I am fascinated by the best of Japanese anime. “Moriarty the Patriot” is a good example (24 episodes of about 25 minutes each), available through the usual streaming channels. This story would never have been brought to the screen through live action – simply too expensive, with a huge cast ranging from urchins to Queen Victoria; sets ranging from slums to trains to ships to ballrooms to London’s Tower Bridge under construction; multiple crowd and fire scenes. The relative cheapness of anime allowed the writers & producers to tell a complex tale.
In this version, Moriarty is a group of three brothers who have sworn to end the vile 19th Century English Class System, where the Ruling Class has forgotten that their privileges come with responsibilities. But the patriotic brothers want to thread the needle of correcting the flagrant injustices perpetrated by the English Upper Classes without triggering anything like the pogrom of the French Revolution. Their initial approach is to assist abused downtrodden individuals in taking revenge on their Upper Class oppressors. The resulting crimes come to the attention of Sherlock Holmes, and allow for the introduction of many of the well-known characters from Conan Doyle’s oeuvre.
The subtext is the moral conundrum of using necessary evil to defeat pure evil … and the price that imposes on the individuals involved. Will even Sherlock Holmes be able to keep his hands clean? However, the writers manage to avoid lecturing, and bring in additional interesting elements – such as a clever alternative ending to a famous Shakespeare play. There are lighter moments too, such as briefly introducing a “James Bonde” character, and giving him a 19th Century super-car.
Normally, the best way to watch anime is with the Japanese soundtrack and English subtitles, because the dubbing into English is usually so bad, apparently paid for out of the spare change left over at the end of the production. However, in this case, for an anime set in 19th Century England, the producers spared no expense and hired genuine English voice actors with class-appropriate accents.
