When making recommendations, I typically try to ensure something is "cyberpunk" rather than ensuring it's "good". After all, this community is for "cyberpunk" content, not "my random list of recommendations".

But I'm not going to try with this one. It isn't cyberpunk. I'll call it cyberpunk-adjacent though simply because of the mood of this movie. Plus, it's a really good movie. And the animation is incredible. You could call it style over substance, but there's a lot of style in this movie.

Redline is about an illegal car race which draws in racers from all over the galaxy. This year, the race has been chosen to run on a planet called Roboworld, who definitely do not want the race to happen on their planet. So it's sci-fi, it's weird, and it's a gorgeous film made by Madhouse.

Here's a trailer. I don't think it's streaming anywhere right now but if you ever get a chance, definitely watch it.

Megazone 23 is a 3-part OVA (each episode being over an hour) made in 1985-89. I've seen it included in cyberpunk anime lists as being a classic 80s cyberpunk, along with Cyber City Oedo 808. But I don't see it. I guess it's somewhat cyberpunk, but nothing compared to Cyber City Oedo 808.

It starts out with some punk kid living in 1980s Tokyo. He gets his hands on a weird motorcycle that the government wants back for some reason. And then he learns the motorcycle can transform into a mech suit. So this is very clearly a mecha anime. By the end of the first episode, the kid learns that what he thought was 1980s Tokyo is actually a space station, called Megazone 23. So that's neat. Still not entirely cyberpunk in my opinion.

In episode 2, the punk kid is trying to spend more time with his biker gang but gets drawn into the escalating war with a neighboring space station. So more mecha battles. Oh, and there is an AI which runs this space station and talks to the main character occasionally. So there's a punk with a mech suit, is that enough to be cyberpunk? There's an AI that runs the city, now is it cyberpunk? I'm not sure. It's very clearly an 80s mecha anime but I'm not sure how cyberpunk I'd consider it.

Then there's episode 3, which takes place 500 years after episodes 1 and 2. Now the main character is a hacker who spends a lot of time in cyberspace. Now things are getting cyberpunk. And I can't find this episode streaming anywhere!

You can watch an english dub of Part 1 and Part 2 on Amazon Prime. Or you can watch subtitled versions of Part 1 and Part 2 on youtube. But I can't find Part 3 streaming anywhere!

Also, a random fact I learned from the wiki page: Robotech: The Movie was made in 1986 by splicing footage from Part 1 of Megazone 23 with the anime series Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross. That's how much more "mecha" this is than "cyberpunk".

I should clarify I'm not calling this anime "bad", I'm simply judging it by how "cyberpunk" it is. If you like 80s scifi anime, this is a great example. But as cyberpunk? I'm not sure.

Currently showing

Goku Midnight Eye is another crazy hyper-violent cyberpunk anime from the 80s. It's about a private investigator who has a cybernetic eye which gives him god-like powers over all electronics on the planet (and off-planet, he can control satellites). And he uses that power... to solve his cases.

The entire series is just two 50-min episodes. In the first episode, he gets knocked out and wakes up on an operating table as some mysterious person is giving him the cybernetic eye. And that's never resolved or explained. I assume the manga explained why this random investigator was given god-like powers over all electronics, but the anime doesn't have time for details like that. It's too busy focusing on the violence and random nudity.

The entire series is weird like that. He also has a staff which can extend for as long as the plot demands, and it's indestructible. So that's nice.

You can watch it on Tubi, or Freevee (Amazon Prime).

If you've never seen Cyber City Oedo 808, you really need to. It's a classic cyberpunk anime and only 3 episodes long, so it isn't much of a commitment.

It's available on Crunchyroll. Also, someone posted both the subbed and dubbed versions to youtube if you'd rather watch it there.

When I first watched the trailer for Black Lotus I thought it was just a generic story that they slapped the Blade Runner title on for some name recognition. But after watching it, the story truly does fit within the Blade Runner universe. The themes of what it means to be human and whether Replicants should be treated as human is central to the plot.

The animation style still looks too much like a video game cutscene to me, but it isn't a bad show. It's also very slow. I think they were trying to mimic the slow pacing of the original Blade Runner but were only partially successful. They weren't able to pull-off the quiet melancholy feel of the original Blade Runner, or an anime like Serial Experiments Lain. It isn't bad, it just isn't a masterpiece.

The first episode is available on youtube, and the entire series is available on Crunchyroll.

I should mention I've never read the manga, I've only watched the Netflix movie. And while I think it's a great post-apocalyptic scifi movie, I thought BLAME! was considered cyberpunk?

The movie is about a distant future where self-replicating machines have covered the entire planet in a giant City (although calling it a "city" is a bit generous, it's mostly a series of pipes and corridors). In this future, the machines now detect all humans as intruders and are trying to eradicate them. So the last remaining humans are just trying to find a way to eke out an existence.

Am I missing something? Can someone explain why this is usually included in lists of cyberpunk anime? It all feels very post-apocalyptic to me. Is it just the lack of plants/nature that gives it a cyberpunk label? Or is there something from the manga that wasn't brought over into the movie and would've added some cyberpunk themes?

To be clear, I'm not saying this is a bad movie by any means, I'm just confused how it's considered cyberpunk. Here's a trailer, and it's still available on Netflix.

Appleseed is a strange franchise. Made by Masamune Shirow (the creator of Ghost in the Shell), Appleseed never seemed to reach the same popularity as Ghost in the Shell so all attempts at creating Appleseed movies have always felt somewhat low-budget to me. Also, they usually feel more like military scifi than cyberpunk.

The one exception to this is Appleseed: Ex Machina. This one actually felt cyberpunk to me. One of the main plotlines is about everyone in the city using an augmented reality headset in their day-to-day lives when someone hacks the headsets, turning everyone who uses them into mindless zombies. This is the only movie in the Appleseed franchise (in my opinion) that touches on the 'dehumanization of technology' aspect that I expect/want from my cyberpunk stories. I mean, the 2004 Appleseed movie spent the second half of the movie trying to stop a giant mobile fortress and Appleseed Alpha never even left the wasteland. Having a city inhabited by both humans and cyborgs isn't enough for me to consider something cyberpunk.

I guess part of the problem is I'm expecting the American version of cyberpunk with its 'High Tech, Low Life' focus, while the Japanese version of cyberpunk seems to be focused more on police forces in the future.

What do you think? Any fans of Appleseed here? Am I being unfair by not calling the other movies cyberpunk?

This series just started airing on Crunchyroll. It looks like your standard Blade Runner setup with androids co-existing with humans until some androids go rogue and need to be stopped. And yet the trailer has random shots of like mech suits fighting (or whatever it's called when it's just scifi armor). So I really don't know if this show is cyberpunk or just generic scifi.

I'm not sure if I'll watch it but I wanted to share in case others are interested.