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Feego wrote: Fri Aug 21, 2020 3:17 pmI'm not particularly well-versed in anime beyond the most well-known mainstream staples. As such, Ghost in the Shell will make my list and gets a hearty rec from me (I've never seen any of the sequels). I might also recommend Rintaro's Metropolis, which I haven't seen in years but remember being fun if not exactly a masterpiece. It's a somewhat loose reimagining of Lang's film, based on a manga by Osamu Tezuka, who admitted he never saw the Lang film himself but based the manga on a single still image.

Rintaro's Metropolis seemed like it might be a good movie that others would probably enjoy. There is something about this style of animation, however, that I find visually irritating to the point of wanting to take a break from it every five minutes. That's a minority view. The movie is widely praised for its animation, including connoisseurs of the genre, and negative comments are generally reserved for the incomprehensible plot.

therewillbeblus wrote: So I assume that affirmative ruling includes Cowboy Bebop, Paranoia Agent, etc. as well as Evangelion, considering their pre-planned conceptions were for a single series? This also really opens the floodgates for a majority of anime, based on what I've gathered from my girlfriend's mass viewings at least. I don't know how I feel about this flexibility yet, or if I'll be taking advantage of it, but I'll probably just wait to see how others feel/campaign to gauge the mood of the forum.

I will not be voting for Cowboy Bebop. Despite the fuzziness of the boundaries, it clearly feels to me like a TV series rather than a film, and as such wouldn't be in keeping with the spirit of the list, just as a technically-eligible fantasy film wouldn't.

Same thing for me with Trigun even though that is literally where my username comes from.

Absolutely agreed, just trying to get a handle on the slippery slope.

knives wrote: Fri Aug 21, 2020 7:53 pm Same thing for me with Trigun even though that is literally where my username comes from.

Now I'm embarrassed that I never connected your name to Trigun before, because that was the other notable example of a sci-fi anime series I had in mind.

bottled spider wrote: Fri Aug 21, 2020 7:38 pm

Feego wrote: Fri Aug 21, 2020 3:17 pmI'm not particularly well-versed in anime beyond the most well-known mainstream staples. As such, Ghost in the Shell will make my list and gets a hearty rec from me (I've never seen any of the sequels). I might also recommend Rintaro's Metropolis, which I haven't seen in years but remember being fun if not exactly a masterpiece. It's a somewhat loose reimagining of Lang's film, based on a manga by Osamu Tezuka, who admitted he never saw the Lang film himself but based the manga on a single still image.

Rintaro's Metropolis seemed like it might be a good movie that others would probably enjoy. There is something about this style of animation, however, that I find visually irritating to the point of wanting to take a break from it every five minutes. That's a minority view. The movie is widely praised for its animation, including connoisseurs of the genre, and negative comments are generally reserved for the incomprehensible plot.

Yeah, while I enjoyed the visuals, I couldn't tell you a single thing about the plot today. I'm pretty sure it involved a robot woman. I also distinctly remember a scene that owes a serious debt to Dr. Strangelove.

The Pachyderminator wrote: Fri Aug 21, 2020 7:58 pm

knives wrote: Same thing for me with Trigun even though that is literally where my username comes from.

Now I'm embarrassed that I never connected your name to Trigun before, because that was the other notable example of a sci-fi anime series I had in mind.

To be fair that’s a bit of a sly one. I used to go as legato when I was starting interneting.

This is probably a good time mention that End of Eva is unquestionably eligible and will probably make my list. Bitchy at otaku culture anime is the most delicious flavour.

In my first revisit since college, 2046 still stands as one of WKW’s greatest achievements. Where films like Mr Nobody and The Fountain struggle to find an impactful strategy to accentuate existential emotional growth through bifurcated narratives, this film succeeds by enveloping us in a fugue state that doesn’t operate based on time like the others. WKW doesn’t wholly reject time as a concept or embrace a Buddhist approach, but the scenes we experience- whether detached voyeurism, projected desires into writing surrogate experiences, or genuine impermanent connections- service an internal narrative of internal and external observation and participation, to bind and unbind from worldly intimacy.

This film feels like self-reflexive therapy more than any of the director’s other works, for it’s about this nonlinear process of cyclically reverting to alienate the self and becoming inspired to follow the magnetism toward others’ energies. Is it love or lust, finite or fleeting, insecure or safe? The dreamy nature of the storytelling and exposition elicit an affinity with memory. This is the sum of one’s experiences, where a futuristic science fiction world’s literal state isn’t as important as what it resembles: a predictable milieu of escape from an erratic and challenging world, but one where only once there do we realize that this isn’t a utopia at all, but a space that sucks the meaning out of existence.

There is so much catharsis in the acceptance that follows a pitying comment about living in the past, where Chow is able to acknowledge that this isn’t categorically negative, and reframes through observation on another to promote his own growth; while also recognizing the pull between attempting to recapture the past and repress that history to look ahead for the future- neither of which is exclusively positive or negative. This is a hard film to write about because so much of its influence is indescribable, but rarely is the depiction of conscious experience inspiring our continual development, in both measurable change and comprehension of self, this beautiful- even if we do wind up a subject of our innerworkings and isolated from ourselves and others in many respects through the ringer of life.

therewillbeblus wrote: Fri Aug 21, 2020 1:54 pm Paprika isn't quite as impressive on a revisit, though lesser Satoshi Kon is still good, but it still plays as a creative dissection of dreams and our competing subconscious parts of our psyches. There are fair comparisons thematically with Inception, even when ostensibly this defaults to the mecha anime climax vs the Bond-action setpieces, and it manages to jam a significant amount of cogitable probing in its visually vast mise en scene. Highly recommended even as a gateway to Satoshi Kon's other work (none of which qualify for this list, unless you want to count the entirety of Memories).

I'm neither averse to, nor a passionate acolyte for, anime in general- but I will say that this filmmaker tends to appeal to those who aren't drawn to the movement, in my experience. Unfortunately my favorite sci-fi animes are technically series (Monster, Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion) and something like Akira, which is fine, won’t make the cut. Does anybody have any strong anime recs that do meet criteria for the project?

This is just off the top of my head at the moment, but I have a few: the already mentioned sci-fi/intergalactic war/love triangle/musical(!?!) Macross: Do You Remember Love? is still astonishing even now. I really like Macross: Plus too (a different set of characters in the same universe, with a whole new love triangle between two pilots, their childhood friend and a virtual pop idol that has fragments of her personality implanted into it that goes semi-autonomous), though I think it works even better in its four episode mini-series version than the edited down feature film, since it can do some wonderful cliffhangers, particularly into the final episode. It has some of the best flying scenes in anime, a virtual pop idol years before S1M0NE (and came out the year before William Gibson's Idoru novel) and a wonderful Yoko Kanno score.

The alternate world/alternate history/abstracted space race film The Wings of Honneamise is beautifully detailed (with as much detail put into the equipment as in the explosions in the final scene of the attempt to launch intercut with a simultaneous military invasion from a neighbouring country) and very moving, with a great Ryuichi Sakamoto score. Though beware the attempted rape scene mid-way through the film that often appears to catch audiences off guard. Though that really fits into the big theme of the film, of exploitation of each other in all sorts of ways, from the smallest to the largest. That final speech showing the course of humanity, and a prayer to use this new leap into the unknown wisely, is still very powerful.

If you want more Mamoru Oshii beyond Ghost In The Shell, I would direct to the earlier Patlabor: The Mobile Police - The Movie, a feature spin off from the TV series about a police force investigating crimes in a world where the use of mechanised suits are the norm for heavy industrial tasks, and which takes the form of what initially seems like a low key investigation into a mysterious suicide of a prominent figure in the first section (I particularly love that wordless sequence that takes place in the middle of the film that follows a couple of investigators around the city doing some sleuthing! As well as the turning point revelation scene in the character's apartment after they have been put on probation!), turns into an excellent portrait of a teamwork in its mid section and then has an all out action packed climax in a steadily collapsing off shore rig manned by autonomous robots in its final section. Its one of the best action scenes I have seen in anime (and in its final face off you can see elements that would reappear in the climax of Ghost In The Shell a few years later), though I have yet to see Patlabor 2 to see how it fares in comparison! (And while it is not anime, I also want to do the regular push of Oshii's live action Polish-language sci-fi Avalon from 2001)

Written by Katsuhiro Otomo though not directed by him, I would recommend the 1991 film, Roujin Z (or Old Man Z), which is a fantastic bit of speculative futurism about the answer to Japan's aging population being an all bells and whistles prototype robotic bed that unfortunately ends up becoming sentient and taking on the qualities of the new inhabitant's dead wife! They then both go on the run together, causing mass destruction whilst doggedly followed by the old man's young nurse and her friends! (Plus the corporate figure, the military and the media!)

Its a great film with lots of good points about the treatment of the elderly as objects (and their carers as doing a lot of work that goes unrewarded) in the face of technology, but also that technology itself can be caring too! Perhaps too caring! It is also very funny and a fun take on the giant mech running amok genre too!

OVAs: From the same director as Roujin Z a couple of years earlier came Black Magic M-66 which is kind of what happens if you took the relentless robot from The Terminator with the heroine from Aliens and had them fight it out for a while. And if you can cope with the relentlessly detailed focus on ginormous bouncing boobs throughout, (incluidng a mid-film break for all the female characters to go for a much needed bathing scene in order to compare breast sizes, whilst one of the male members of the crew spies on them and gets an explosive nose bleed for his trouble!) Plastic Little is great tongue in cheek take on the usual sci-fi action 'getting roped into having to save a princess and then by extension the world' plot!

In terms of serialised TV anime of course there is Neon Genesis Evangelion but I'd also put in a word for its predecessor Gunbuster.

(And there is that 1988 six part adaptation of Starship Troopers which actually plays the material straight! Its fascinating to compare it to the Verhoeven film!)

Thanks for those recs colin! My partner hasn’t even seen half of them so looks like we’ve got some viewings planned out. She also recommended Devilman Crybaby and Boogiepop Phantom as sci-fi anime, though a quick search seems to categorize both more into the dark fantasy camp

Always hard to draw the line between fantasy and science fiction.

One anime that I would definitely rate as unquestionable science fiction is Time of Eve, a 6 (short) episode series (about the length of a standard film). In a way it almost a precursor story for the world of P K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Plastic Sheep. It involves a slightly future earth where androids have become ubiquitous -- and the latest versions are basically indistinguishable from real humans (and are required to where a halo-esque "badge" to show their status). One of the scientists working on android design has introduced (without authorization) some novel tweaks to better allow empathetic understanding -- which has the effect of also allowing the development of a sense of autonomy. Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics are directly referenced and explored. There is a burgeoning movement (still underground) to outlaw androids -- which is where one can see the links to the anti-android world portrayed by PKD. The story centers around a teenager whose family owns a maid android. The protagonist discovers the maid makes visits to a certain cafe -- which requires that visiting androids turn off their halos -- and also requires that within the cafe there be no discrimination between humans and androids. Not very well known -- but this deserves a lot more attention. (There is a home video release of the movie version -- which is substantially the same as the 6 episode series).

If it helps the case on Patlabor: The Mobile Police - The Movie there is a great moment that homages Tippi Hedren in the bedroom in The Birds during that action-packed climactic sequence. Its such a good film because it manages to actually pull off having both the slow burn mystery and then a third act full of action as the characters (and one character in particular gets her moment to shine) try and stop the computer virus from spreading, even having to fight against their own infected machines! (That's the reason for the cry of "Alphonse!" at the end of that trailer, as that is Noa's pet name for her mech!)

Yes, I'm also drawing a really hard line between sci-fi and fantasy myself. So a great anime like Angel's Egg does not really count, because I'm thinking technological futurism or space operas! I have not seen Devilman Crybaby as yet but I have seen the 1987 and 1990 OVAs which I would certainly class more as fantasy-horror, with an emphasis on the horror!

Not sure how to classify Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (mini-series) and Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (film). Definitely these have science fiction elements.

Hosoda's Summer Wars presumably does count as more or less science fiction -- as opposed to his other films which are pretty much fantasy.

Just watched (but not yet reviewed) a mini-series called Kuromukoro (on Netflix) which is science fiction with giant fighting robots -- but has such a big focus on the human character drama that it seems to have not found much of a following among anime fans.

Speaking to that distinction; Nausica?

knives wrote: Sun Aug 23, 2020 12:41 am Speaking to that distinction; Nausica?

A few Miyazaki are on the fence but this feels like the one most clearly devised using a science-fiction future to drive its ideas. I’m sure people could make convincing arguments for the two films with Castle in the title as well, though his works generally read as overwhelmingly fantasy to me.

It is difficult to say that Nausicaa or Castle In The Sky particularly fit (the closest Ghibli to sci-fi for me would be the On Your Mark music video, but even that has an angel in it!). I would probably argue that it would be better to do a "Fantasy List Project" at some point in the future to cover everything from Lord of the Rings to superhero films, the Conan films, Italian peplum movies, anything featuring dragons or Godzilla and pals and most of Studio Ghibli's output, as being something very distinct from sci-fi, but that might not be an opinion shared by others!

It might be worth mentioning that Otaku No Video, which is kind of a semi-documentary and a parody of anime nerd (i.e. Otaku) culture (and itself spins off into its own sci-fi narrative at the mid-point) does mention Nausicaa as a big event movie of the period that everyone was camping outside the cinema for! Here's my old post from the anime thread about it:

I also have to highlight the amusing Otaku No Video which takes a kind of 'mental hygiene' approach to anime nerds (the titular "Otaku") following the dark descent into anime fandom of a promising tennis ace as his decision to go home early from a party ("he's the only one who takes tennis club seriously" state his other friends about to go off to more bars) leads to him accidentally sharing a lift with a group of highschool dropouts who have dedicated themselves to every possible nerdy interest from wargaming to cosplaying (the soundtrack goes from lighthearted and happy to ominous and foreboding when the Captain Harlock stickers come out!). These anime sections alternate with live action 'interviews' with real-life Otakus about their 'deviant behaviours', who have their faces pixellated and voices altered, as if they were committing some offence so shameful that they need their anonymity! Most of those sections end with a too blunt interview question that leads to the equivalent of many "How dare you ask that! I have real friends and so what if I cosplay! This interview is over!!" moments! (It is interesting seeing your now relatively commonplace cosplay aficionado being given the (obviously satirical and irreverent!) brushstroke of being the equivalent of some kind a sexual deviant here! Ah, it all seems so charming and naive now in the era of Furries having taken everything to the next level!).

The foresaking of the outside world (and actual relationships, sex and procreation) for 2D animated antics gets a section to itself. There's the rather expected take on the 'having to camp out for the big film premiere' situation (in this case for the premiere of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind) while the more 'normal' friend passes by, girl on arm, to be incredulous about his old tennis loving friend doing something so crazy. That causes a moment of self-reflection, but only a moment as another member of the club arrives with purloined storyboards and character designs from the upcoming Macross movie!

The second episode goes full bore into the hopes and dreams as in response to 'otaku discrimination' our hero fully embraces his nerdiness and decides to become the "Otaku of all Otaku! The Ota-king!", starts a cottage industry, conquers the world through anime, makes a feature film and eventually runs a space programme to go off for space battles in the stars for real, whilst the live action segments start turning even more bluntly into reality television police chase style tracking and shaming of 'cell thieves' and vigilante justice meted out in hand-held style! Its quite a fun and complex piece of work, as the two worlds split apart - the anime becoming sci-fi fantastical and literally out of this world, the 'reality' becoming more bluntly, crushingly cruel - in such a way that makes unashamed fantasy seem like the only true response to petty and mundane day to day prudishness, yet also completely unmoored from any sense of real world issues.

I would say that Nausicaa is as much science fiction (if not moreso) than Dune. Future Boy Conan is likewise pretty much science fiction. Laputa is more borderline, but probably a bit closer in tone to science fiction than to fantasy.

I realize this would be utterly ridiculous to include based on sheer volume, but technically Monster was one long series telling the whole manga story, running about 25-30 hours over the course of 74 eps straight, I believe without any seasonal hiatus. More than any other miniseries I can think of from memory, it actually does function like a long movie, with episodes showing breaks in the journey but rarely having isolated closures of self-contained episodic parameters other than maybe entering or leaving a town on occasion. The first third is especially enthralling as we become acclimated to the story bit by bit, where episodes have no bearing other than to separate the story in fragments, culminating in one of the most terrifying showdowns in that church with Johan. No wonder it was so challenging to get the HBO adaptation greenlit, since a pilot couldn't even establish the story- hell, maybe by the first season's finale!

The premise is terrifying and essentially takes the It's a Good Life episode of The Twilight Zone and builds on that idea to detail the horrific consequences of a cold sociopath with supreme power, and then makes the protagonist a moral participant in contributing to the existence of this destructive force. Highly recommended for all, even though it's too vast to try to squeeze onto a list in good spirit.

Just now catching up with this thread. I have to say the dumbest (and obviously doesn’t work) but also the catchiest (and frustratingly works most of the time) phrase to distinguish science fiction and fantasy is : “science fiction has rivets, fantasy has trees”


I also find the penumbra term “speculative fiction” equally frustrating because it is just specialist enough of a term that it takes a fair amount of explanation to detail that it’s the term that encompasses fantasy and sci-fi and alternate history and zombies and horror and comic books and ...

And then you realize the term is so vague and redundant that it actually encompasses all fiction which is why it’s such a useless penumbra term!

Amazing discussion of A.I. Above. The script calls the figures at the end metal mecha, not aliens, describing them as Giacometti style sculptures. (And note the backlit silhouette early on in the film that is our first introduction to David, sketches this basic shape for us before he’s revealed.)

I also find it interesting the parallels in the ending “simulacrum for David” with the opening scenes where David is a “simulacrum for Monica” and how those inform each other in rich ways, mostly philosophically. Along this same axis, I find it fascinating that in creating the mecha, man has become god like (as William hurt points out in the opening scene) and in the end of the film, the metal mecha are searching for their extinct/silent creator—we literally fly through their massive archeological dig before arriving at David—much as man spends so much output searching for their extinct/silent creator. And then for the mecha, in discovering this progenitor that is the closest they’ll ever come to their Creator/god, winds up being disappointing and disillusioning.



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I rewatched A Clockwork Orange a bit ago, and was struck then about how much of the film seemed about police / state brutality, and channeling the droogs into the official ranks of state sanctioned violence struck me as a political insight of the film I had completely missed the first time I watched it in high school ( when I thought it was just about how “the man” forces kids to “conform” and that’s a real bummer...) Seeing the protest events of 2020 play out since the droog cop killed George Floyd, only reinforced that perception.

Whilst it is probably ineligible for this project I also want to put in a plug for one of my very favourite anime series that got me into the area in my teens: Cyber City OEDO 808. Although this is one series that I would recommend specifically going for the English language dubbed version of, and specifically the UK version because of the excellent almost entirely re-done soundtrack by Rory McFarlane that adds so much to the action. That is about three criminals each given the choice by a mysterious figure to spend their lives in space prison or to get fitted with explosive neck collars a la Snake Plissken and go out on dangerous missions as cyber-cops. There are three episodes which puts one member of the trio front and centre as the primary focus. I like the second episode featuring the computer hacker Gogul being sent up against the latest cyborg robot the most, but the other two episodes (about a 'haunted' high rise tower and a modern techno-vampire) are great too.

I also want to put in a word for a few post-apocalyptic animes of the 1980s. The Mad Max series probably had an even bigger impact on anime than Western cinema and you can feel its influence throughout a series like Fist of the North Star and its compressed 1986 movie (I'm currently 75 episodes through the 156 episode boxset!) with its taciturn hero striding through a wasteland killing bad guys but not particularly caring one way or the other about the villagers that he is saving either. But I most want to highlight the astonishing Grey: Digital Target which has a bleak plot of a man striving to commit tasks in another wasteland in order to raise his rank of citizenship up to finally be allowed access into a fabled city, but which involves carrying out quests that pretty much involve certain death. The majority of the film is about putting together an ersatz band before everyone gets brutally decimated (even the comic relief characters!) to raise Grey's rank up a tiny notch up the scale before he has to leave for the next mission. Its bleak message seems to be that of savouring the present moment, even though it seems hideous, because there's nothing better around the corner, and better to leave that promise of citizenship as a motivating pipe dream than get there and realise it is all a sham anyway. That's something which also crops up in the early 90s Battle Angel: Alita OVA too, and if it is not a direct influence the feel of that period of anime feels present in a few recent Hollywood films set in stratified societies underneath glittering floating cities: of course the recent Alita: Battle Angel live action film, but also the Matt Damon film Elysium too.

(The full version of Grey: Digital Target is here for the moment)
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Whilst on post-apocalyptic anime of the early 90s, I thought I should also mention The Wind of Amnesia which is about starting from scratch in a post-collapse world after everyone has mysteriously lost their memories, and which in its starting over from zero premise feels similar (though tonally rather different!) to the recent Dr Stone series.

Funny you should mention Monster. I’m half way through the manga right now and loving it. Given how much the board likes crime stories just for fun, not the list, it’s definitely gets me to second you.

Enjoy! The series apparently follows the manga very closely (I watched it in my early 20s after an ex’s brother who was an anime lover said it was his all time favorite, both in manga and series). I’m not sure what the consensus is on the story’s development but I found the first third to be perfect, though I still enjoyed the rest. You’re right about its crime detective blueprint, but I love how it assembles multiple genres from noir to horror, sci-fi fantasy, and even western in his wanderings through towns in the first act. There’s an early bit where Tenma plays chicken with a band of criminals, coldly refusing to perform surgery until they agree to terms, that reminds me of a western gun showdown applied to mind games of morality, and may be my favorite moment even though it’s just a passing detail in the function of the plot.

They definitely match fairly closely. I actually have the first 8 or so episodes on DVD.

I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure they only released at max a couple volumes of the series on R1 DVDs, and then stopped producing them, so you can't even complete the series with U.S. friendly legal means.

Yep. That’s where I got stuck and only years later decided to pick up the Manga as a substitute.