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And the other highlights, I have to say opening and ending theme songs and animations.
Yeah, I would watch a whole show that was just this show's opening.
アニメ『Moonrise』の概要
Welcome back to 2AM OTTACK! I am your host Mayu, a born and raised Japanese non-otaku and...
I'm Cisco, an American born otaku.
In this podcast, we share our reviews of anime and manga through our distinct perspectives
with commentary on Japanese culture, history, and the language.
Cisco.
Yeah.
We are going to talk about this Japanese original net animation series.
Netflix.
And it's awesome opening and ending music today.
This anime was produced by Wit Studio and the story is based on the novel.
The main character's voice is by Chiaki Kobayashi, who did a voice for Marshall.
Today, we are going to talk about...
Moonrise!
Before we start, we'd like to hear from you.
Share your thoughts, ideas, questions, or even suggestions that we should talk about.
Send us a message to the email in the description,
or you can use Spotify and the YouTube comments section as well.
All right.
First of all, Cisco, could you give us a summary of Moonrise?
I don't think so.
Just kidding.
It's interesting to hear it's based on a novel.
It actually makes me want to read the novel because I bet the novel's better than
the anime in terms of explaining the story.
There were things I liked about this anime, but
explaining the story is really hard because they don't explain a lot of what's going on.
But okay.
So a quick summary is, in the future, there's people living on the moon.
Somehow, the people living on the moon seem to be important in supplying the prosperity of the Earth.
There's a rebellion on the moon, and the Earth and the moon are fighting.
Some of the people in the war are this guy, Jacob Shadow, who was probably born on the moon
or on a spaceship.
And then some stuff happened.
He went to Earth and got raised by a rich family.
And all of his friends are in a unit together.
He's suspected of being connected to the attack on Earth by the moon,
the terrorist event that starts the war.
So he's always under surveillance.
Anyway, he and his team go to the moon to assassinate the leader of the moon rebellion,
Bob Skylum.
And while they're there trying to carry out their mission, he meets a person from his past,
Phil.
And eventually, a lot of parts of the moon are threatened by a mysterious life form called
L-Zone that has a connection to a girl they meet during their travels named Mary.
And Jack is also related to it.
Is that pretty good?
I think so.
I wouldn't be able to do this.
Okay.
Because it's still complicated to me after we watched the whole thing.
Yeah, there's some stuff that never gets fully explained.
So I'm not totally sure about all of it.
But I think that's the gist of it.
Jack's from the moon.
He's actually a genetically modified human for space travel.
And then he's kind of related to the events that are taking place.
So they're trying to assassinate Bob Skylum.
But it's complicated.
Yeah.
This anime premiered on Netflix on April 10th, 2025.
Oh, it's still kind of new.
It's still kind of new.
Okay.
You said story setting is very interesting.
アニメの設定とエピソード数
Yes.
I loved the setting of this show.
I would absolutely watch a prequel that explained more about like,
how the world got to be the way it is at the beginning.
It would make so much sense if they do sequel.
And this is the whole thing you didn't get.
Yeah.
Like, here's the rest of the information we forgot to tell you in the actual show.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How many episodes are there?
18.
18.
Which to me felt like a weird number.
Because like a typical anime series runs 24.
A lot of Netflix shows run, you know, only like 8 to 12.
18 is longer than Netflix will usually give to something,
but not as long as most anime series usually have.
And especially knowing this is adapted from a novel,
I wonder what kind of compromises they were like forced to make
in terms of what to actually show in order to complete the story.
Right.
キャラクターデザインの魅力
I gotta say the character design is by Hiromu Arakawa.
Do you know the person?
I feel like I've heard their name.
Yeah.
This person is a manga artist.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Who made Alchemist.
Awful Metal Alchemist.
Yeah, that makes so much sense.
And Silver Spoon.
And Silver Spoon.
Yeah.
Wow.
I did not see Silver Spoon coming.
For a long time, I thought this person was a man.
Because of the name.
Yeah.
But actually a woman.
Oh, that's really cool.
And she is from Hokkaido.
And then her family run like a...
Farm?
Farm.
Well, that explains the Silver Spoon.
Because she worked there.
She went to that kind of high school.
The beers and Silver Spoon.
Oh, okay.
And they worked there for like seven years at home with her family.
Wow.
That sounds like our friend.
What?
From Akita.
3AM Attack.
Who?
Sugimoto.
Like raised in, you know, a faraway place.
And then like have to like work at home in the family business.
With like dreams of becoming a manga artist.
Yeah.
So yeah, I like the character designs.
The character design is a real highlight of the show.
There's no doubt about it.
One of the highlights.
Yeah.
And the other highlights.
オープニングテーマの分析
I have to say opening and ending theme songs and animations.
Yeah.
Let's talk about from opening.
Okay.
I would watch a whole show that was just this show's opening.
You can see they spent some money on it.
Yeah, they definitely spent some money on it.
Yeah.
The opening is really cool.
There's no theme song, which I don't love.
Like it's just...
You mean like no lyrics?
No lyrics.
It's an instrumental piece.
And it sounds like the theme from a movie.
It sounds like John Williams.
So John Williams.
Yeah.
Which is not a bad thing.
But like...
It's like orchestra style.
And it's a beautiful piece.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a great...
Especially the change when it's like...
And then it becomes like calm music.
Yeah.
It's a very John Williams transition.
I love that.
And it fits really well with the animation.
I agree.
And then I think animation doesn't really give you much information about...
I actually disagree.
I think the animation gives you an enormous amount of information.
地球の危機と月の植民地化
But it leaves it up to the viewer to kind of like parse and interpret.
But just in the opening animation, like this is kind of what it sets up as the plot.
It says...
It basically tells you Earth was facing like a crisis, right?
Climate change, extinction, pollution, poverty, war.
And humans created an AI.
Like a super AI that they started to listen to.
That told them what to do and how to solve things.
Then they built some gigantic spaceships to try to escape the Earth.
And all of them took off at once.
And at least one of these spaceships crash landed on the moon for some reason.
And then humanity started like colonizing the moon.
You get all of that just from the intro.
I was disrupted by music.
Well, I mean, the music's great, so I don't blame you.
But all of that is sort of...
All of that plot is related to me.
That's what I'm saying.
I would totally watch a show that was just about that part of the story.
How did humans create the super AI?
And how did it affect them?
And why did they choose to make these spaceships?
And then what the hell happened on the one spaceship that crashed?
Which they do show a little bit of.
But they do not explain why at all.
Not really.
音楽とテーマソング
And the music is by Ryu Kawasaki.
He did a whole music for Moonrise.
And you can go to Spotify or other music streaming services,
and then you can listen to the whole soundtrack of Moonrise,
which has 31 songs.
And they all sound amazing.
Nice.
And ending theme song.
Yeah.
So are you sure you like this?
Why?
Because I feel like you talked a lot of smack about it while we were watching.
I think it took me a while to like it.
Okay.
I liked it instantly.
The theme song is called Daijoubu.
I guess it's like, it's okay.
It's all right.
It's all right.
By Aina G. Endo.
It's all in Katakana.
So I have to call it Aina G. Endo.
Oh, well, I can call it Aina The End.
Yeah.
And I had never heard of her before until I watched it.
Well, she's pretty new, right?
Her debut was like now?
No.
When was her debut?
She is a former member of Bish.
Bish?
Bish.
Bish.
The idol group.
You don't know Bish?
I know a person in my regular life whose name sounds pretty similar to that.
But no, I don't know the idol group.
When did she make her solo debut?
I don't really know.
It's not like 2001 or something?
She's 30.
Yeah, she's 30.
Oh, you're right.
She was in Bish.
Okay.
This says years active 2015 to the present.
But yeah, her first solo album, The End, came out on February 3rd, 2021.
So that's what I mean.
Just recently.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
The conversation came full circle.
You were like, her name is Inaji.
And I was like, she just came out recently.
You were like, no, she was in Bish.
And we had a whole conversation about how I don't remember Bish.
And then at the end, I was like, see, so she made her solo debut recently.
And you're like, oh, she just came out recently.
I was like, yeah, that's what I said in the very beginning.
Fair, fair.
Got it.
Oh, okay.
アニメと声優の魅力
So yeah.
Tell me more.
Okay.
So she, I didn't know about her.
She is actually in the show, in the anime as a voice actor.
Yeah.
She shows up midway through.
It's very, you notice it immediately.
Cause like, she sounds like a mature.
It's such a mean way to put it.
Oh my God.
Sorry.
I thought for sure you'd be like, you can tell right away.
Cause she has this really distinctive husky voice.
That sounds exactly the same in the ending theme song and in the show.
And it's like, you're like, yeah, you can tell right away.
She sucks.
It's different.
You can tell she had like a main job is not voice.
I feel like the better way to say this was like, she doesn't sound like a professional
voice actor.
She has like a really fresh, normal sounding voice.
That doesn't feel like she's taken a lot of lessons.
Doesn't feel really like refined and polished.
It feels like a normal person.
Right.
But in a good way for me, I feel a little weird about it.
Okay.
This might be like my bias about Japanese acting in general, overall, my impression of Japanese
acting, especially like not anime voice acting, but like regular Japanese acting is that everything
is way over the top.
Like it's so like over directed and like, you know, it's like watching like Kabuki,
like, or like, you know, where like everything is like super stylized and like very intense.
And so to me, like I, with voice acting, I don't usually feel this way, but listening
to her do the voice acting, it really felt like a normal person as opposed to someone
who was like doing Japanese voice acting.
Yeah.
And so I found it kind of refreshing, honestly.
Yeah.
I think that was a point for the makers side.
Like they wanted, they intentionally wanted someone not from animation industry.
Right.
And then she got hired as a voice actor for one of the like very important characters.
And then she got an offer to make a theme song for Moonrise.
It's like such an unusual roundabout way to get there.
Right.
I mean, they know she's a former idol singer, but they didn't hire her for the theme song
first.
I mean, yeah, that's like pretty serendipitous for her then.
I mean, she has distinctive voice for sure.
Definitely.
A little bit husky.
Yeah.
She had like a vocal cord surgery before something.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah.
I don't know if it affected.
Affected her voice quality.
Yeah.
Could be.
Not sure.
Anyway, so she is a voice actor and she made this theme song, Daijoubu, It's Alright.
And she's done a lot more anime theme songs before, like Gundam.
Okay.
Or ending theme song for one of like Apothecary Diaries season.
Really?
Have we seen it yet?
Yes.
Time out.
What?
One of the Apothecary Diaries ending theme songs was this girl and I didn't know until
right now?
Yeah.
What?
Shame.
Yeah.
How did I like miss that?
Okay.
You got to check it.
And she also did some like opening theme songs or ending, I think for Mononoke film.
All right.
We didn't make it to the end of that one.
Yeah.
So what did you think about ending theme song?
I really liked it.
It has some English right in the beginning.
What do you pay for?
What do you pray for?
Which is kind of like an interesting thing.
What I thought was really neat about the ending theme was the it's all stills.
There's no actual animation.
It's just single images, but it depicts all of the characters and kind of like a happier
time, like having a party, which is like, I don't know if they're all on earth, actually,
but it's just like, it's like such a nice counterweight to like the seriousness of the
story and the sort of like depressing storyline that's going on to have this like very like
simple, gentle ending theme song with like a positive uplifting message and like some
really nice sort of like what if scenarios of the different characters, like having fun
together.
It always made me like feel a little bit better at the end of the show.
That's nice.
Yeah.
So here's a good news.
Dunderdanceの新情報
Great news.
Actually, Anna G.
And is doing opening theme song for Dunderdance second season.
Oh, cool.
Yeah.
Okay.
I feel like she's a good match for that show.
So you can listen a precious song on Dunderdance trailer.
Oh, right.
That just dropped recently, right?
Yeah.
And then in North America, you can go to the theaters to watch first couple episodes.
Oh, damn.
Okay.
When is that coming?
June.
Okay.
Maybe I'll do it.
Maybe I'll be the only person in the theater again.
Well, maybe.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, Dunderdance is pretty popular.
I feel like we'll get a couple more people.
Yeah.
Which I mean, which watch is such?
They just didn't promote it at all.
You know what I mean?
They did.
I saw it.
That's why I suggested to you.
Let's go watch.
Yes, they did.
And then, yeah.
I didn't see it at all.
Well, I didn't see the Dunderdance thing either.
Okay.
Well, they're not promoting in the right places.
That should be like an ad on the Shonen Jump app.
You know what I'm saying?
Oh, I see.
How are they not using that?
I don't understand.
You have to follow social media, which you don't.
I do that.
Right.
Anyway, so I watched a little bit of trailer and listened to the song and it sounded perfect.
Cool.
Yeah.
It's just perfect.
And you can go to her YouTube video and then watch like an official music video for Moonrise,
which is all like animation.
Cool.
It's like, what do you call?
There's like a character talking in between the songs.
Oh, really?
Music with some sounds from anime.
Like an anime music video?
Is that how you call it?
No, no.
I don't know what it is.
But like, I get what you're saying is like the sounds from the actual show are like layered
into the song.
I don't think there's a name for that.
Or there probably is, but I don't know what it is.
Okay.
So that's something looking forward to.
Nice.
Okay.
Let's do Word of the Day.
All right.
Otaku, Word of the Day.
Today's Word of the Day is daijoubu.
Oh, great one.
Because like, I think a lot of people might know daijoubu already.
Moonriseの評価と感想
Yeah, it's a pretty easy one to catch on to.
Because like, I want to compare daijoubu and jobu.
They're totally different.
Yeah.
Okay.
Can you explain daijoubu?
Sure.
Daijoubu means it's okay or everything's all right.
And so it's a very useful word to know early on in your study of Japanese, because especially
if anybody asks you if you are okay, it is the word you say in order to make people stop
worrying.
And so, or like, if someone's like, does this bother you?
Or do you not like this?
Daijoubu is a good way to get people to be like, okay, everything's fine.
So it's a very useful word that I think people visiting Japan can deploy when Japanese people
are being like, especially solicitous or worried that you don't like something and you want
to be like, no, in fact, everything is okay.
Yeah.
And do you know what jobu means?
Maybe this is a different jobu, but jobu means like a sturdy or girthy or like basically fat.
Well, you could be, or like very healthy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Healthy, strong, but with an impression of like weighty.
Yeah.
Right.
It's hard to break.
Things can be jobu too.
Like this disc is jobu.
Really?
No.
Like, it's okay.
Yeah.
It could be more jobu.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So like daijoubu and jobu is the same, almost the same pronunciation, but different meanings.
Are the characters the same?
Yeah.
Oh.
You just put big, dai.
Very jobu.
Very jobu or jobu.
Interesting.
Yeah.
That's also the ending theme song, daijoubu by Aina Jiendo.
Okay.
You can sing the song cause like she keeps repeating.
Daijoubu, daijoubu, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Okay.
Let's talk about our thoughts.
Okay.
Like honest thoughts about Moonrise.
Take it away.
You go first.
Oh, me?
Yes.
Okay.
So I really, really, really wanted to like this show.
And I think ultimately looking back on it after it's over, I did like this show.
It's a type of sci-fi that I'm pretty into.
Like the animation itself was really, really good.
The character designs were cool.
So I liked looking at the characters.
The character development was okay.
Like confusing, but I actually liked the story and the relationships between the characters.
And like looking back on it, despite its flaws, I think overall I liked this show.
And I have some criticisms that like could have made it better, I think.
But in having like thought about it since we finished watching it,
I think I've come to the conclusion that I did in fact like this.
But as we were watching it, I felt very frustrated a lot of the way through.
This show did a terrible, terrible job of explaining what was going on
and had so many loose threads that it was a very frustrating experience
to try to understand what was happening or why and where things were going or why.
A lot of characters did not get the character development they deserved.
I don't know.
Parts of it felt sort of like formulaic or weird,
and it didn't end in the way that I wanted it to.
Like it could have been amazingly excellent.
And instead like it was okay and had some flaws that I think I liked it despite the flaws.
作品への感想
But yeah, like I wanted it to be like amazing.
And instead it was just all right.
I thought you wanted to shout out for Taki.
Yeah, shout out Taki Takoyasu for doing a role that he's like not usually in,
right, for getting to be like a wild, crazy character,
which was really fun to see him get to do.
For me, I have to say, first of all, I'm not a big fan of sci-fi or Star Wars.
Yeah, I kind of dragged you into this one, didn't I?
It's like Star Wars.
It's not like Star Wars.
That is a very misleading statement.
It's about space.
It is only like Star Wars in the most basic possible way,
which is part of it takes place in space.
Yes.
But not even far away space.
Yeah.
The opening lines of Star Wars are in a galaxy far, far away.
This is all of the action takes place on the moon or the earth.
Those are places humans have actually been in real life.
True.
It's not that much like Star Wars.
Okay.
Well, if you like that kind of stuff.
No.
Sorry.
Just no.
If you like that kind of stuff, if you are interested in sci-fi as a genre.
Okay.
You might like this.
But if you hate sci-fi as a whole genre, you're not going to sell it.
I don't hate sci-fi.
I don't.
I think I'm not into space sci-fi.
Okay.
So name a sci-fi that you did like.
I like Kulong, generic romance.
Okay.
Actually, that's her.
Right.
Yeah.
Any cool clone stuff.
You love clones.
I love clone stuff.
I don't know why.
It's weird, but okay.
You love clone stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's no clones in this one.
No.
As far as we can tell, actually.
Yeah.
Certainly.
Yeah.
Okay.
So anyway, it was.
And you hate space.
What do you call those like fear stuff?
Like a phobia?
Yeah.
What phobia?
Astrophobia.
I don't think that's what it's called, but maybe.
Yeah.
Astrophobia.
Why not?
Yeah.
Music.
I loved character design by, you know, the same manga artist who did Silver Spoon.
Right.
Also the sea slug.
The L-Zone?
Yeah.
You liked the L-Zone?
Sea slug.
Yeah.
I didn't see that coming.
Okay.
Isn't that like just like sea slug?
I understand why you're calling it that, but I think it bears like a superficial resemblance.
And that's where it ends.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
I kept thinking this is definitely sea slug, like giant sea slug.
Okay.
Well, sure.
Why not?
Yeah.
All right.
So.
That's one of the things you liked?
I don't know.
Trying to find something I enjoyed.
Anything else you'd like to add?
I don't know if this anime got like the attention that I sort of felt like it deserved.
Like Netflix doesn't seem to have pushed it like that hard.
Yeah.
That was my impression.
Like they didn't do like a press or like, you know, media stuff.
And I mean, like I was frustrated enough by this that I can picture it having gotten
essentially bad reviews when it came out because the frustrating parts of it are pretty frustrating.
But like I said, I think in the final analysis, I actually liked it.
And I'm glad that I made it all the way through, even though there were some lingering things
アニメからの興味
about it that I feel like probably could have been done better.
But this is not something I say very often.
Watching this anime made me interested to read the book because I have a feeling the
book explains more than the anime does.
And that's not a feeling I get that often.
Sometimes I'll watch an anime and think I want to read the manga, but more often I'm like,
nah, I probably know the whole story already.
Why bother?
And this one, it's like, no, I definitely want to read the novel it was based on.
I bet that's pretty good.
Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode.
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Moon Rice!
