Moonrise Review
Director: Masashi Koizuka
Date Created: 2025-04-10 16:30
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Moonrise Review: This Japanese anime series ć ć¼ć³ć©ć¤ćŗ is directed and written by Masashi Koizuka, and the story comes from Tow Ubukataās original work. There are 18 episodes in this series, each being 25 minutes long, so it won’t take too long for you to finish watching the whole series. Among the voice actors are YĆ»to Uemura as Phil Ash, Chiaki Kobayashi as Jack Shadow, Kosuke Takaguchi as Osma, Satoshi Yamaguchi as Duan, Arisa Sekine as Windy Sylph, Yuka Terasaki as Zowan and others.
Moonrise Review
The Moonrise anime series story is set in the future, where Earth is run by a powerful computer system Sapientia. Sapientia determines peace on Earth by sending all the criminals and pollution to the Moon. Life on earth is, therefore is peaceful, but life on the Moon is very hard. The people there are poor and angry. Earth and Moon start fighting. Jack Shadow, the main character, joins the Earthās army after members of his family are killed in a bombing. At this point, he wants revenge. But once he reaches the Moon, he starts to discover that things are not so simple.
First of all, the animation is amazing. Any of the Moon and world scenes are breathtaking, especially the Moon thing that used to open each episode. Wit Studio did an excellent job in every aspect. All of it was very clean and smooth, including the character designs too. It was fun just looking at the screen.
Another thing I enjoyed was the underlying idea of the story. It’s not about just fighting wars. It’s meant to show how some people are hurt terribly in order for others, entirely new generations, to live comfortably when they didn’t have anything to do with it. I liked to study whether the story made me right or wrong.
However, although the Moonrise Japanese series has beautiful animation and music, its plot makes me very confused at times. It is not at all simple how the story progresses. It skips between the present and the past, and it even goes into dreams or memories here and there. So it was hard for me to fully grasp the continuing sequences, especially in the middle episodes. I had to go back and watch again in order to avoid missing something.
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I felt like the story got distracted too often. In the beginning, it very much established a strong storyāA man out for revenge who gradually finds out what really happened. But as the show went on, too many side characters and subplots sneaked in. Several were even unnecessary. There was also that curious love triangle, which did not have the least bearing on the story itself. I wished the show had concentrated just on Jack and his journey.
Another thing that bothered me was the slow tempo. Even though the episodes are short, there’s a bit where it feels like the story is not going anywhere. I would be waiting for something really big to happen, but then the episode ends without much headway. I think 18 episodes was far too long. This same story could have been told in 10 or 12 episodes if it had been tightly written.
In the heavy-handed filler department, Netflix’s animated series Moonrise had parts that just didnāt fit the bill at all. For example, those whole sentences of scientific explanation about what things are like on the Moon carefully surf the line between being good and bad prose. For this reason, my personal preference is not to write such in. I love sci-fi and all, but I also feel that itās okay to let the viewer imagine a bit too.
Summing Up
On the whole, Netflix’s Moonrise series is a show with both merits and drawbacks. I really want to adore this thing as it’s fresh, and potentially, it could have been very good. But because the messy storytelling causes a torpid pace, I can’t totally enjoy it. At one time, I had some sad moments, for example, when Jack begins to question what he’s doing. But these were overshadowed, and asides piled on. If there is a second season, I hope the story stays focused and doesn’t again wander in so many unnecessary directions.
The Moonrise 2025 series is now streaming on Netflix.
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