The 10 Best Cyberpunk Anime of All Time
You’ve read all of William Gibson’s novels. You’ve seen Blade Runner so many times you can quote it verbatim. You’re on your 30th play-through of Cyberpunk 2077. Like a scrappy citizen of the hi-tech, low life worlds you love, you’re desperate for a change. You need a new score. Something to get you through the Bad New Days of the future. What you need is a cache of cyberpunk anime, digital worlds to jack into when real life starts feeling like dystopian fiction. These are the 10 best cyberpunk anime of all time, and who knows, maybe they’ll give you some coping mechanisms for living in the modern era. Starting your own lawless biker gang sure sounds therapeutic!
Ghost In The Shell
The quintessential cyberpunk anime franchise, Ghost In The Shell is the gold standard. Directed by Mamoru Oshii, the 1995 film Ghost In The Shell single-handedly changed the face of sci-fi anime forever. It’s the story of Motoko Kusanagi, a cyborg who works for Public Security Section 9 – a clandestine government organization that combats cyberterrorism. After the populace comes under attack from a hacker named Puppet Master, Motoko has to mobilize in order to take down the threat. While the film contains more action sequences than you can shake a circuitboard at, it also features an equal amount of philosophical questions. What’s the nature of the human soul? Can consciousness be digitized? If your body is replaced by cybernetic parts like some kind of human ship of Theseus, are you still yourself? There are no easy answers, and not every problem can be solved with a bullet. Sorry Motoko, I know that’s kinda your thing.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
One of the best cyberpunk anime of the 21st century, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a ten part tragic romance that takes place in the world of Cyberpunk 2077, the video game. Set in dystopian Night City, the plot follows a young man named David who struggles to survive alongside his single mother. After a tragedy leaves David alone in the world, he decides to throw his hat in with a team of edgerunners – cybernetic mercenaries who sell their skills to the highest bidder. Seduced by the money and power that comes with the job, David is ultimately led down a dark and criminal path that leads to destruction. While watching this series your heart will pound, your palms will sweat, and your eyes will water – all normal biological functions, I’m told. David wouldn’t’ know, he replaced his flesh and blood body a long time ago.
Ergo Proxy
Ergo Proxy is a weird one, an underrated and esoteric gem. The story is set in the domed city of Romdeau, where humans and androids live protected from the ecological disaster beyond the walls. After a mysterious virus causes the robot population to become homicidally self-aware, Re-l Mayer is dispatched to investigate alongside her android partner Iggy. While on the hunt for answers, she encounters augmented humanoids known as “Proxies” – said to be the next step in human evolution. Dark, dreamy, philosophical, and pulse-pounding, this anime feels like a Phillip K. Dick novel that got a mid 2000s cybergoth makeover – I mean that as the highest praise.
Trigun
Trigun is technically a Western, but peel back the rootin’ tootin’ exterior and you’ll find cyberpunk circuitry underneath. This is the story of Vash the Stampede, an outlaw with a sixty billion double dollar bounty on his head. Despite his reputation for being a Humanoid Typhoon, he’s actually a really nice guy! Well, he’s not really a “guy” at all. His supernatural gunslinging abilities suggest that there’s more to Vash than meets the eye. He might just be some kind of escaped science experiment from beyond the stars. The series’ cyberpunk tone comes from its sense of quiet desperation, it’s a show about little people trying to get by in a vast and unfeeling future. That’s mood that the Western genre also shares, a sense of isolation in the wilderness of the world. Poor Vash, all he wants is to find somewhere he belongs – him and everyone else in a William Gibson novel.
Psycho-Pass
A textbook cyberpunk title, Psycho-Pass is set in a near future metropolis where government surveillance is the norm. Monitored by a complex AI known as the Sibyl System, civilians are assigned a “crime coefficient” – a numerical value based on their likelihood to commit, well, crime. If a person becomes mentally unstable, their crime coefficient rises, which could lead to their arrest or execution. The plot follows Akane Tsunemori, a rookie cop tasked with tracking down “latent criminals” before they can resort to violence. But what happens when a serial killer shows up whose crime coefficient never rises above normal levels despite the rising body count? You call in a group of legally sanctioned criminals to hunt him down like human bloodhounds. It’s Blade Runner meets Minority Report – you’re gonna love it.
Akira
The jewel in the cyberpunk anime crown, Akira is the pinnacle of the genre. Directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, the film follows a group of biker gang teens living in Neo-Tokyo – built on the ruins of the old city that was blown up in a modern world war. Lawless teen Tetsuo is content revving engines and cracking the skulls of rival gang members, but his life changes when he’s contaminated by an escaped government experiment. Developing telekinetic powers at an alarming rate, Tetsuo begins to lose his grip on reality – threatening to tear it to shreds with his uncontrolled abilities. Ultimately, this is a cyberpunk story of friendship – friends don’t let friends turn into cosmic horror beings and rip apart the fabric of the multiverse now, do they?
Megalobox
Megalobox is set in a world that’s beginning to show signs of cyberpunkerky. The wealth gap is widening, the poor are poorer than ever, and the rich profit off of morally dubious new tech. The latest bit of bread and circuses that the masses are being supplied is “megaloboxing,” a sport where corporate sponsored cybernetic fighters duke it out for supremacy. When all hope of social mobility seems lost, a working class hero named “Gearless Joe” comes along – a young man whose lack of augmentation is his greatest advantage. It’s basically sci-fi Rocky, the story of a poor underdog waging a one man war against the tech industry, and punching his way to the top.
Serial Experiments Lain
Like Megalobox, Serial Experiments Lain is set in a world where cyberpunk dystopia is just beginning to take root. The plot follows the reclusive middle schooler Lain, whose days of isolation are interrupted after she gets an email from a classmate. A dead classmate. The formerly dead girl claims she’s received new life in The Wired, a digital realm that resembles the early 2000s internet. The girl also claims she’s found spiritual enlightenment in cyberspace, and that God is hidden deep within the circuitry. A new interpretation of the phrase “deus ex machina,” Serial Experiments Lain is the story of one little girl’s search for spirituality in the bowels of the machine. The answers to all her existential questions are there, but she might not like what she finds.
The Animatrix
An anthology series that takes place in the same world as The Matrix films, The Animatrix fills in the franchise’s narrative gaps. Ever wonder how the robots took over? Check out The Second Renaissance sequence and you’ll find out – but you may not like the answer. Harrowing, horrifying, and deeply human, The Animatrix provides a play by play of exactly how the Wachowski’s world went to hell in a hand basket. While I’d argue that the world of The Matrix is post-cyberpunk (because the machines won), The Animatrix shows us glimpses into the cyberpunk past. A past where humans built robots to make life easier, the robots got tired of listening, and life got all the harder for us. Be warned, the film features some seriously disturbing scenes – atrocities committed by both humans and robots alike. Humans were the instigators, but one the robots took the gloves off and decided to wipe us out, we never stood a chance.
Cowboy Bebop
While Cowboy Bebop tends to avoid the sprawling cityscapes for which cyberpunk is famous, this star-faring series features all the quintessential themes of the genre. Set in a recently colonized Solar System, the long arm of the law hasn’t quite gotten the distant worlds under control, making our planet’s neighborhood resemble the Wild West. Crime abounds, and bounty hunter duo Spike and Jet know it also pays – when criminals are turned in for cash, that is. The pair chase down do-badders while running from their own shady histories, but if there’s anything this series will teach you, it’s that the past can’t be outrun forever. Loneliness, lawlessness, isolation, these are the only companions a space cowboy has on the starry trail. Just like in William Gibson’s Night City, everyone in this universe is only out for themselves.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
