Mitsuo Iso’s new anime The Orbital Children dares you to believe in a better future

polygon.com:

Among casual anime fans, Mitsuo Iso may not be a name that leaps out with the same force of recognition as someone like Hayao Miyazaki, Hideaki Anno, or Shinichirō Watanabe. But you most certainly would recognize his work as an animator on such seminal anime series and films as FLCL, Ghost in the Shell, Neon Genesis Evangelion, RahXephon (where he made his debut as an episode director), and Blood the Last Vampire. His resume includes some of the most forward-thinking and technologically interesting anime of mid-’90s to early aughts, qualities which would go on to influence his critically acclaimed (yet criminally underseen) 2007 anime Den-noh Coil. Nearly 15 years since his last original production, Iso has returned with The Orbital Children, a new six-part original anime series available to stream on Netflix – and it was absolutely worth the wait.

Iso’s latest centers on a group of five children in 2045 whose lives are brought together by a quirk of fate in the wake of a disaster. Touya, a taciturn 14-year-old hacker living aboard a commercial space station called the Anshin, is one of two of the last living children born off-Earth following a catastrophe that forced humanity to retreat from colonizing the stars. Along with Konoha, his terminally ill childhood friend, Touya has been born with an artificial implant in his brain that impairs his ability to safely continue living in space, further fueling his complicated resentment for humanity and Earth. Following the arrival of Mina, Hiroshi, and Taiyo; three Earth-born children visiting the Anshin, the station is caught in a collision with a shower of meteor debris. While working to find a way of escaping the station unharmed, the children inadvertently find themselves