Nobody taught me science fiction anywhere. Not at school, not at home, not in that neighbourhood library where the books about ships stayed on the shelf until the spine went yellow and the pages stuck together on their own. A television taught me.
I was thirteen or fourteen and I did not sleep. Not because of anything serious: because of nothing. That is the part that embarrasses me to tell. I was not a child with a problem, I was a child with an aerial. And at those hours, when the house creaked and my parents slept, they broadcast things that were not for my age and were, precisely for that reason, for me.
I saw cities falling to pieces and people still clocking in in them in the morning. I saw machines with human faces and humans with machine faces. I saw the end of the world several times, in different formats, and almost always with a pretty song over it, which is how the world will probably end.
The years passed. Now I write dystopias and I boast about not being a fan, about having no posters or T-shirts or strong opinions about dubbing. Lie. I know the directors’ names the way others know the line-ups, and when somebody says that anime is for children I remember that my childhood was watched with the lights off.
What I bring here is a guide: why this format suits science fiction so well, which are, for me, the best sci fi anime series and films, and where to enter if you have never watched one. Everything in it exists. Nothing is invented.
Why anime is the best vehicle for science fiction
Because it does not negotiate with the budget. A manga can draw a machine that has never existed and an anime can set it in motion, which is why so much of the genre ended up living there. Ideas that would need a decade of Hollywood money are a Tuesday in a Japanese studio. And a drawn face can afford to be strange, ugly or broken in a way that a famous actor cannot.
And why cyberpunk belongs to it
Cyberpunk was born as a literary label in the United States, but it found its body in Japan. That is not a coincidence. The saturated city, the neon, the megacorporation that replaces the state, the modified body as merchandise: all of that exists in Tokyo before it exists in a novel written in English.
The best sci fi anime series
Mobile Suit Gundam (1979)
The series that taught the genre that a robot could be a tool of war and not a toy. Yoshiyuki Tomino directed for Sunrise a story of teenagers shut inside cockpits, with politics, hunger and corpses. Almost everything that came later comes from here, including the parts it would deny.
Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-1996)
Hideaki Anno directed for Gainax a series that begins as a robot fight and ends as an interrogation of the viewer. It is not an anime about saving the world. It is an anime about not wanting to be in the world and, even so, getting up.
Cowboy Bebop (1998)
Shinichirō Watanabe and Sunrise made a space western with jazz, debt and people fleeing their own past across different planets. Every episode holds up on its own and the whole thing hurts. The science fiction here is scenery; the rest is loss.
Serial Experiments Lain (1998)
Directed by Ryūtarō Nakamura at Triangle Staff, it is the series that in 1998 anticipated almost everything we later called life on the internet. A girl, a network, an identity coming apart. I do not recommend it for a Friday night.
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2002-2003)
Kenji Kamiyama directed for Production I.G. a police series where crime is information and information is power, with an elite unit chasing offences committed partly inside the network. Cyberpunk stops being an aesthetic and becomes a workplace, with bosses.
Texhnolyze (2003)
Hiroshi Hamasaki directed for Madhouse a series that barely speaks and still leaves your body wrong. An underground world, prosthetics, power struggles and a slowness that is a method. Not for starting. It is for when you have already seen everything else.
Planetes (2003-2004)
Sunrise adapted Makoto Yukimura’s manga to tell something almost nobody tells: the job. Orbital garbage, contracts, shifts, unbearable colleagues and a space race that is, for the characters, paid employment with a payslip.
Ergo Proxy (2006)
Shukō Murase directed for Manglobe a dystopia of sealed cities, sick automatons and a protagonist asking questions she should not. It is dense, pretentious and at times deliberately lost. I like that part too.
Dennō Coil (2007)
Mitsuo Iso directed for Madhouse a series about a neighbourhood where augmented reality has become one more layer, with glasses, digital pets and kids playing at something more dangerous than it looks. It has the eye of someone who was there.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (2007)
Hiroyuki Imaishi directed for Gainax the optimistic and strident version of the genre: an anime that believes human will can pierce the sky and that, even so, ends with a hole in your chest. I put it on when everything else fails me.
Steins;Gate (2011)
White Fox adapted the visual novel by 5pb. and Nitroplus and came out with one of the best time travel stories in the medium. It begins as a comedy of nerds in a flat and ends as a tragedy with many layers. The script is a machine and it does not cheat.
Psycho-Pass (2012-2013)
Naoyoshi Shiotani directed for Production I.G., with a script by Gen Urobuchi, a dystopia where a system measures your probability of offending before you offend. The police arrest people for what they are going to do. I will not say anything else.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022)
Studio Trigger and Hiroyuki Imaishi adapted the game Cyberpunk 2077 and something better than most adaptations came out: ten episodes, a city that eats you, implants, rage and easy money. It is the fastest door into cyberpunk, and it does not forgive you on the way out.
Anime films: the best science fiction
Akira (1988)
Katsuhiro Otomo directed for TMS Entertainment the film that opened the Western market to serious anime. Neo-Tokyo, a motorbike, a teenager with a power too big for him and a body that refuses to stay his. The animation is thirty-five years old and it is still ahead.
Ghost in the Shell (1995)
Mamoru Oshii directed for Production I.G. the adaptation of Masamune Shirow’s manga and turned it into a film of silences, water and philosophical questions about what is left of you when your body is replaceable. It is the central text of the genre, and it knows it.
Memories (1995)
Three shorts in one film: Magnetic Rose, directed by Kōji Morimoto from a story by Satoshi Kon; Stink Bomb, by Tensai Okamura; and Cannon Fodder, by Katsuhiro Otomo. The first is one of the best things the studio has ever done.
Metropolis (2001)
Rintaro directed for Madhouse a film with a script by Katsuhiro Otomo, loosely based on Osamu Tezuka’s manga. Robots, a two-level city and a humanity that has decided who is expendable. The jazz soundtrack and the mix of styles are a whole aesthetic education.
Paprika (2006)
The last film Satoshi Kon finished, directed at Madhouse before he died. A machine that lets you enter other people’s dreams, a therapist who goes in, and a border between the dreamed and the real that falls apart in pieces. Watching it after Inception is an interesting exercise, and unfair to Inception.
Where to start with sci fi anime
Never watched anime and want a wide door: Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. Ten episodes, the pace of a current series and no homework. Coming from cinema and wanting impact: Akira, and the next day Ghost in the Shell. Ideas, and slowness does not scare you: Serial Experiments Lain and Texhnolyze. A robot that makes you cry: Gurren Lagann. Why cyberpunk is Japanese although it was born in English: Stand Alone Complex. An anime that does not look like anime: Planetes.
And an unpopular piece of advice: do not start with Evangelion. Not because it is bad, which it is enormous, but because it is the last one, not the first. It is the exam, not the manual.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best sci fi anime to start with?
It depends on what you can take. If you want immediate entertainment, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. If you want a masterpiece and you have patience, Cowboy Bebop. If you want a film and a single night, Akira.
Which cyberpunk anime should I watch first?
Akira if you are into cinema, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex if you are drawn to the long series. And if you want something short and brutal, Edgerunners. The rest of the tradition is in cyberpunk: what to read.
Is there sci fi anime without fanservice or filler?
Yes. Planetes, Dennō Coil and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex go straight to the point and treat the viewer as an adult. Filler and fanservice are a vice of the industry, not a law of the format.
Do I need to watch it in Japanese with subtitles?
No. A good dub is a good dub, and whoever tells you otherwise is defending their childhood, not the work. I watch things the way the day catches me.
Closing
There is a series I have not watched again for years. I am not going to say which. Not because it is a secret, but because I watched it in a period and with somebody, and if I put it on again it is going to sound different and I am going to have to admit that the one who changed was me, not it. So I leave it there, on the list, untouched.
That is what good science fiction does when it is drawn: it promises you a future and gives you back a past. It talks to you about machines and it is talking about you. And when it ends, it does not leave you an answer, it leaves you an empty house with the light on and the feeling that somebody has just left. I am going to put the first episode of something on again. I will tell you if I sleep this time.
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