© 魚豊/小学館/チ。 ―地球の運動について—製作委員会
Alas, poor Rafal. We hardly know you. Now it's Oczy's turn to be the center of attention, though he'd rather cower from that attention than let a single strand of his hair be illuminated by it. He's a very different protagonist, to put it mildly. Rafal is a privileged prodigy, a scrappy realist, and an inquisitive young man who eventually finds his convictions and pays the price for them. Occy, on the other hand, is a gloomy sword-for-hire who fears both God and the afterlife in equal measure, but he also finds no solace in his material existence. These guys have almost nothing in common. So what is our continuation? Why did Orb take such a drastic turn?
According to the plot, the connective tissue is clearly visible. Last week's preview and this week's final scene set up Oczy and Gras' meeting with Rafal's secret star rankings. However, thematically (and more importantly), I'd say the clear differences between Rafal and Occy are key. We already know the story of people like Rafal. Under other circumstances, he might have grown up into a Copernicus-like figure, who helped bring heliocentrism into the annals of science. Occy, a pessimistic civilian with minimal scientific education, is a more unlikely—and therefore more interesting—hero to usher in Orb's next leg.
Since this is essentially a new story with a new cast (not counting Nowak with a thicker beard), the episode does a great job of setting the stage in its scant twenty minutes. In that respect, Ocza's characterization is its most important achievement. His eyes are often gloomy. Katsuyuki Konishi voices him as if he's about to cry. The opening flashback establishes him as a witness to the same horrors that Rafal witnessed, but Ocza sought refuge in religion, which made him even more afraid. He is also a talented swordsman. While this episode seems more difficult than previous episodes, it smartly pours its resources into a quick and well-staged duel. This is a director's decision that makes me optimistic for the rest of the season.
Orb also continues to develop dialogue about religion and science. In fact, it pays special attention to how each side informs the other. The monk uses the phenomenon of gravity to explain why Earth is more accurately described as the bottom of the universe, ravaged by evil. Gras, choosing to look on the brighter side, instead sees the apparent perfection of heaven as evidence of God's mercy. Ocza came to a conclusion that suited his harshness—the immutability of the stars was too much for him, and he instead imagined them as old eyeballs looking down and judge him for his unworthiness. There is one constant in all of these cases: their personal biases. Each of these shows the takeaways and it's bad science.
Gras provides the simplest example of observer bias. He diligently collected his data. He was invested in the process. He was very excited about it. However, he draws a conclusion without the whole picture. This in itself is not a crime. Science is all about hypotheses, and if a planet is 90% round in the sky, it's reasonable to conclude that it will get the job done when it doesn't, however Gras falls in hopeless. This is a human reaction. We look for patterns and we don't like it when there are no patterns. This is also the irony of geocentrism. It posits a beautiful universe with everything in its right place, but the universe does not obey those laws, and therefore it appears ugly.
Of course, the truth is that Mars follows a set of rules and patterns that we already understand quite well. It is not the sky described in the Bible, but it has its own beauty. Furthermore, it is beautiful only because we can observe it as such. The universe is simply like that. That's it. But to paraphrase Carl Sagan, humans are a way for the universe to understand itself. It's a thought and philosophy that I love very much. From another perspective, our space observations confirm how astronomically precious life is on Earth. On a universal scale, life may be very common, but our existence is balanced on the head of a pin. When the heretic speaks of beauty on Earth, he is likely echoing one of these sentiments. And when Gras cuts his ties, he confirms that he hasn't completely given up on understanding heaven. There is still a scientist in him.
I may have been a little apprehensive about how Orb would follow up on last week's episode, but this episode convinced me that it knew where it was going. It's like observing the planets. Mars looks like it wanders haphazardly across the sky, but it has a path and it follows it.
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Orb: On the Movements of the Earth is now streaming on Netflix.
Steve is on Twitter while it lasted. He was busy thinking about the orb. You can also see him chatting about trash and treasure on This Week in Anime.