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

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by literaturenerd (384)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

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

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by Kittykate13 (25)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

Feb 3, 2021

askGleb

Not Recommended

Funny

4/10 Very shallow show. Fanfiction? More like a bleak shadow of the original...


Imagine Sherlock Holmes's original series but adapted for kids. This show is exactly this, a really dumbed down version so that even 5yo can get the point.

Story: 3/10
What you see on the screen is exactly what will happen, there is no mystery or any sort of guesswork that you need to do. Too predictable, mysteries are solved effortlessly, the main characters are too powerful for the challenges they face. I got a feeling that the original creator of the manga misinterpreted the original work (hope they actually read it) and no one ... fixed the deficiencies during the production...

Art: 8/10
The art and animation are of good quality. Lots of detailed backgrounds, textures, character design is fine too. You can tell the show was funded well, but that's the sad part. There are great story-driven shows out there that could not afford such excellent visuals, but somehow this garbage got them.

Sound: 8/10
Music in the opening/ending is ok. Throughout the show, the sound engineer(s) appropriately used environmental sounds to enhance the action.

Character: 2/10
Very flat, non developing characters, main traits taken from original Conan Doyle story, but mangafied a bit. Moriarty is a cheap version of Kira from Death Note. Sherlock, well, nothing outstanding.

Enjoyment: 4/10

Overall: 4/10
Please don't get your hopes up, I don't know why this shown has almost 8 score right now. Perhaps, most people rated when the first episode came out. If you haven't read the original Sherlock Holmes, I highly recommend it, unlike this show.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by askGleb (2)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

ENTP male characters in anime

by QueCarajillos

50 Entries · 1 Restacks

ENTP female characters in anime

by QueCarajillos

50 Entries · 2 Restacks

Best of 2020-2024

by Doggo1195

50 Entries · 77 Restacks

North American Anime & Manga Releases for July

Here are the North American anime, manga, and light novel releases for July. Week 1: July 5 - 11 Anime Releases Amnesia Complete Collection Blu-ray [2022 Re-release]...read more

Jul 6, 2022 5:57 AM by Aiimee | Discuss (7 comments)

Fall 2020 Simulcast List [Update 12/1]

In this thread, you'll find a comprehensive list of anime acquired for simulcast release during the Fall 2020 season. This list also includes titles that were p...read more

Sep 28, 2020 11:50 AM by Snow | Discuss (75 comments)

	Poll: Yuukoku no Moriarty Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) Wolfie8338 - Oct 3, 2020	158 replies	by Zekkenshin »» Dec 3, 1:28 AM
	Poll: Yuukoku no Moriarty Episode 6 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Nov 15, 2020	81 replies	by 3miL »» Nov 20, 4:28 AM
	Poll: Yuukoku no Moriarty Episode 5 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Nov 8, 2020	96 replies	by 3miL »» Nov 20, 4:05 AM
	Which of the original Holmes stories did this show adapt? Curlybrace101 - Sep 24	2 replies	by TheSoundOfQin »» Sep 25, 9:07 AM
	Poll: Yuukoku no Moriarty Episode 3 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Stark700 - Oct 25, 2020	120 replies	by RaizelSandress »» Sep 17, 10:42 AM

MAL Staff Picks: Fall 2020 Opening Themes

26 staff members judged 39 songs to bring you our definitive ranking of nearly every opening theme this season!

by Shymander

76,159 views