what are some good scifi animes?

[ShiroNeko-__-]

hi everyone, i saw that a lot of you said you like scifi anime but i haven't really seen a good one yet. could you tell me your favorites here? i really like scifi tv like star trek (all but orig), firefly, fringe, babylon 5, etc

[lemmingllama]

Gurren Lagann is pure gold. Other good ones are Ghost in the Shell, Eureka 7, and Blassreiter.

[CaNzCo]

If you are into a more drama based Sci Fi with a killer plot, check out Scrapped Princess. It may be a rough start, but you won't regret it.

Honestly if you haven't seen many good ones, check out the classics. Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, and Trigun may be your cup of tea.

[Telemecus12]

If You want a few I would recommend some classic anime such as:

Battle Angel: Cyborg/Robot genre where people live on earth in 2 completely separate ways of living and the struggle to find a better way to live.

Appleseed: Can't go wrong with this one.

Very old one from the early 80's if your feeling adventuress.

Mospeada (Genesis Climber MOSPEADA)

Created in partnership by the same guy that made the 2004 Appleseed move. this anime features Transformable motorcycle-armors. They all kind of resemble the mechs from Macross a bit.

Lastly Armitage. Mars is colonized and Androids are common use a criminal/Sci-fire genre I would put it in.

[Jeordy]

I agree with Eurika 7 and Appleseed. Code Geass is kind of sifi-ish as well and is a show everyone should watch regardless of their favorite type of anime (in my opinion)

[shadow007]

Mobile Suit Gundam 00

and also Macross Frontier

[ShiroNeko-__-]

Thanks a lot guys! I have a lot of stuff to check out!

ive already seen Cowboy Bebop and loved it but was kinda disappointed by the ending.

i also saw ghost in the shell a long time ago so dont really remember it. guess i should check it out again.

[shyguysteve]

the genre sci-fi covers a lot of ground in anime.

it can be from anything mech to anything monster.

since there is so many to check out, start with

trigun

cowboy bebop

black lagoon

blue gender

neon evangelion

a lot of these are kinda old but great anime to watch.

[STR1K3]

black lagoon

As much as i love back lagoon, i wouldn't consider it scifi. But totally worth the watch if you haven't seen it. I can see why Shyguysteve suggested it, as i scifi fan i do love it, just not for the scifi content.

All the big names have been pointed out. But i'll throw in Gundam Seed, which pretty much is a space opera like star wars. Albeit with more crying and Mobile suits.

[Bluenoser]

First, before I get into the recommendations, you need to know I have been a hardcore SF junkie in literary form since shortly after I first learned to read, I have been addicted to the stuff for nearly 40 years now and am very widely read and to a lesser extent viewed (movies and TV) in the genre as well. So I tend to have some older school approaches to the material, how it is defined, and what I would see as real SF. The following are just a few off the top of my head recommendations and concurrences with other recommendations already in this thread, by no means an exhaustive list.

I'd agree with Gundam Seed myself, of all the Gundam series I find I enjoyed that one the most, but Gundam 00 is in many ways a better SF story than the other Gundams since it takes place in the "real" world a few hundred years later and I found it tried to stay a bit closer to a projected reality than the other various Gundam series IMHO.

However, one series which was not mentioned here is Starship Operators, it is a 13 ep series that like B5 does its best to play fair with known laws of science/physics without wonder weapons, unlike a lot of the SF out there, and I found the characters interesting and the visuals well worth looking at. If you want space ship combat with a strong feel of realism to it's science I would give that one a try.

Ghost in the Shell, both series and movies certain were decent SF stories IMHO, well worth the time I'd suggest, Appleseed is a good one too. Eureka 7 also is a good one, but it is a slow start (I said to my wife when it first came on around here that I would give it a chance since it can take time to set up characters and settings, she quit after the first few but I stayed with it and was rewarded for doing so, something she agreed with down the road too) but the overall story I found to be almost classic golden age written SF in its nature at the end. I would also agree with Scrapped Princess, while it may not seem to be SF to look at, especially in the beginning, it truly is, and not badly done either, although not the top of the quality spectrum, it does use a few more SF tropes than I might have preferred but still worth it I thought. Armitage is also a good older classic SF anime story too, I would concur with that recommendation as well.

I also liked Kiddy Grade, nothing too out there in terms of originality per se but I thought it was well constructed and created good characters and a good ride through the story myself.

A personal favourite example of SF anime is Bubblegum Crisis 2040, the story, characters, and music in it worked really well together. I can't recommend that highly enough.

Zegapain is also one of the better SF animes I've seen as of late, and one I find well worthy of recommendation.

These are a few SF animes that are all available here at Kametsu that I would recommend to you to look into. I have tried to stick to what is true SF and not just material that uses SF solely as a setting for other types of storytelling (nothing wrong with that, it is not what I feel is real SF though), and since one of your favourites that you listed was B5 I figured you must like reality derived SF as much as what could be called Science Fantasy (which there is a fair bit in anime I find, also good material, not knocking it just making distinctions is all) and I have tried to pick out ones that fall into that category. Hope they are of some use to you.

[Hicks]

No one mentioned Ergo Proxy or Last Exile? For shame.

[Bluenoser]

No one mentioned Ergo Proxy or Last Exile? For shame.

Well, I didn't because I've only seen the first couple of episodes of Ergo Proxy and I don't recommend something I haven't seen in full yet, and while I enjoyed it I am not comfortable classifying Last Exile as SF beyond it's setting. Yes, it is very good, but SF, no, not in my books. I did think about Elfin Lied, but I also can't call that a SF anime despite being good if a bit violent at points. Like I said I am a bit old fashioned in how I define something as a SF story, it takes more than just the setting being used for me, it takes the interactions within the settings and the impacts of the different technology upon the societies and the characters as well, and that was what was lacking in Last Exile for me to not be able to consider it truly a SF anime...still a very good one, but not really SF, that would be what I call speculative fiction more than science fiction, which takes nothing away from how good it is. It takes more than being post apocalypsian for me, and I personally found that trope got old in the genre decades ago when no one thought we could survive the Cold War without one, which btw was one of the main reasons Star Trek was so popular, it actually foresaw a future where we hadn't blown ourselves up and developed into an advanced culture as a species. I mean really, you had to have something to offset Shatner's ham acting...LOL

That's my defence for excluding those two, one for lack of completion, the other for inability to call it SF despite it being a very good anime story...

[Hicks]

They had flying ships and a giant space ship in Last Exile, which lasses it as an SF in my opinion. Of course I would go as far as to class most steampunk as SF, though Last Exile technically isn't steampunk either.

I'm not really one for the strict definitions of genres though, either. Technically, SF is about how technology effects society (boiled down). Taken that way, Star Trek technically wouldn't be a SF, yet when one thinks of SF, Star Trek comes to mind for most people. So I guess I go with a looser definition, and so something that would fit the strict definition would be classed by me as being a "hard SF".

As for Star Trek, I'm more of a DS9 fan, personally.

[Bluenoser]

They had flying ships and a giant space ship in Last Exile, which lasses it as an SF in my opinion. Of course I would go as far as to class most steampunk as SF, though Last Exile technically isn't steampunk either.

I'm not really one for the strict definitions of genres though, either. Technically, SF is about how technology effects society (boiled down). Taken that way, Star Trek technically wouldn't be a SF, yet when one thinks of SF, Star Trek comes to mind for most people. So I guess I go with a looser definition, and so something that would fit the strict definition would be classed by me as being a "hard SF".

As for Star Trek, I'm more of a DS9 fan, personally.

[ShiroNeko-__-]

Bluenoser, could you explain to me why fantasy is often lumped in with sf? i never understood that. but i don't have an academic background in it. i am not a fan of fantasy really. to me, fantasy is stuff that could never happen, not based in science at all ... magic, faries, vampires, etc.

Hicks, ds9 is awesome! i was really sad whe n they killed jadzia dax though and i didnt like that they brought ezri in. it didn't make sense for many reasons and the character was weak.

[Bluenoser]

First of all Hicks, my bad, I mixed up Last Exile with another anime, the one with the last wolves on the planet looking for heaven, Wolf's Rain, why I had them mixed I cannot say, but that was the case, which was also why I was talking about post apocalypsian tropes in the SF genre too. You are correct that Last Exile would be SF as I define it now that I have looked it up thanks to TCL putting in a link recently, while I have not seen it yet myself I would have to agree it fits the SF definition judging by the exception. Sorry about the confusion, as I said, entirely my bad here. Unlike some folks I am willing to admit my mistakes when I become aware of them, and this was certainly one of them, hence the apology and public acknowledgment of it.

Now, as to ShiroNeko-__-'s question regarding the blending of SF and Fantasy by some, that has a couple of different aspects to be answered so I'll try my best. If you mean in terms of people simply lumping the different genres together, especially older people that comes from the fact that until the last couple of decades at most Science Fiction was seen as silly stories, escapism and basically no different than wild fantasies albeit using science instead of magic as the basis, and therefore no different from each other to any "serious" reader. They were sold and marketed together as essentially the same genre for sales purposes, which also added to this. Nowadays though Science Fiction has become recognized as the literature of ideas and gained a lot of respect and credibility, but for many that doesn't matter, what they first thought about it remains the only way they look at it. I am old enough to remember being mocked for being a SF reader instead of a reader of "real" literature because I was reading Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, etc.

Then we get into the way some people blur the lines in their writings between Science Fiction and Fantasy, and create what in many ways I and others call Science Fantasy, basically taking theories rooted in Science and extrapolating wildly with them to create effects that are in essence and impacts little different than magical effects. There is an old expression from one of the greats of SF that goes "any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic", and alas that concept has allowed some writers to run wild and further blur the lines between Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Those are the two main reasons why for some there is such a blending/lumping together of SF and Fantasy despite the reality that is anything but a fair combination. Now, I also enjoy good Fantasy, even though my first love is Science Fiction, but the idea that the two are essentially the same or even similar is one I find offensive. The only thing they have in common is that they are both speculative in some respect, aside from that though well they take very different paths to their respective destinations. That I hopes helps answer your question for you, feel free to ask for further clarification if you feel the need, just state what it is you want clarified and if I can I will.

[ShiroNeko-__-]

thanks for your reply Bluenoser.

i just cant get into fantasy books really.

[Kyliegraphy]

Just stating this Deep space 9 is the worst of star trek (not including 2009 movie)

[Hicks]

I couldn't disagree more that that assessment. Personally, I feel that DS9 remains the best that the franchise has to offer.

[hikarabita]

ghost in the shell series, Appleseed series, Code geass, guilty crown (ongoing)