The Fall 2024 Anime Preview Guide

Orb: On the Movements of the Earth

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In fifteenth-century Europe, heretics are being burned at the stake. Rafal, a brilliant young man, is expected to enter university at an early age and study the era's most important field, theology. But Rafal values Reason above all else, which leads him both to the shocking conclusion that the Earth orbits the Sun, and into the hands of the Inquisition!

A decade later, two members of the Watch Guild, the dour young Oczy and the cynical Gras, find a hidden stone chest that details the secrets of the universe Rafal left behind. Dare they try to change their own stars by selling the heretical texts, or would that only lead to the stake and the fire?

Orb: On the Movements of the Earth is based on the manga series by Uoto. The anime series is streaming on Netflix on Saturdays.

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Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

It's amazing how many horrible acts have been committed in the name of religion. The Inquisition is a prime example, and Orb: On the Movement of the Earth doesn't shy away from showing it. The opening moments show an inquisitor using a choke pear (alternatively called a “pear of anguish” or a “Spanish pear”) to break someone's jaw, a scene followed by the graphic ripping out of someone's fingernails. Later in the first episode, we see a man being burned to death, while in the second episode, the pear makes a return. At this point, two monks who travel with the inquisitor marvel at the fact that he's a layperson, wondering how a former mercenary, a man with blood on his hands, could possibly do the Lord's work. It's a brilliant bit of irony.

Set in “the Kingdom of P” (so totally not Poland) in the late Medieval/early Renaissance period, Orb does for heliocentrism what Vinland Saga does for Vikings. It's a clearly researched period piece following the harrowing journey of scientists dogged by a religious organization and the various ways said organization attempted to stamp out what it saw as a threat to itself. (That would be “the C religion,” which isn't coy at all.) It's also brutal as all get out, and if I hadn't read the manga and known what was coming, I would have had to turn the episode off immediately.

But it's hard to deny that Orb is telling an interesting story. Our protagonist (for now) is Rafal, a young orphan taken in by a priest named Potocki, who would like to see his intelligent charge go to university and devote himself to the Church. Rafal, however, has an interest in astronomy, and that's only solidified when Potocki tries to do a good deed by taking in a supposedly reformed heretic named Hubert. Hubert, of course, teaches Rafal about the theory of heliocentrism, which blows Rafal's mind…and makes a lot of sense when he stops being afraid to think about it. Hubert essentially sets Rafal on the path to science while also reminding him that this road is very likely to lead to death, which ought to remind us not to get too attached to anybody.

In the case of Nowak, the inquisitor, that's remarkably easy. Nowak is the worst humanity has to offer, yawning at the scene of an execution because the victim is taking too long to die, casually using his pear of anguish to get a child's ball out of a tree, and then proclaiming how he can't ignore a crying child while torturing said child's father. His bloody sleeves show that he really doesn't care about what he's doing, or at the very least, doesn't think that it's wrong, and that may be the scariest thing of all. Honestly, these episodes were far more terrifying than anything in Uzumaki.

Orb isn't going to be an easy watch. It has no guaranteed good ending, much less a happy one. Its art isn't particularly attractive, and the one character guaranteed to stick around is incredibly hateable. But if you like history and prefer it not to be glossed over, I'd definitely recommend checking this out.