Why do all sci-fi anime have such a bleak and depressing atmosphere?

>>155596904
Gurren Lagann is pretty colorful.

>>155596941

Cowboy Bebop was really jazzy.

>>155596941
Guren Lagann is science fiction about as much so as is Star Wars.

It means they are right. Look around you.

>>155596904
Chobits is okay

>What is cyberpunk
really?

>>155596904
Off the top of my head, Dai-Guard's super optimistic without shying away from fairly serious topics.

Watch more anime.

>>155596904
E7 is filled with nuclear war allegory but is about counterculture and the power of love.

>>155596904
Most sci-fi isn't particularly speculative about the future, and instead uses techno-fantasy as a way of exploring themes of the present day by proxy of fantastical futuristic elements.

It's bleak because it's making a criticism about some aspect of our world, and the tone is simply reflecting that. When an author has something hopeful to say about the future, they write stories about the present.

that the industrial revolution was a mistake

I can guarantee you this thread will have 200+ replies and have a huge debate over the unibomber at some point.

Fucking leftist pieces of shit.

>>155599374
Who?

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>>155600433
Uncle Ted.

>>155596904
Speaking of GitS, can anyone explain why in the original anime movie where in the beginning the Major shot up the diplomat instead of the actual programmer? Both of them had diplomatic protection but the programmer felt like he could have been the one to shoot at since he was the one with all the secrets and wasn't a foreigner. The diplomat getting assassinated should have been a massive international incident but it looks like Section 9 got away with it? How? It felt like she just straight up murdered the dude for no reason, and there were all those body guard witnesses. The guy was no threat, only the programmer was. They could have just taken all of them into custody and worry about the details later but they ended up in an even bigger mess politically. Or am I missing something?

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>>155596904
Not all scifi anime are cyberpunk.

>>155596904
tbqh I think stuff like GitS and Big-O are comfy. The atmosphere might be dark, but it's dark in a seedy, Christmasy way. Like the streets may be dingy and dirty but the neon lights make it all look kind of homely. Add to that the music, the quietness and then the abrupt violence/action, then back to being quiet, I love it. It's like ASMR but where I could easily pause it and fall asleep to the image. Like if I was in that world I could just find an abandoned building and sleep there and still feel safe as long as no one finds me.

>>155596904
Transhumanism is when science solves all of mankind's problems.

Cyberpunk is when it doesn't.

>>155596904
>cyberpunk

>>155603065
Because Japanese people trying to write shit like they're smart write dumb shit and and then try to use lots of justification to make it seem like the nonsense the my wrote totally makes sense.

>>155596904
Japs have a poor outlook for the future.

>>155597601
Agricultural revolution*

>>155599374
>>155600433
>>155600878
TED DID NOTHING WRONG

HE WAS RIGHT, HE WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG

>>155596904
The happiest sci-fi anime that i could think of was Time of Eve, other than that, it has to be that one doujin about that guy who falls in love with a robutt and then they had lots of sex.

>>155596904
Being critical is being intelligent.

>>155603667
You clearly haven't watched space dandy.

>>155603741
Is Space Dandy about technology?

Sure, but it's not bleak and gritty enough though. It's either pseudo-commentaries or mindless pseudo-violent actions like M.D. Geist. Very fitting for a genre that revels on hyperreality and simulacrum, which is fine, but not enough of the nihilism/void part. There is always some degree of utopia contained within it, which for me is a sign of concession or giving up, a normalization of some sort towards ideology. Maybe that's all genre fiction could amount to, especially for this sort of type.

>>155596904
>Why do all sci-fi anime have such a bleak and depressing atmosphere?

General trend about sci-fi worldwide: we can't imagine a bright future anymore. It just looks childish and naive.

> What are they trying to tell us?

The world sucks and it's going to suck more. High tech, low life. More people but no social cohesion, no common cultural threads (yay diversity!).

I guess that's why we see more fantasy and specially isekai now. Technology doesn't cut it anymore, we crave idealized humanity. Even Konosuba's Fantasy Australia with its lurking monsters is a pretty, comfy, warm place. Nazarick is a den of horrors but a close, happy family of horrors. Better imagining being an undead monster with "children" than just a salaryman. And the nicest harem LNs are always family harems like DxD, Rokujouma.

>>155596904
japan is dying so the japs can't imagine a future that isn't even more decrepit

>>155604171
That's a good answer.

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I want more comfy-nostalgic sci-fi with cute alphas dancing.

>>155596941
Didn't humans live underground in a distopia where aliens misstreat them?

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Considering the insidious control mega corporations have on world governments coupled with the fact that they're already behaving like the crude caricatures that old marxists used to make them out to be, it only going to get worse as they have to rely less and less on humans.

Communists delude themselves into thinking some kind of global universal basic income will come when robots do everything, but what will actually happen is mega-corporate world government rule enforced by private robot armies and society will be divided thus: The rich people who own the robots, and the absolute helpless poverty of everyone else.

>>155597227
I miss cyberpunk. I guess it can't be helped, we are almost in 2020, we are basically "in the future" so I guess no one has interest in that stuff any more.

>>155604171
>General trend about sci-fi worldwide: we can't imagine a bright future anymore

Has anyone ever imagined a bright future?
The main task of any good sci-fi story has always been to warn people about the risks of our future.

>>155604526
>Communists delude themselves

Communists and their ilk were the the primary tool used to disassemble (violently) the old guard, the ancien régime of aristocracy and mercantilism and replace it with our current capitalist overlords.

Ironic, isn't it? They're the best weapon of their hated enemies. It's not like MegaCorps care about traditions, nations, religion, close families and the like. More existential emptiness to vainly fill with consumerist crap.

Blame all the "enlightened" philosophers who believed in the tabula rasa, the possibility of a New Man. Well they didn't knew about evolution but they did have eyes to see how men have an inborn nature, which is social and tribal.

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>>155596904
> Moe Pirates
> Bleak and depressing

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>>155596904
Get some taste, OP

>>155604646
>Has anyone ever imagined a bright future?
>The main task of any good sci-fi story has always been to warn people about the risks of our future.

On thing is to warn, other to depress with grimdark stories. Back in the 40s and 50s there were those idealist stories about a bright future with nuclear automoviles that don't need refueling and juvenile adventures in space and the like.

There's no clear boundary but I think it is mostly since the 70s when the trend changed. Compare 2001 with Alien. Heroes in a clean spaceship (even if ruled by a crazy AI) versus blue-collar workers in a dirty space truck, suffering because of corporate greed.

>>155604199
>implying it's only Japan
Every "developed" nation is dying, it's just maybe more obvious in japan

>>155604832 There's no clear boundary but I think it is mostly since the 70s when the trend changed

If we're talking about all science fiction, then no. Star Wars and its sequels weren't really negative about a futuristic fantasy setting any more than it was positive. The balance of good vs evil wasn't written in the tech but in the way humans simply behave. Back to the Future is also not that negative about the future; though it mostly lampoons technological progress into inane and silly directions in the second movie, I don't think the writers were trying to say "we're fucked" so much as "why does nobody think of hoverboards?". The Fifth Element is also not particularly negative about humanity's future and technological progress, but much like BTTF, seems to be playing around with how technology really hasn't made us better people necessary, just weirder.

And so on and so forth.

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>>155596904
It's because you have shit taste.

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Lolita Motoko best Motoko

reading Lem is depressing

his first stories were optimistic and fanciful about new technologies and wonderful worlds but the very last one is just about the sheer impossibility of a contact with any alien civilisation

>>155604410
Yeah, they're sure comfy now that the テロテロの時間 has gone. But the author shows you just enough of the past to let your mind fill in the blanks and realize that those chill old people are actually burdened with the memory of their world and their lives falling apart.

>>155604656
The only bleak and depressing part was getting eight episodes in and still managing to be underwhelmed over them not being proper pirates despite knowing about it in advance.

I mean, that's just the show failing to click with me rather than a knock against the show itself, but I don't see why they spent seven or so episodes intentionally misleading the audience to think that there was going to be actual space piracy.

>>155604410
>the world went to shit

>>155596993
The science thing was just to set a mood, it wasn't even a plot device.
GitS is about transhumanism, bebop is about a cool guy in spaaaace.

>>155604536
Punk in general is kinda low because punk was created in a time where the prediction was that human population was gonna explode to unbearable levels.

>>155603294
transhumanism is transcendence of human consciousness, be it good or bad, awesome or disturbing.

>>155605072
Star wars it's not Sci-fi. It's more like Space opera fantasy.

>>155605072
>star wars
>science fiction
I mean technically? But really dude?

>>155605617

I don't know about that. It might have a setting that is not our future (or even our galaxy), but while aliens are running amok, the story is told from the majority human perspective with a lot of concepts and ideals that we could recognize. The only reason it isn't pure sci-fi is the Force, but if you take that out it might as well be as sci-fi as Star Trek is.

>>155605705

If the point of the discussion is to find science fiction that doesn't go bleak or negative about humanity's future, I think it works. Sure, it isn't our future, but it is recognizable as a potential future. It really isn't all that different from other space "westerns" or opera works like Firefly, Cowboy Bebop / Outlaw Star, Buck Rogers, and the like. Shit, Outlaw Star has blatant magic incorporated into it and it still works as scifi.

>>155605808
star wars takes place in the past tho

>>155605808
There is the discussion of what is science fiction.
If it looks sciency and it's in space, it's not necessarily scifi.
Star wars is science fantasy, with zen religion in the middle.
Star trek is science fiction, to the point of it being dull with details about the tech sometimes.

>>155605858

I mentioned that. I still think it works as a vision of the future, though. If Lucas wanted to just do a swords and sorcery fantasy, he didn't need to have space planes and gigantic balls of engineering impracticality.

>>155605905

I'm not going to get nitpicky about details. Whether Star Wars is scifi or fantasy or something else is, judging by a quick Google search, a stupidly hot debated topic. I don't really want to go into it here. If you don't like it as an example, fine. I gave several others.

>>155596904
Life sucks.

Buy straws.

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>>155596904
Not all...

Because when you concentrate on the known you see scarcity everywhere and sci-fi is about the known.

With unknown there is potential abundance everywhere and fantasy is mostly about the unknown and there is seemingly always good times ahead. The abundance of stuff that is yet to come.

>>155605430
Well, considering the polution, the population and corporations and evil goverments ruling the life of citizens and the pseudo clandestine tech markets China basically is now the epitome of cyberpunk setting

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Y-yeah, why so b-bleak?

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Mmm, all that bleak

>>155596941
>>155596904
Aria is aesthetic as fuck

>>155596904
Because if someone shows you a happy future you'd want to kys from knowing you won't live to see it.

>>155596904
>Why do all sci-fi anime have such a bleak and depressing atmosphere?

Meal Drive would like a word with you

>>155596904
You should try sci fi manga
Blame can be depressing to read even when nothing is happening

>>155607662
That's not sci-fi

>>155608893
Close enough.

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>>155608552

>>155603065
She missed. It was the first sign of Puppet Master invading her ghost.

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Dirty pair was pretty upbeat for a sci-fi. I feel like the late 80s was when anime sci-fi started shifting to all-grimdark all the time.

>>155605808
>A long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

>>155596941
Gurren Lagann is not sci fi and humans there lived in underground holes with the threat of beastmen and later antispirals waiting to kill them above

It is presented in that way because as technology has progressed, human life has become bleaker and lost more value. A farmer in the 1910s would be more integral to society and act like less of an animal than someone in today's materialistic hellscape, and so in works that go futher into the future it is only logical that it would get worse. If anyone is familiar with the Unabomber, it is similar to the philosophy behind his attacks.

In regards to storytelling, it presents a logically more extreme but familiar world through which authors can echo commentary on modern society.

>>155604655
I'm sad that this is the perspective I have reached

>>155596904
Because Uncle Ted was right.

>>155613565
Did you watch it until the end?

>>155603294
Science can't solve problems, it is totally impotent.

>>155604536
A new GitS anime was announced yesterday

>>155615611
Yes and through it I concluded that the Unabomber was right

Does Chobits count?

>>155606520
>china
Not nearly enough tech and not nearly enough hopelessness. Chinese lives outside of foxcon factories have only improved lately.

>>155618555
Don't watch it.

>>155615611
of course not

>>155622266
Then your opinion has been completely invalidated.

>>155596904
the future is so bright that you have to wear mirrorshades

>>155597227
>cyberpunk
That word this trademarked now actually. Can't use it.
[spoiler[ not kidding, it really is. [/spoiler]

>>155617117
>anti-vaxxer

>>155623332
Nice spoiler.

>>155596904
The future is a bleak and depressing place.
The past is a bleak and depressing place.
The present is a bleak and depressing place.

The only answer are SoLs and New Dominion Tank Police