Moonlight Mile
Entry updated 5 January 2026. Tagged: TV.
Japanese animated tv series (2007). Produced by Studio Hibari. Directed by Iku Suzuki .Written by Akinori Endo; based on the Manga by Yasuo Otagaki (2000-2022). Music by Kan Sawada. Voice cast includes Hiroaki Hirata and Kazuhiko Inoue. 26 25-minute episodes. Colour.
The story is set in the Near Future, although due to time passing it is now effectively Alternate History. In 2005, after conquering Everest, two young climbers – the exuberant Saruwatari Gorou (Hirata) and his more taciturn partner "Lostman" Jack F Woodbridge (Inoue) – notice the International Space Station and decide their next target is space.Each takes a very different path to qualify for the lunar mission. Gorou, a brawny Japanese construction worker, leverages his uncanny skill with heavy machinery to become an astronaut, literally working his way up by assembling space infrastructure. Lostman, a former US Navy ace pilot, returns to America and earns a spot in NASA's shuttle corps, later getting entangled in a secret military space-fighter project. As the resource-hungry world pivoting toward lunar (see Moon) Helium-3, the protagonists are pulled into a tightening web of state, corporate, and military interests aiming to exploit the Moon. As the stakes rise and Colonization of Other Worlds (here the Moon) intermixes with militarization of space between major powers, shadowy government agents eliminate snooping journalists, and terrorists plot nuclear attacks. The show steadily if slowly slides from personal ambition and rivalry into a wider Politics-of-Technology drama about who gets to own the next frontier, and what human costs get hidden behind heroic recruitment posters The anime's final episodes suggest that reaching the Moon is only the beginning of a new era of conflict and opportunity in space, though the televised story concludes just as that era dawns, and as noted by critics, the adaptation ends "right before it really gets interesting".
The anime is based on the ongoing Manga by Yasuo Otagaki that both predates it and significantly extends it. Serialized by Shogakukan in Big Comic Superior (24 volumes, 2000-2022), the original MOONLIGHT MILE manga remains the spine of the franchise, particularly as anime covers only the first 8 volumes (and skips some content). The manga continues the story into the 2030s (terrorists trigger an Indo-Pakistani nuclear exchange, Earth's nuclear contamination accelerates space development, both protagonists become essential leaders of the new Moon community, and Gorou's Moon-born daughter starts to emerge as a deuteragonist). The manga recently resumed from a long hiatus: Otagaki paused it at volume 23 in 2012, and resumed with volume 24 in 2022.
The storytelling centres on the friendship and rivalry between its two protagonists, showcasing a brand of muscular, masculine camaraderie, reminiscent of pulp-era male adventurer tropes. The overall tone is unabashedly macho and optimistic: Moonlight Mile revels in the notion of "manly men conquering space" and treats the cosmos as a grand frontier for those bold enough to seize it. Gorou in particular is portrayed as an over-the-top hero: hard-drinking, womanizing maverick who can boldly jump into life-threatening situations, calculate orbital mechanics one moment, and irresistibly seduce women the next. Female characters are present, but they are largely written as either romantic interests or opportunists, a point of contention for some critics. Together with salty language, mature protagonists, and the show's pivot from Fan Service to R-18-rated sex scenes (reminiscent of Western cable or streaming programming), the result is an Anime aimed at the adult audience, rarely seen in the genre.
Though often discussed as Space Opera, Moonlight Mile leans hard toward Hard SF texture: EVA routines, long-haul training, mission planning, and the institutional frictions of contemporary spaceflight extrapolated forward, with action sequences framed less as swashbuckling dogfights than as procedures that go wrong. Its respect for reality extends beyond technology, with themes such as orbital tourism, scramjet experiments, robotic moonbase construction, and the specter of a new Cold War tied to the US-Chinese space race. Its tone is adult (including sexual content and bleak reversals), and it treats "becoming an astronaut" less as destiny than as a job inside systems that can casually grind up bodies and ideals. Within anime, Moonlight Mile occupies a niche alongside works like Planetes (2003-2004), Space Brothers (2012-2014) and perhaps Mighty Space Miners (1994-1995) that depict near-future space exploration with a high degree of realism. Like those series, Moonlight Mile is deeply interested in the practical challenges of living and working beyond Earth – orbital construction, radiation exposure, life-support systems – and it grounds its speculative elements in real science and engineering. However, tonally it is far more rough-hewn and sensational than the introspective, character-driven Planetes and Space Brothers, and arguably has most in common with the aborted Mighty Space Miners (except being aimed at the adult, rather than teenage, viewer); for a non-anime fan, a comparison to The Expanse (2015-22) would likely be more precise.
Despite or perhaps because of its uniqueness (an adult-targeted, hard SF space series), the show never achieved mainstream popularity, either in Japan (where it aired on a subscription WOWOW channel, at a time Japanese audiences were loosing interest in space-themed shows, and where mature, adult protagonists remain a minority) or in the West (where it was licensed by ADV just before its demise; the show's second half was never officially released in English and still circulates only via fansubs). The manga has likewise been hampered by its long hiatus, and has never received an English release.
Moonlight Mile thus stands as a bold, if imperfect (and somewhat forgotten), exploration of humanity's next giant leap, one that wears its influences on its sleeve (from Apollo-era lore to Arthur C Clarke-style near-Future History) while carving out a distinctively edgy take on the space conquest theme. [PKo]
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