Yuukoku no Moriarty

During the late 19th century, Great Britain has become the greatest empire the world has ever known. Hidden within its success, the nation's rigid economic hierarchy dictates the value of one's life solely on status and wealth. To no surprise, the system favors the aristocracy at the top and renders it impossible for the working class to ascend the ranks.

William James Moriarty, the second son of the Moriarty household, lives as a regular noble while also being a consultant for the common folk to give them a hand and solve their problems. However, deep inside him lies a desire to destroy the current structure that dominates British society and those who benefit from it.

Alongside his brothers Albert and Louis, William will do anything it takes to change the filthy world he lives in—even if blood must be spilled.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

James Moriarty, William Main

Saitou, Souma Japanese

Holmes, Sherlock Main

Furukawa, Makoto Japanese

James Moriarty, Albert Main

Satou, Takuya Japanese

James Moriarty, Louis Main

Kobayashi, Chiaki Japanese

Moran, Sebastian Supporting

Hino, Satoshi Japanese

Porlock, Fred Supporting

Uemura, Yuuto Japanese

Watson, John H. Supporting

Ono, Yuuki Japanese

Holmes, Mycroft Supporting

Yasumoto, Hiroki Japanese

Ms. Hudson Supporting

Asumi, Kana Japanese

Inspector Lestrade Supporting

Komatsu, Fuminori Japanese

Sabat, Christopher Producer

Cook, Justin Producer

Maeda, Toshihiro Producer

Morihiro, Fumi Producer

Reviews

Dec 20, 2020

literaturenerd

Recommended

Here it is! My favorite anime of 2020. It's been a rough year, but we finally got a genuinely good anime that's not Interspecies Reviewers! This is something I can actually recommend to my offline friends and they won't just laugh awkwardly and say, "Um...Really dude?".

Moriarty the Patriot is both a surprisingly faithful Sherlock Holmes adaptation and puts a new spin on familiar characters at the same time. Sherlock Holmes and Watson besides looking weirdly bishounen act exactly like they do in the books. A lot of dialogue is lifted directly from the source stories. All the minor supporting cast from Ms. Hudson, Lestrade, ... the Baker Stree Irregulars, are all portrayed very accurately. As you could guess from the title, the character that they changed the most is Professor James Moriarty. In this series he is still a cold, calculating, master criminal. He's still a math professor by day who moonlights as a criminal consultant that orchestrates crimes from behind the scenes. However, his motivations are different. Moriarty grew up homeless and starving with a sick younger brother he had to care for. He holds a deep anger and resentment towards the British aristocracy and especially those that believe themselves above the law due to their social status. Moriarty wishes to help the poor and downtrodden gain revenge on nobles that have deeply wronged them but can't be punished because they own the courts. Moriarty's ultimate goal is to bring about radical, revolutionary change that will dismantle the strict caste system of Victorian England.

So basically this is an anime that combines the cat and mouse games of Death Note with the class struggle of Rose of Versailles, topped off with a generous helping of EDGE. This is a pretty damn violent and brutal anime, although it calms down a little after the first 4 episodes. At one point, Moriarty convinces a rich kid to murder his snobby little brother in cold blood, then kill his parents for being assholes towards the servants. In the beginning portion, Moriarty got to the brink of going full Elfen Lied, but the show wisely backed off a bit. I'm glad the director or whoever read the room and realized it's not 2004. I'm also glad that the show remembered that Moriarty is still the villain despite ultimately good motives and also refrained from demonizing Holmes and Watson to try make us cheer for Moriarty easier.

People will quickly compare this version of Moriarty to Light Yagami, but I will actually go on record saying this Moriarty is vastly superior to his bishounen prototype Light. For one thing, Moriarty genuinely cares about his younger brother and isn't purely a selfish, evil asshole with a God complex. It also helps that Moriarty's worldview and goals make a LOT more sense than Light's.

Let's look at 1880s England when this story takes place. According to historians, over 25% of the population lived in dire poverty and this percentage was even higher in London. Over half the population was hungry and didn't have enough food to eat. The wealthy benefited from the blatantly exploitative East India Trading Company and British South Africa Company, but how much of this wealth trickled down to the average Briton? Not enough. From 1873 to 1896, Great Britain suffered from a 23 year Great Depression! Unemployment and crime were absolutely rampant. The wealthy lived in 3 story, 100 room manors in the countryside while the majority lived in squalid apartments dying of cholera and tuberculosis. If those 2 didn't kill you, the air pollution would certainly finish you off. There is a reason that Charles Dickens became the national author and voice of the people during this time. For the majority, living in England REALLY sucked in the 1800s. Moriarty's anger at this societal injustice makes perfect sense in context. Was he justified in murdering a small child who was only trying to copy his snooty mother? Of course not! James Moriarty is not a nice man. However, he's an interesting and compelling villain.

Now let's look at our boy Light. It's 2000s Japan and crime has never been lower. Japan is one of the most peaceful countries in the world. Wealth per capita isn't quite at America's level, but Japan is a genuinely great place to live. Light's crusade to establish a paradise by killing bad people makes very little sense. Even Moriarty realizes that just killing a few bad people won't fix England. Moriarty wants to expose the crimes these nobles committed after the police investigate the deaths and hope these exposed crimes lead to a social revolution among British voters. Light is an idiot's idea of a genius. Nobody with an IQ over 100 would ever believe that a magic book could solve the world's problems by killing a select few bad people. Let's look at a country that actually has problems such as Afghanistan. 20 percent of the people know how to read and only 5 percent can read an international language like English. Maybe 1 percent have computer savvy and can code. Overpopulation is putting immense strain on aging infrastructure. Corruption is a societal wide problem at every level. The leading job is making opium and having to grease the palms of violent warlords who want a large cut of your opium profits. Religious extremism has brewed to insane levels. Even if religion was removed entirely, the country's largest ethnic group, the Pashtun, want independence to establish their own state. They utterly despise every other ethnic group in the country, to the point that the majority are very happy to support the Taliban so long as a Pashtun state will result. If you think Afghanistan could be made a paradise by killing 5 people, 50 people, 500 people, or even 5,000 people then you're a complete idiot. So in summary, Moriarty is a believable and interesting villain, unlike Light.

The animation is done by Production I.G. who also made Vinland Saga, my favorite anime from last year. Those guys are on a role! The animation and character art are honestly pretty damn great! I never found the CG distracting and most of the time I never even noticed it at all. It's depressingly quite rare when I can say that about an anime made in the last 5 years!

The OP is cheesy as hell, but the soundtrack largely does its job. It's not a standout, amazing OST but it also never distracts the audience away from the action. It's perfectly serviceable.

The series direction was handled by Kazuya Nomura, whom I previously have praised for his work on "Run with the Wind" just last year. This guy is a solid director and I will be looking forward to his future projects including of course the Moriarty sequel!

Overall, this is a really fun anime! If you're big fan of Sherlock Holmes, you absolutely can't afford to miss this one. Even if you don't like Sherlock Holmes, I would still probably check it out. I was very worried after the first few episodes. I thought this series was going to land right on its neck, but it surprised me and absolutely stuck the landing! Nearly everything about this series was well executed in addition to being highly amusing each and every week for the last 11 weeks! Anime of the Year. Check it out!

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Dec 29, 2020

Kittykate13

Mixed Feelings

It was a fun mystery/drama that managed to be rather light hearted despite its darker subject matter. Moriarty is a kind of Robin Hood character except instead of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, he helps the poor murder the rich; often in ever more increasingly elaborate ways.

It tries to tackle some interesting moral questions, but in my opinion doesn't delve very deep into them and thus is kind of shallow. "Rich people are terrible, the world would be better without them, so to bring about that better world let's kill them". Additionally, each "villain" is comically villainous to the point of seeming to ... lack any humanity or redeeming qualities, thus making it easy for the audience to sympathize with Moriarty's views without question. Holmes is the only one we really get to see grappling with the morality around killing someone, but even that isn't given much serious attention.

Additionally I felt some of the more "anime-esque" additions kind of took away from the "real world" settings they were placed in. i.e. characters leaping onto and off of multi-story buildings, some of the hand to hand combat techniques, wearing cloaks whenever engaging in shady business, etc.

Overall it was an enjoyable watch, nice to look at, rocking music for both the opening and ending, and had interesting enough stories to keep my attention, but it could have done more with its premise and wasn't spectacular, thought provoking, or particularly memorable.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Feb 10, 2021

Dogkid

Not Recommended

Time and time again Sherlock Holmes has been re-imagined, re-invented, modernised and so on. But often times, when set in the particular historical period the original novel is set, people forget the effects of the time period small intricacies.
(as well as read and pay attention to the source material, but then again Sherlock name sells, seen by how much people venerate this anime lol)

Moriarty is a incredibly interesting character in the novels, however he was not given a lot of focus.

Here the anime had a chance to explore his character and...well choose to play the "Noble bad, poor good" card as his motivation. ... Which frankly for a character such as Moriarty is lacking(as in not strong enough for him to trouble himself).
He's a genius like Sherlock, so he must have an even stronger motivation to push him to be the 'Napoleon of Crime'. Even if he did want to change the situation of the lower classes, crime is the least favourable thing, as often it hurts more those of which that do not have the means to defend themselves.

The characters look great in the show, I do like their design but they lack strong motivators to follow Moriarty so blindly.
The villains are often so dumb and easy to control that Moriarty is just a genius because he is surrounded by idiots.

They butchered Sherlock's character too, I won't get into detail but it's worth seeing (he looks good but meh much too easily played by Moriarty).

Fandom for this is often only simping for the looks of the show rather than the content, people aren't thinking too much about how some of the 'logic' is often very questionable.

P.S. On Ep 8 - Police constables hats have Queen Elizabeth II's initials not Victoria's (and that's priceless aha)

I've watched and found it a very ok show, definitely not the best of the best but good when there wasn't anything else too thrilling to watch.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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