Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of good animated sci-fi comedy, but I recently watched Scavengers Reign and I’m looking for other more adult sci-fi animated shows.
Pantheon is awesome. It’s based on Ken Liu’s work who’s a pretty great scifi/fantasy author.
Mars Express is a french movie from last year that’s sort of like a film noir scifi. I’ve heard the english dub is quite good if you don’t want to deal with subtitles for some reason.
Secret Level and Love, Death & Robots are anthologies of mostly scifi stories.
The Star Wars animated works are all solid if you’re interested in more scifantasy.
Common Side Effects is very Scavenger’s Reign-esque in art style and animation. Which makes sense considering many of the same artists worked on both. It’s not really scifi in the same level though I still would recommend checking it out.
There’s also a lot of really good high concept Scifi anime.
Pantheon was interesting, but I am forever scarred by “Monotheism, the original killer app”. That line is quite possibly the stupidest fucking line I’ve seen in TV. Even with context, it makes like no sense. Its just so fucking stupid. Haven’t watched season 2 tho lol
Haha, yeah that is ridiculous. To be fair, it’s said by someone who’s basically a Silicon Valley CEO who’s like a zealot. I don’t think it’s meant to be taken fully seriously.
The Animatrix is pretty good
Another vote for Patheon. The first season is a bit predictable, but things get genuinely interesting in the second and final season. The series got a really wonky release, and I’m not even sure season 2 is streaming anywhere (aside from random youtube uploads and other places).
Jérémie Périn, the director of Mars Express, has made some other works that are definately worth checking out:
- Crisis Jung - a series of 10 hyper-surreal short films (all posted to YouTube in their entirety) depicting a man’s existential crisis through the lens of ultra-maximalist interpretations of Jungian philosophy. It’s not funny, but it’s completely ridiculous and a wild ride. If you’re into the philosophical musings of The Good Place and the extremist imagery of Heavy Metal, this one is for you.
- Lastman - this is a 26 episode series about a boxer who gets caught up in a web of intrigue around crime, politics, people on the run and some really out-there sci-fi/fantasy stuff. The whole series is a prequel to a French graphic novel of the same name. Again, the show really sticks the landing in its second and final season.
Kaiba (2008) - This is one of the early works of Masaaki Yuasa (Inu-Oh, Keep Your Hands of Eizouken!, The Night is Short Walk on Girl, etc) and probably one of his weirdest. It’s a super chibi depiction of a cyberpunk dystopia where bodies and minds are completely disconnected, following a mysterious central character with amnesia and a giant hole in their chest. Not all of it makes complete sense; it’s one of those stories that starts mid-way through and you get filled in on the before and after as you go. It’s ultimately worth it for some tremendous dramatic turns and an art style that is utterly unforgettable (not exaggerating).
Aeon Flux - Depending on your age, this may be new to you. This is a series of MTV-produced short films and a short run series of relatively disconnected anthology stories in a futuristic dystopian world as a barely-dressed spy does lots of freaky, violent sci-fi spy things. If you’re looking for animated sci-fi stories and haven’t seen this yet, put it on the top of your list (purely as a seminal work for fans of the genre).
I’ll assume you’ve seen Arcane.
Carol and the End of the World (2023) - This is more along the lines of a personal dramatic story that happens to sit within a sci-fi setting. I really enjoyed sitting with this (aside from the penultimate episode, which seemed to have nothing to do with anything and almost certainly completely went over my head). There’s humor here, but it’s pretty thin and dark. I would not call this a comedy.
Don Hertzfeldt’s World of Tomorrow series of shorts - Three short films from the minimalist animator whose work I’m delighted to see maturing and becoming so much more complex and interesting as the years go by.
- Episode 1: World of Tomorrow is free to watch on YouTube.
- Episodes 2 (The Burden of Other People’s Thoughts) and 3 (The Absent Destinations of David Prime) can be rented on Vimeo.
Outstanding reply! Got a lot to try out from this. Thanks!
Happy to help! I hope you like them!
Memories (1995) is a brilliant Japanese animated anthology film produced by Katsuhiro Otomo, consisting of three distinct science fiction stories. The first segment, “Magnetic Rose” (彼女の想いで, Kanojo no Omoide), is particularly outstanding and bears similarities to what Netflix’s Love, Death & Robots would later become.
Pantheon
Hard to go wrong with Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.
Pantheon?
I’ve mostly got anime to draw from, western animation just isn’t as diverse…
I enjoyed the first season of Psycho-Pass a lot, same goes for Star Blazers 2199 (aka Space Battleship Yamato).
GITS Stand Alone Complex is excellent.
Cowboy Bebop.
Planetes is really good. It does have comedic elements, but I wouldn’t call it a comedy. More like a scifi workplace drama with socio-polticial themes.
- Star Trek: The Animated Series (Not Lower Decks, the original '70s series)
- Ghost in the Shell
I can’t think of any others that I would openly suggest.
Damn, I was going to suggest Scavengers Reign 😆
Same haha
But I had this exact thought when it ended (and I found out there was not going to be a season 2 😭)