Summary
Not everything can go right in a story. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a story. From the simplest kids’ books to the longest epics, there’s something that eventually needs fixing. They just tend to get more complex and difficult, like when technology runs amok, and anime loves its technology.
Anime has seen technology go awry almost since its inception. Whether fans got their start throughAstro Boy,Robotech,Akira, or newer series, they’ve featured one hi-tech problem or another. Movies get a feature-length runtime to sort them out, but these series either feature an ongoing problem or multiple little issues where technology goes horribly wrong.
1Bubblegum Crisis
Androids Run Amok And Require Advanced Police Intervention
Thanks toAkira’s success, the late 1980s and early 1990s saw a swell of anime movies, TV shows, and OVAs hit the market. As obscure, violent, and/or plain nuts as they could be, many of them would become cult classics, likeNinja Scroll,Wicked City, andBubblegum Crisis. The latter would even get spin-offslikeAD Police Files,Bubblegum Crash, and its expanded reboot,Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040.
The original OVA series took place in 2032, where Japan, now annexed by the US, suffers from a range of issues. Between rising poverty and wealth inequality, lifelike androids or “Boomers” are being used to commit a range of crimes, which their megacorporation manufacturers, Genom, have washed their hands of. It’s up to the Advanced (AD) Police to deal with Boomer-related crimes and the corruption at the heart of their system.
If things went right for “mad scientist” Rintaro inSteins;Gate, he’d still be messing around with his friends in his “Future Gadget Laboratory.” His “PhoneWave” would be exactly what he planned it to be: a microwave that could be controlled remotely with a mobile phone. The banana he used to test it with would’ve been cooked at the general level instead of turned to gel at the molecular level.
It also would’ve sent ordinary emails instead of D-Mails: text messages that can besent back into the pastto change the present. These D-Mails did save the life of Kurisu, a neuroscience researcher. But it would result in the attention of the shadowy SERN organization, the death of his friend Mayuri, and a time-traveling tech arms race that leads into World War 3. As if risking ripping apart the fabric of time and space wasn’t risky enough…
3Dennō Coil
Augmented Reality Blends In With Actual Reality
Dennō Coilappears rather innocent on the surface, as it’s about a bunch of kids running their own detective bureau to investigate urban legends. However, they’re not investigating any ordinary schoolyard scrape. In their world, nearly everyone and anyone uses Dennō Megane, special glasses that allow people to interact with the Dennō World, a realm of augmented reality where they can keep AR pets, use AR tools, and other features.
They also control self-driving cars, virtual money, and wearable computers a la Fitbits. But they all come with issues. Their self-driving cars can run over people, hackers can mess with the Dennō space, and then there are the Nulls. They’re black, humanoid figures that can cause the Coil Phenomenon, where a person’s consciousness can separate from their body and get trapped in the AR realm. So, it’s not as cuddly as it appears to be.
4Serial Experiments Lain
Technological Revolution Goes Out Of Control
Dennō Coilsaw the line between reality and augmented reality get blurred, but it offered a way back for those who got lost in the Dennō space.Serial Experiments Lain’s journey into the virtual world ended up being a one-way journey that got Lain more than she bargained for.When she got an email from a dead classmate who claimed she “discarded” her physical self to find “God” on the Wired, Lain decided to investigate.
The Wired isan expanded form of the internetthat essentially runs all communication services. Its next step was to enable unconscious communication between people and machines without physical interfaces. The result thinned the barrier between the Wired’s virtual reality and actual reality, and Lain could control both if she also uploaded her mind to it. Though whether this meant the shy, real-world Lain, cocky online Lain, or a different Lain, or if they were all the same Lain is another matter.
Made as a successor toGhost in the Shell,Psycho-Passwas Production I.G’s next stab at cyberpunk crime drama. Only instead of being about cyborgs, it focused on a futuristic Japan finding a new way to regulate crime. Its Sibyl System scans its citizens’ brains and provides an assessment called a Psycho-Pass. It rates their criminal activity (or potential to do so) via a Criminal Coefficient Index. If the number’s low, they’re fine. If it’s high, they’re in trouble.
Once the CCI exceeds the maximum limit of 100, the Public Security Bureau (PSB) can apprehend them, or even “decompose” them if pushed. Their “Dominator” Guns can only fire when the Sibyl System determines their target is worth the shot. So, how can an obvious criminal like Makishima keep his CCI low, while others get treated as “latent criminals” for minor acts? The Sibyl Systemisn’t as efficient as it seems.
The problem with futuristic series is that the little details can throw people off. Audiences can buy humanity colonizing the Solar System at the cost of Earth itself, but their old-school tech like CRT TVs and VHS tapes somehow breaks the suspension of disbelief. In the end, they often embrace their anachronisms wholeheartedly, likeRed Dwarf(people went back to VHS because people are too stupid to look after DVDs) andBlade Runner 2049(the USSR and Atari are still around) did.
Besides, both they andCowboy Bebopstill retain rather realistic views of their tech. Faye Valentine survived cryogenic preservation, but her memories didn’t. The Bebop ship itself is a hunk of junk barely kept serviceable by Spike and Jet’s digital woolongs. Space flights to Mars, Venus, and the like areas mundane as a ride to Oshkosh. Every fanciful sci-fi thing has some drawback that ironically makes them more believable than their more optimistic counterparts.
Still,Cowboy Bebop’s view on VR in the episode “Brain Scratch” was more conventional, as a cult leader tries to trap other people’s consciousnesses on the web. What was masterful was how it ended in a way that made all parties rather sympathetic. Not everyone turns out quite so angelic inGhost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. They take place in a world where people don’t have to be dragged into VR to get their brains hacked.
They can either be tapped into directly via their cybernetic implants, or they can find their minds uploaded into other cyborg or robot bodies. Artificial minds that develop self-awareness, like the Tachikomas, risk getting scrapped to prevent security risks. That’s without getting into Major Kusanagi’s issues as a cyborg cop whose body is essentially owned by her bosses. WithGhost in the Shell, it may be easier to list the tech that goes right.
