Orb: On the Movements of the Earth

Episode 17

After last week's dalliance with heists and action, Orb returns to its intellectual roots with an episode focusing on our other new protagonist, Draka. She's not the first person I'd compare to Oczy, but she shares two important qualities with him: she's thoughtful and scared. Oczy's fear was existential and cosmic, which simultaneously attracted and repelled him from religion. Draka's fear, on the other hand, is rooted in the loss of her father at an early age. In mourning, she vowed to never experience that pain again, but that drove her to a different god: Mammon.

All my friends wish our country were more socialist, and here's Draka, who wishes her communist nomadic tribe were more capitalist. It makes sense if we look at the big picture. Just as Earth can't move freely about the solar system, so too can a person not extricate themselves from society. Draka is a go-getter. She's young, inquisitive, and restless, and that's a potent combination for rejecting the norms around you, whatever those norms are. And she's not aimlessly rebellious either. Per their village chief, her ideas have made their economy much safer and more reliable for the whole population. But her motivations are fundamentally selfish, and that makes her want more. She covets a sum of money that will eradicate her fear once and for all, and that's a number that does not exist.

We can trace Draka's proclivities to her uncle, who is similarly smart and self-centered. He's someone who knows how to blend in and say the right words to coast along and do their own thing on the sly. Her uncle's vices of choice are booze and books. He's the first person in the show to bring up the subject of atheism. Talk about a cool uncle! However, when he broaches the subject to assuage Draka, it's not really about the tenets and philosophy of not believing in God. He instead instills in her the values and virtues of questioning the world in pursuit of truth. That's the fundamental motivation at the very heart of Orb's narrative. Unfortunately, both Draka and her uncle come away with flawed conclusions after their inward interrogations. Draka tunnel-visions on the accumulation of capital. God might not be real, but money sure is. Even the Church knows the importance of money. Meanwhile, her uncle concludes that survival comes before anything else—prolonging his life is the only truth that matters. Both of them made the same mistake, which was not looking at the aforementioned bigger picture.

Draka's discovery of the heretical text is her big turning point this week. Orb actually does something quite clever or insufferable here, depending on your tolerance for puns. Remember the series' Japanese title and its multiple meanings? In this case, you could say that Draka followed chi (the trail of blood into the house) to learn the chi (truth) about the chi (earth). And it's very funny that, after having her mind blown by astronomy, Draka's thoughts immediately pivot to profit. We stan a nomadic capitalist queen.

Her conjectures are extremely relevant to the story. She quickly concludes that the main logistic issue with selling the book would be making enough copies to allow it to get popular in the first place. For most of recorded history, this was the limiting factor of all scholarship. Therefore, the story of heliocentrism and religion intertwines with another development around the same time: the printing press. That invention, as well as the subsequent proliferation of books throughout Europe, was vital to the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries. I think it would be appropriate for Orb to pull this into its narrative as it approaches its conclusion, and I hope it follows through.

My last note for the week is that I'm happy for the confirmation that the heretical book is indeed Oczy's and that it is indeed titled Orb: On the Movements of the Earth. This name makes it parallel with Copernicus' treatise on heliocentrism, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (note the “orbium” in there), which has been translated into English as On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. That's not to say that Oczy is secretly Orb's version of Copernicus. I think Oczy remains who he's always been: a wise person with an unvarnished gaze, who saw a chance to help the world and took it. Now, it looks like it's up to Draka to carry that legacy, whether she likes it or not.

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Orb: On the Movements of the Earth is currently streaming on Netflix.

Steve is on Bluesky now, and he's okay with that. He is busy pondering the orb. You can also catch him chatting about trash and treasure alike on This Week in Anime.