All things are cyclical to be sure when it comes to entertainment and we see different kinds of things coming back into play over the years, some more than others and some more prominent than others. When you look back at areas of entertainment over the decades, you can see different themes that stand out more than others and sort of define it, particularly with music but also with movies and television. Anime, especially with its shift in the last decade to more thirteen episode seasons that sometimes go a bit longer, has gotten shorter and more varied and diverse shows that are hitting but there are still some main commonalities behind it, even when the big shows step out of it. It’s easy to call the 2000’s the decade of the schoolgirl in terms of comedies, dramas and more as the other genres seemed to wane.
But what type of anime do you wish would find a renaissance in this decade, even if just for a year or two?
For me, I want to see a rebirth of some real science fiction shows across all the genres. I came into anime in the 80’s with the blend of music and science fiction, from the cyberpunk styled Bubblegum Crisis to the larger war themed series Macross and its tangent series that comprised the Robotech universe. The decade brought out all sorts of Gundam shows. Science fiction has long been on the wane which is hugely disappointing since it can cover all the other genres as well. Revisiting shows recently like Crest of the Stars and seeing a rescue of Cowboy Bebop in the UK has me pining for things that go larger than life, yet still very human, such as the recent Bodacious Space Pirates. But real science fiction shows, not just the alien harem comedies with schoolkids on Earth, are disappointingly rare and that’s the genre I want to see resurface.
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