The best sci-fi anime every fan should see. The canon weighted toward respected deep cuts, spanning cyberpunk, hard space-SF, philosophical head-trips, and space-western cool.
1The space-western touchstone, fusing jazzy noir, bounty-hunter cool, and melancholy into the genre's most universal entry point.
2The definitive time-travel thriller, building paranoia and tragedy out of microwave-and-phone science that actually pays off.
3Cyberpunk's intellectual peak, dissecting identity and networked society through tightly plotted near-future police work.
4Hard-SF done humane: orbital debris collectors face the real grind of working in space, a deep cut beloved for its grounded realism.
5The vast space-opera epic, a war of ideologies across the stars that anchors any serious sci-fi canon.
6A moody post-apocalyptic head-trip about androids and identity, the kind of philosophical deep cut sci-fi fans champion.
7Prophetic, unsettling exploration of digital consciousness and the wired world, a cult pillar of cerebral sci-fi.
8Dystopian cyberpunk crime thriller interrogating a society that quantifies criminality before the crime.
9Slow-burn far-future dystopia about psychic powers and societal control, a deep cut routinely named among the genre's smartest.
10A quietly visionary AR-childhood story that predicted mixed reality, a respected deep cut for thoughtful sci-fi.
11A gentle, humane chamber piece about androids and personhood, a short deep cut that punches far above its length.
12Gun-toting space-western with a pacifist heart, blending desert-planet adventure and comedy with surprising philosophical weight.
13The funny-with-space-vibes pick: episodic, gorgeous, irreverent cosmic adventure from the Bebop creative lineage.
14A sleek modern AI time-travel story that asks what it means for a machine to have a soul, with standout sci-fi action.