinions of the experts in charge of scientific research.[25] Since this was an entertainment work, the minimum basic rules were followed, but priority was given to fun rather than realism in the adoption of the idea.[25] Finally, Iso took the opposite of the usual approach of linking ideas together before building the story in order to make the most of all the ideas that were adopted.[25] The script took about five years of meetings alone, and Iso wrote about 100 different draft variations.[20] The fundamentals of the story have not changed, but the initial plot was about a comet crashing into the earth and only 50 children on a school trip to a space station survived, and in the end they emigrated to the moon, and the main characters were Tōya and Nasa, who was the same age as him.[19][26] However, this was a 20th century story, and it is now the 21st century, and since dystopian science fiction has already been produced so many times, Iso decided it was time to create a bright future.[26][27]

Iso engaged in almost all jobs except sound, including scriptwriting, storyboarding, key frame checking, CG, VFX, and cinematography.[17][20]

Open source 3DCG software "blender" was used for CG drawing, but it was used more as a support for hand-drawing, both digital and analog.[28]

Since this work has only six episodes for various reasons, it is overwhelmingly short on time, and many scenes in the scenario were cut.[21] In order to fit into the 3-hour film size, the events before the incident of Episode 1 and daily life in space, etc. were omitted, and a number of important scenes, especially at the end of the story, both narratively and thematically, were cut.[21][24] Although the story is complete, Iso said that if given a chance, he would love to release the original "director's cut" version.[26][29]

• Official website (in Japanese)
• The Orbital Children on Twitter (in Japanese)
• Mitsuo Iso's "Extra-Terrestrial Boys & Girls" on Twitter (in Japanese)
• The Orbital Children on Netflix
• The Orbital Children (film) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia