William James Moriarty is not necessarily an original character because he’s from the famous classic of Sherlock Holmes where he played a rather minor role in the overarching story. However, the author Ryosuke Takuechi simply found it sad that Moriarty wasn’t given enough attention in the books and chose to write Moriarty the Patriot with Moriarty himself as the protagonist. This is something that we at Honey’s Anime have never seen even outside of anime, where Moriarty’s character is not simply about being a psychopath who kills people but he actually had various reasons behind it. Watching Moriarty the Patriot, you get to know more about Moriarty’s childhood, how he had a little brother, Louis and was adopted into the Moriarty family. Though adopting the Moriarty name, he remembers that the reason the rich are rich is at the cost of the poor and he bases his actual identity on his character more than his family name as was common in Victorian England. All this background information in the first few episodes sets the pace for the rest of the show as we get to know Moriarty more through his interactions with Sherlock.

While a better part of the anime community ships William Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes, we simply don’t think this anime had any hints of that. What this anime did highlight was the friendship between the two men. Think about it, Moriarty and Sherlock’s first meeting was a game of wits where they assessed each other simply by observing one another for a few minutes. William says so himself, he doesn’t really know why he chose Sherlock of all people to put an end to him. But he also says that for the longest time, he’s often thought of Sherlock as one of his long-standing friends simply because they understood each other more than anyone else and Moriarty simply decided that if someone should end him and his heinous plan, it should be Sherlock who actually made Moriarty forget about his heinous plan for a moment.

As the anime unfolds, we’re unsure whether we should really like Moriarty and condone his actions because even if he’s doing good, he’s manipulating people into killing themselves. However, as the plot unfolds further, we see that Moriarty’s mission is not to simply take the credit and go around ruthlessly killing all the bad nobles. He simply wants to be the villain that everyone hates, including the poor and the rich. This common and shared evil will ensure that these two classes unite together to overthrow Moriarty from Britain. Moreover, the fact that in his letter to Sherlock, William tells him how he knows what he’s doing is so wrong. Murder even done for the good of people is not right and all Moriarty can see in his hands sometimes are the blood of all the people he’s killed before. But this truthfulness and vulnerability is what sets Moriarty apart from other morally grey characters we’ve met before. Moriarty knows and accepts that what he’s doing is wrong and instead of being an arrogant noble with all the power, he suddenly becomes the humble boy he was before he moved into the Moriarty family and his character comes full circle.