Moriarty the Patriot

憂国のモリアーティ (Yuukoku no Moriarty)

8.0(1)

OtakuDen

8.2(212,386)

MAL Score

Ranked #507

Popularity #518

Mystery
Suspense
Adult Cast
Historical
Organized Crime
Psychological

Episodes: 11
Duration: 23 min per ep
Aired: Oct 11, 2020 to Dec 20, 2020
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

In late 19th-century Great Britain, the world’s most powerful empire rests on a harsh social order where wealth and birth determine a person’s worth. The aristocracy thrives at the top, while the working class is kept firmly in place, with little hope of rising beyond the station they were born into.

William James Moriarty, the second son of the Moriarty family, moves through high society as a proper nobleman, yet quietly takes on work as a consultant for ordinary people seeking help and answers. Beneath that composed exterior, he harbors a ruthless resolve to tear down the system that protects the privileged. With his brothers Albert and Louis at his side, William pursues change by any means necessary—even if it demands violence.

Otaku Consensus

Moriarty the Patriot earns its strong 8.17 MAL average by treating the Holmes mythos as a political crime thriller rather than a puzzle-box detective show, with Kazuya Nomura’s direction and Gou Zappa’s series composition keeping the 11-episode season brisk and case-driven. The most praised material is the William-and-Sherlock charge that fans identify as the engine of the adaptation, while the most serious criticism is that the anime can feel less intellectually airtight than the manga and leans on early brutality before settling into a steadier rhythm.

Why You Should Watch

Watch Moriarty the Patriot if you want the moral pressure of Death Note filtered through Victorian crime fiction, but without supernatural rules or tournament escalation. Its appeal is not a cozy whodunit; it is a cold, adult-cast suspense series about ideology, reputation, and social violence, built around anti-hero decision-making and organized-crime tactics. Production I.G gives the season a clean, controlled period-drama finish, while the short 11-episode run prevents the political material from sprawling. Viewers who like detective stories where the criminal mind receives as much attention as the investigator will get the most from it, especially once the Sherlock Holmes connection becomes central. It also works for fans who want class-struggle fiction with sharper teeth than a standard historical drama.

Key Characters

W
William James Moriarty
William is compelling because the series frames his intelligence less as eccentric genius and more as a disciplined, ideological weapon, which is why fan discussion often centers on whether his methods corrupt or clarify his ideals.
A
Albert Moriarty
Albert’s interest lies in how he functions within aristocratic society while aligning himself with a campaign that targets the very hierarchy giving him power.
L
Louis Moriarty
Louis stands out as the most tightly wound of the Moriarty brothers, defined by vigilance, loyalty, and the constant sense that the family project has a private emotional cost.
S
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock is the pressure test for the series’ central anti-hero appeal, and reviewers and fans repeatedly point to his dynamic with William as the relationship that gives the adaptation its strongest charge.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
The season is a compact 11-episode Production I.G adaptation that aired from October 11 to December 20, 2020, giving it a tighter footprint than the more common 12- or 13-episode TV cour.
2
AniList’s highest tags are Class Struggle and Anti-Hero at 97%, followed by Crime at 95%, which accurately signals that the show’s mystery elements are tied to political motive rather than isolated clue-solving.
3
The structure leans case-based, reflected in AniList’s Episodic tag at 52%, so individual incidents work as moral arguments inside a larger ideological campaign.
4
The opening stretch has a reputation for being notably violent and brutal, with reviews specifically noting that the intensity calms down somewhat after the first four episodes.
5
The adaptation’s fandom gravity is strongly tied to the canonical Sherlock Holmes and William Moriarty conflict, a point repeatedly highlighted in viewer commentary as the hook that pushes the series beyond a simple villain-perspective novelty.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: The anime credits Ryousuke Takeuchi for Original Story and Hikaru Miyoshi for Original Character Design, while Tooru Ookubo handled the anime character designs, showing a clear division between source-side design identity and TV animation adaptation work.
Fun fact 2: The production staff includes separate credits for Mechanical Design, Prop Design, and Weapon Design: Shinobu Tsuneki, Jouji Sawada, and Akira Takata respectively. That level of credit separation is especially relevant for a historical crime series built around period objects, firearms, and staged incidents.
Fun fact 3: Its audience profile is unusually strong across both major anime databases: MAL lists an 8.17 score from 212,386 votes with Rank #507 and Popularity #518, while AniList lists an 80/100 score and 6,159 favourites.
Fun fact 4: The AniList tag spread marks it as a primarily male-cast, adult-cast historical suspense series, with Primarily Male Cast at 84% and Primarily Adult Cast at 73%, making it distinct from school-age mystery anime.
Fun fact 5: Critical discussion around the anime is notably adaptation-aware: positive reviews praise it as thought-provoking and attention-demanding, while harsher criticism argues that the manga handles the intelligence and plotting more convincingly than the TV version.