Aoi Nagase in: The Future Depicted by Anime

Yo, buddies. Still alive?

In every kind of  motion pictures you can find (documentaries, movies, anime, cartoons, etc.), they always depict the appearance of our world’s future differently. Of course, that’s because it’s part of the creators’ imagination. The two most common depiction of the future are either prosper future with complex designs of buildings, or a world that is in its near-destruction condition. Or both, with split 50:50 share.

Most of the future predictions in motion pictures dictate that the world will be either a peaceful place after technological breakthroughs or the world has simply ended, with few surviving living being left. Of course, there are other depictions, as well, such as the world where extraterrestrial beings co-exists together with humans on Earth or that the conventional governance had essentially collapsed and is replaced with corporatocracy.

Anime is no exception to this, but they have one prediction that makes unique in their depiction of the future; a world where technology and magic essentially became a vital component in life.

The world in the aftermath of a holocaust.

I came up with this idea of how the future is depicted in anime after reviewing both The Asterisk War and Cross Ange the other day.

In The Asterisk War, the superpowered humans, Genestella, appeared after a major incident that happened sometimes before the start of the series, called “Invertia.” It’s basically a meteorite that crashes into the Earth that causes geographic and economic damages. The aftermath of the incident causes the rise of genetically enhanced human, the Genestella, and the collapse of the world governing body, being replaced by an entity called Integrated Empire Foundation.

In Cross Ange, the world I explained in the previous post is actually an artificial Earth, being created after a huge holocaust on the real Earth that resulted in the extinction of humanity. The endless war that occurred before the start of the series made a particular scientist I’m not gonna name, Embryo, determined to create a world of absolute harmony and zero conflicts. To do that, he created Villkiss to destroy the currently ongoing war in the real Earth, causing a  major widespread annihilation of humanity and a full-blown destruction on the surface.

Floating city of Asterisk.

The Empire of Misurugi, part of the artificial Earth.

That’s just two examples of the depiction of the world’s future. I saw a lot of anime, and mostly, the depiction was nothing more than a background excuse to set up the ever-peaceful or dreadful setting of the anime, particularly those with “magical battle school” genre such as Sky Wizard Academy, Masou Gakuen HxH, and Antimagic Academy: The 35th Test Platoon.

There are also anime in which the depiction of the future was based on real-life incident, such as Coppelion, where the anime’s setting of abandoned capital city of Tokyo after a major nuclear powerplant accident was based on Chernobyl disaster (and Fukushima few years later, though the original series was launched before the incident happened).

But, the most amazing, if not impossible, depiction of the future imaginable, in my opinion, is the one in Rakuen Tsuihou -Expelled from Paradise- anime film. In the movie, a major incident called “Nano Hazard” has made Earth practically inhabitable, with almost everything on the surface such as plantations, waters, and soil got purged from existence, and the planet became nothing more than an extremely huge desert of sands. Humans, however, have found a way to contain humanity without having to go to space to find new place to inhabit. That is the DEVA, a space station where its inhabitants have no physical bodies, and their mind digitised and computerised to live in a virtual reality world, a technology known as “Personality.” With this technological breakthrough, the lingering problem such as overpopulation and scarcity of resources was solved, and any form of space exploration project became an obsolete thing in the past.

 

Space station DEVA.

I can only think that this sort of thinking was something that’s impossible to happen. At least, I’m not convinced that’s something that can happen. Thankfully, the anime is set on the year 2400; if it happened quite soon from now, that’s just incomprehensible.

There are more of anime depiction of future that’s only going to happen if aliens were to invade us, like Qualidea Code and Unlimited Fafnir. Boooring…

Can you think of an interesting depiction of future? Have you ever thought what the future will become of to us? Will you pour that in a motion picture? It’ll be interesting if you can whip up a future where we can live in harmony without being lazy or having to fight against extraterrestrial being.

Period.