Recently I watched this Black Lagoon anime, that could easily be a Cyberpirates setting, minus cyber and other high-tech stuff. Well, some characters display amazing capacities that only an adept or sammie could have, like one of the protagonists, that shoots with both hands and always hits.

There´s also Ghost in the Shell, the movies and the series, but that´s far obvious. Witch Hunter Robin deals with an agency that tracks and hunts people with a "mage gene", and one of the hunters also has this gene. They don´t have not cyber, but magic is extremely SR-like.

Any other sugestions for anime? I´m trying to build a new gaming group, and almost all of the candidates (except for one) are anime fans that never gamed before. My idea is that if I can relate them to the setting´s mood, they can have a better approach to gaming.

Not an Anime fan myself, but I heard Cowboy Beebop is both good and quite cyber-punkish. Also Bubblegum Crisis might fit the theme. Akira, maybe.

Only seen Akira myself from those, and didn't like it at all, but that doesn't mean anything, since I don't really like Anime.

Bye
Thanee

After a quick glance at my anime shelf

Akira
Bubblegum Crisis
Patlabor
Appleseed
Blood

I think the old GITS movie best fits the bill. I've watched quite a lot of anime over the years and I'd say that most futuristic or cyberpunk anime settings don't have quite the combat grit that Shadowrun does for someone new to the combat system.

For example, Noir (isn't futuristic, I guess) could be about a pair of Shadowrunners, but the style of the gunfights is very not Shadowrun. All the bad guys die with one hit from a tiny pistol and the unarmored non-cover-using main characters can go pistol rambo and not have any problems.

For anime that resembles Shadowrun you have to get away from that dynamic.

I love Bubblegum Crisis, but it is only superficially like shadowrun. You take a first look and think "Hey, these Knight Sabers are just like shadowrunners!"

But one of shadowrun's main themes is that the runners are cogs in the very system that they fight against. They can do some good, but for the most part they are pawns. The Knight Sabers, on the other hand, make elite police units seem underarmed by comparison, kill megacorporate executives and sign the crime scene, and otherwise are at the top of the food chain.


Noir has a more shadowrun feel, but as in many anime, completely mundane characters are capable of doing amazing feats in combat that couldn't be matched by the most tweaked-out adept or street samurai. In addition to the usual "You can't hit us, but we kill with every single shot" thing, you see things like one of them hitting the same spot in a wall repeatedly to make a bullet hole, then firing through that bullet hole, and killing people.


Ghost in the Shell has a shadowrun feel, with the caveat that it deals with government operatives rather than independent agents. Go with the superior manga, though, not the film, which is nice eye candy but not nearly as good.


Akira, other than the psis, was very shadowrun in feel. And although it is an older title, it has aged very well.

Watch Akira for Go-Gang inspiration, seriously. And also the riots and following government/military MASSACRES are good to set the tone.

Ghost In The Shell is amazing influence for the feel of the Matrix. The fact that they have VR (Diving) and also can hack things wirelessly is great inspiration for both sr3 and sr4. Also, the first movie confronts a lot of interesting issues that could be related back to the effects of cyberware upon the human being. Other things that feature are Ruthenium skin/polymers and vehicle rigging.

Ghost in the Shell II is interesting, though I'm not totally sure what could be applied to Shadowrun. The concept of Anthroform Drones modified to be prostitutes and going nuts/getting hacked would make a great plot hook, with some tweaking.

The TV show is quicker, flashier and is probably way better for one shot run ideas. Although you have to remember that a hacker (if you're sr4) can not hack another person to punch himself in the face. However, some instances of the Laughing Man (probably the l33test hacker ever) would make good ideas for things to do with the matrix (for example. If a hacker altered a Simchip production factory to cause all the chippers to think they are the laughing man, and then believe it is their mission to kill a certain government official).


All i've got right now honestly.

There was one on Adult Swim for a while called Blue Gender. It was about some kind of creatures that had taken over the earth and were feeding on the Humans. That could be inspiration for a Chicago Containment Zone of Inscet Spirit heavy campaign. You would have to work in magic though. Probably more to the series than I know about: I didn't really get into it and didn't watch the whole thing.

Witch Hunter Robin was an interesting premise.

With modification, Bleach could work. Make the Soul Society an initiatory group for Adept and a few mages whose purpose is to hunt ghosts, ghouls, wraiths, toxics, etc.

Texhnolyze. There's no magic (or almost none, I suppose), but the characters don't demonstrate any resistance to damage they shouldn't have, and… well, there are more similarities, but they're hard to describe without giving things away. Anyway, it's awesome, and is very cyberpunk.

BLAME! Of course, you'll want to read the manga first, as I can't imagine it making any sense whatsoever without it (it's an OVA of the oldschool "let's make a short OVA for the preexisting fans" variety).

It's manga rather than anime, but Duds Hunt is very Shadowrunnish. Lower tech, but the proper sort of authoritarian hopelessness.

I think there were more, but I can't remember right now.

~J

Black Lagoon kicks aaaaasss!!!

And the end has a lot of syndicate action.

A awesome anime with very nice syndicate and a shedim-esque protagonist is one of my favorites: Gungrave. If you have not seen it, I do highly recommend it.

The 2 season of the TV shoiw Ghost in the Shell are great for SR- each season had an over all plot but many little runs inside it.

Read or Die, the original serries or the later one have good interaction though the paper masters is a little hard to get in.

in Witch Hunter the entire team has the witch gene but only the title character is active

Snow_Fox, I personally like the R.O.D. movie more the tv show, but that is IMO.

Witch Hunter Robin is also an extremely great anime, and also a good SR influence piece.

GitS can be said without any arguement.

For someone awesome Adept and Mystic Adept stuff, as well as beautiful swordplay and it being one of most recommended animes besides Akira, I do recommend Ninja Scroll.

Wow, people, thanks! and all in the same day I´ve posted - now that´s quite a Dumpshock! (hehehe)

I´l take a look at the animes and mangas you indicated. Some of them I already seen, like Cowboy Bebop (that certainly has a SR-ish side to it, that I didn´t think of before), Akira (yes, exactly, the go-gangs) and Ninja Scroll (talk about adept initiates!). Or read, like Blame! (SR future?) and Appleseed (only if full cyborgs weren´t all cyberzombies...).

Thank you a LOT.

I think Serial Experiments Lain could fit in here. Yes, it's weird, yes it's a fair bit difficult for some people to understand, but if you're looking for Shadowrun in it, you've got a fair bit of it. Mostly Matrix and Technology stuff, with a nice theme backdrop.

And it has a tip of the hat to the Knights, which is always nice to see.

I really like the series, but I haven't reconciled it with Shadowrun yet which is why I didn't mention it.

~J

Besides GitS, AD Police (cyberpunk cop spinoff) and Cyber City Oedo 808 (three hardened criminals operating as a suicide squad to shave time off their sentences, bit campy and 80s at time but not bad).

How about Silent Möbius? You have a group of extraordinary women either modified with cybertech or magically talented, that hunt down spirits from another dimension and their allied mages who try to bridge the gap. The roster is easily transferred to Shadowrun, I think.

Ghost, Robin, and Bebop. In that order.

Another Shirow oldie that I would recommend is 'Black Magic M-66'

I only saw a few episodes of Robin, but my two thoughts were:

1.) Isn't it funny that Robin blows up the wrong guy until she gets a pair of glasses? It's the equivalent of giving someone a M21, telling him to snipe out the hostage taker, kapow, kapow, kapow, and all the hostages have been headshotted. Then someone hands him glasses and he's like, "Crap, wrong dudes."

2.) Why does Robin sleep naked at night but wear a Victorian style getup during the day?

1. They explain why that is and why she needs the glasses, but it's kinda easy to miss.



Not touching #2, c'mon, she's 14.

And Robin isn't the only active Craft user



So as not to completely de-rail this thread:

Adapting WHR to SR is easy. The quick and dirty way is to have them hunt rogue spirits and other nuisance paracritters. "Need that Naga taken out of your basement, call..."

If you wanted to write up your own setting, it could fit better, but the same could be said for any anime really.

Bebop has a good SR feel, but you're missing pretty much all of the cyber save for replacement limbs. I think there's only one other character with enhancements, but my collection isn't complete so I can't be sure.

Bebop comments in spoiler.



Oh, and my collection is "complete", save for the fact that one of the damn discs is fucked up and won't even read well enough to make a backup copy on my laptop. I keep forgetting to try the toothpaste and brasso tricks.

Just finished Black Lagoon. Wow, that was a great show, several of the arcs are very good. There's one (ep. 13-15) that'll leave me scarred, and there's two (ep. 8-10;16-18) that'll keep me chuckling for a good long time. I say this is a must watch, hey Perssek thanks for mentioning this one! I'm definitely buying the series when it comes out.

I'd say that Outlaw Star definatly has the cyber-punk feel to it, especially with the spellcasting pirates. Also Neon Genesis Evangelion and Kiddy Grade kinda have some Shadowrun-esqe elements.

Also fanservice!

~J

Yes, but fixation with fanservice at the gaming table makes me want to shoot myself.

Personally, I'd just shoot the guy who is playing the naked lesbian elf.

I would recommend Full Metal Alchemist but that's more steampunk.

Maybe Ergo Proxy for the feel and robots of course. Macross Plus has the YV-21's brain wave control system, which must be how a vehicle rig looks. Battle Angel has a dystopian future theme, with the cybered up characters to boot.

Check out the creepy Gun Slinger Girl too. Its a seems a little ... unsettling at times though. You know seeing cybernetically enhanced nine year olds killing and firing heavy weapons, and that eery devotion they show to their "trainers." (Though it is a very nice show, quality wise.)

Topic's probabily long-since dead, but my 2...

Ghost in the Shell - The movie, god, this is what cyberpunk IS. Too many SR Universe cannon items, terms, weapons that the gunbunny is NEVER, EVER having....
Ghost in the Shell - Standalone: certain episodes of series 1 (The rescue on the oil-rig thingy is a classic "We've got big guns and npc's coming out of the wallls, Arc it!" situation) and the overall "Ghosts in society" vibe that you get from the entire team, apart from Togosua.
Ghost in the Shell - Innocence. Damn, once again, huge sections of this can be ripped from the movie and slotted into the SR universe with out anyone blinking. And you've got to love Bateu's cyber-arm gun implant. And his method of negotiation.

Witchhunter Robin. More for the style and the group dynamic.
However the last 2 episodes, with a gumshoe lawyer, a socialite, a decker, a burning-out female mage/detector, a rampant pistol-loving gunbunny and a severely whacked-out initiated mage running a B&E Shadowrun that turns into a Seek-and-destroy.... Most of my games turn out like this. Make one or two of them a Troll or elf, and you've got a typical Saturday session.

Cowboy Bebop- The cyber, the crims, the crime and the group dynamic, again. Waaaaaaay too space opera for the distopian vision of Shadowrun, but very useable.

Knight Sabers... Uh. Ok, fair enough a big pile of corporate Allison Hannigans. But you need a lot more corporations apart from Genom to really get the "will be ground to powder under the uncaring beast's feet" vibe.

Cyber City Edo and the rest of the "spin off" Knight Saber series. Nice cyber, good portrayal of Lonestar... the whole "mad robots going rogue", not so much.

Akira = This is a go-gang in the making. Needs more clowns. And napalm.

Appleseed. Shirow again, but in a more "Barbie goes post-apocalyptic". Do NOT watch that recent truncated CGI abortion for more than 15 minutes. If you've read the manga, this version will make your eyes bleed.

Palabor 2 - Those damn attack choppers towards the end. Everytime I mention something that flies in Shadowrun, the riggers want to "find" something like it and wreak havoc upon the world. Hell, all of Shirow's Orni-coptors look like they're slapped together out of evil and menace.


-My ramble is at an end.

Tir out.

I didn't mind the CGI Appleseed... kinda liked some of it actually.. and well I'll add and say you should watch Patlabor III just because...


But I can't believe I forgot to mention Eightman After!!

This is a must see for shadowrun fans. Seedy ex-cop detective gets gunned down by the Cybered-up gangers. He is then turned into the cyborg Eightman. See in this Cybernetic replacments have just hit the streets. Mostly illegally I think because they aren't approved yet. The cops in the city can't deal with the lowlife punks that now have a gatling gun in their arm or a grenade launcher in their lower leg. The human body can't deal with the replacements though so they have to take drug suppliments to keep the parts from being rejected. And well it just so happens it makes them feel invincible and makes them pychotic.

When I stumbled upon Shadowrun I always wondered why Gun Arms and Leg Missle Launchers weren't more prevalent, well its because of this movie. (^_^).

Oh I can't forget to recommend to Wicked City.

What, no Golgo 13?

And no Hyper Police?

I should also mention Kite, which is pretty darn Shadowrunny (unfortunately right down to magically explosive bullets, but what can you do. They're awesome enough that I at least don't care for once.).

~J

Jin Roh looks to be a good one.

At the risk of being flamed, most anime considered cyberpunk aren't cyberpunk. They're action-scifi. I'm including Ghost In The Shell in that assessment.

Cyberpunk doesn't just mean there are cybernetics and the line between man and machine blurred. What distinguishes cyberpunk from other branches of science fiction is the setting. The setting of cyberpunk is a bleak, near-future capitalist dystopia where everything is for sale, virtually nothing is taboo, corporations rule, poor people live in squalor while working themselves to death, and typically the only resistance to the downward spiral is a rebel/criminal element on the fringes of society. (Yes, and that stuff about cybernetics, man/machine too.) There are other elements, but those are the most prominent.

I've yet to see a single anime which depicts a capitalist dystopia of any kind. The only reason there's even an emphasis on cybernetics in anime is the Japanese go bonkers for robots. Science Fiction + Action + Cybernetics + Mind-Macine Interface != Cyberpunk

GITS's setting is an extremely clean future ruled by a benign military dictatorship, where corporations get the same preferential treatment as they do in the present. It also follows government agents who aren't, as they would be in cyberpunk, oppressing the masses because the corporations say so.

Cowboy Bebop and Outlaw Star are both space westerns (space cowboy/future frontier) settings. The characters are law-bending mercenaries, but the setting is too far in the future and not any more dystopic than ours.

Witchhunter Robin, if I remember correctly, was set in the present. The only thing it has in common with SR is there's magic in a post-industrial time period. It has nothing in common with cyberpunk.

Akira has most of the same problems as GITS that keep it from being cyberpunk. The setting's a little darker, the protagonists are more appropriate, but it's a far cry from a capitalist dystopia and there's no corporate presense.



Yes, you can get ideas for cyberpunk from anime. No, most anime is not cyberpunk.

There are a few nude scenes, but mostly I'm talking about the way that they'll use any excuse (or none at all) to show you Éclair's panties.

More on the "what is Cyberpunk" question after my head stops hurting so much. Or after an alien nightmare bursts forth from it.

~J

Cyberpunk is, first and foremost, people with technicolor mohawks using computers. Corporate controlled dystopia is a common genre convention but it isn't a defining genre convention. Rather, the genre is defined by the exploration of how omnipresent information technology shapes society from the point of view of those who live in that society.

The alien nightmare is winning, but I just want to say that while I don't agree with Habzial's view of cyberpunk (especially his rejection of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as a member of the genre), I completely agree with him in rejecting hyzmarca's proposed view of it.

~J

I don't see how Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? could be viewed as cyberpunk. I absolutely love the book, but it takes place in a post apocalyptic world where most of the population was wiped out. The humans had founded a religion based around empathy. The replicants were manufactured sociopaths who seemed human but lacked empathy. The book's focus was on the value of life through technological metaphore, not a future warning.

A lot of common themes are missing as well. Information technology is barely beyond what we have today (excluding the empathy box). Neither corps nor the government seemed to have much representation. The most noteable example is that the police from Bladerunner were little more than government-subsidized bounty hunters in the book, who even the corps had to fear. People didn't own residential property... at least not in the conventional sense. The book mentions at several points that people just pick where they want to live and move in.

Another big problem is the nature of replicants. They are fake humans built out of manufactured living parts in both the book and the movie. It was furthering the science fiction question of what point a human creation could be considered to have the same value as someone who was born. It's similar to another science fiction question you see much more often in cyberpunk. That being, "At what point, in adding robotic parts to a human, does a person stop being human?"

Even from the point of view that cyberpunk is about punks using computers, this book is nowhere close. The protagonist actually works within the system legally (both in the movie and the book). The replicants acting as antagonists were cultists who'd fled Mars on murder charges, if I recall. It was basically a fugitive hunt set in the future.

Again with the partial replies: I'm going to have to think more to define what satisfies the "cyber" portion, as well as what if anything must be added when you glue "cyber" and "punk" together to allow it to be "cyberpunk", but to my mind what is required to be "punk" is the following two major ingredients:

Something to stick it to ("The Man")

Someone to do the sticking (or to attempt to) ("punks")

What makes DADoES? unusual is that the main character is both The Man and also sticking it to the Rosen Corporation. Deckard meanwhile has it stuck to him by the Andys, particularly Rachel, but Rachel is part of one The Man while Deckard is part of another The Man, thus there's a symmetric sticking-to being done. Isidore sticks it, unsuccessfuly, to the bounty hunter Man, Buster Friendly sticks it to Mercer. There's a lot of sticking going on. Nevertheless, I don't consider the unusual nature of the sticking here to render the book not cyberpunk, or at least proto-cyberpunk.

The cyber aspect will have to wait. I need to go buy some whiskey to put in my car, and then walk to the cemetery.

~J

Though Habzial did say that Blade Runner could be considered non-cyberpunk, he didn't deny it. The debate is over DADoES?, which is from what I hear quite different (I admit it, I still haven't seen Blade Runner).

~J

Wasn't one of the main premises of Dune that computers were outlawed so that people had to use Spice to enhance their mental abilities to the point where they could do the calculations that would otherwise require a supercomputer?


Star Trek does not fit into cyberpunk because it rarely explores the psychosocial consequences of technology, preferring instead to hammer in the moral lessons while Dune is so far removed from our society and our technologies that it would be better classified as a transhumanist space fantasy. I, Robot, while a fun romp, doesn't provide any psychosocial insight, either.

GitS, however, is most certainly cyberpunk. While the movies do take certain aspects of technology for granted due to time restraints, SAC and the manga both do a sufficient job of delving into the impact that this technology has had on society. Also, Kusanagi's nature as a human mind in the body of an overpriced killing machine working for a paramilitary government agency makes her enough of an outsider to satisfy the punk requirement. She isn't a part of mainstream society.


It is also necessary that a cyberpunk society be a distorted future reflection of our own, or else the work misses most of the genre's point, which is why corporate dystopias are so common but are by no means necessary. There are plenty of other dystopias that one could arise from the advancement of computer technology and there are plenty of not-quite-dystopias out there, as well.
This is also something which GitS has but Star Trek and Dune both do not.

But one thing to remember is that the genre is very much an 80s genre and many of the conventions stem from the real future fears of people in the 80s. Most Cyberpunk tropes, deeply rooted in the 80s , appear either outdated or just plain absurd.
Which goes back to my quip about computers and technicolor mohawks.

Among the tropes that were rendered absurd is the corporate dystopia which was originally fueled by by the rise of unabashed corporate consumerism and the yuppie culture while being succinctly defined by Gordon Gekko's words, "greed is good", and reinforced by Reagan's trickle-down economics. There were several years in the 90s when the good old fear of corporate greed was dead amongst the general populace, with only a few extremist anti-globalitarians and anarchists continuing to hold the torch. It was only brought back to life, just barely, by the Enron and given a much-needed kidney-transplant by Halliburton.

Likewise, trope of a giant VR computer network was believable back when no one knew what a computer was but seems patently silly now that the internet is so ubiquitous.

However, it is possible to strip away these tropes and still have the core elements, the impact for technology on an imperfect society very much like our own told from the point of view of an disenfranchised outsider.

The dystopian elements stem from the fact that the protagonist is invariably a disenfranchised outsider. Any society will seem dystopian from the point of view of the disenfranchised outsider. Did the serpent think that Eden was paradise? Hell no. Even Star Trek's Federation is a brutal dystopia from the point of view of a disenfranchised outsider.

While all cyberpunk stories contain some dystopian elements, very few depict true 1984-style dystopias. Most cyberpunk worlds are simply like ours; money is important and those who don't have sufficient quantities of it suffer. To those who have sufficient income and a job that they like, these so called dystopias my as well be paradises.