15 Cyberpunk Anime That Revel in Futuristic Society

Cyberpunk has always been a niche genre of sci-fi, but every niche has its heyday, and it appears that heyday for cyberpunk is now.

Unlike its closely named cousin steampunk, cyberpunk isn’t about high tech melded with something old. Instead, the cyberpunk genre is best explained as melding high-tech with low-life. Cyberpunk settings often feature magnificent technology, but the cities are riddled with crime and the people often live closer clear dystopia.

As anime has a long love affair with dystopian settings, cyberpunk anime has been always received a steadier amount of new entries compared to other niches.

If you are on the hunt for cyberpunk anime recommendations outside of movies, it is time to head on down below.

Best Cyberpunk Anime

Ghost in the Shell

While Ghost in the Shell started with an anime movie, most people are more familiar with the superior-because-its-longer anime series, Stand Alone Complex.

In the world of Ghost in the Shell, flesh is falling out of fashion. Instead, people often augment themselves with cybernetic modifications. As such, there are criminals that seek to take advantage of the technology.

Ghost in the Shell follow Section 9, a police unit dedicated to taking down such criminals. Outside of solving regular crimes, they now find themselves pulled into a larger case involving a hacker.

Psycho-Pass

Similar to Ghost in the Shell, Psycho-Pass also follows a police force. However, the world of Psycho-Pass is less about cybernetics and more about the loss of personal liberties, like dominion over your own mental state.

In Psycho-Pass, the police can examine your mental state to determine your predisposition to crime. Essentially, they can tell who will commit crime before they even do it and the law allows Enforcer and Inspector teams to subjugate them as necessary.

You follow one such team as they carry out these tasks and begin to expose the innate flaws in the system.

Ergo Proxy

In a world that has ended, humanity has retreated to live in relative luxury in domed cities. The highest class among them is served by android servants called AutoReivs.

In Ergo Proxy, you follow Re-l, a privileged girl that is serving as an inspector in order to investigate a mysterious virus that is giving the AutoReivs self-awareness.

However, what appears to be a simple software virus leads to something much more grand and ponderous, even exposing the unhappy past of the planet.

Serial Experiments Lain

Serial Experiments Lain series follows the titular Lain as she receives an e-mail form a classmate that had previously killed herself. Although a technophobe, someone who fears technology, she opens the e-mail and it leads her into the virtual world of Wired where the boundaries of reality and cyberspace blur.

In truth, the more you try to explain what Serial Experiments Lain is about, the harder it becomes to do so. It is easiest to say that Serial Experiments Lain is part cyberpunk and part existential crisis.

Texhnolyze

If the bit of cyberpunk that interests you is the vast transhumanist aspect where people are tossing away their flesh for augmented parts, then Texhnolyze is likely your jam.

Texhnolyze follows a prize fighter that basically mouths off and loses an arm and a leg for it. He is then used as an experiment for the installation of powerful cybernetic limbs.

The world of Texhnolyze is essentially a very early cyberpunk where these new limbs are becoming more popular, but there is still a huge push against them because people are still unsure of what it means to give up humanity.

Gunslinger Girl

In many cases, when you see a cyberpunk anime, you can predict the level of cyberpunk you are going to get. When you see a Ghost in the Shell, you see that trademark bleakness oozing from every orifice.

However, then you have Gunslinger Girl, an anime where you wouldn’t know it was cyberpunk from a glance. However, it very much fits the bill.

Gunslinger Girl follows a unit of young, often orphan girls that were scooped up and implanted with cybernetics that made them into deadly assassins. They look like cute lolis on the front cover, but the substance shows them as melancholic child soldiers that are all ultimately disposed of when the hardware breaks down.

Bubblegum Crisis

Bubblegum Crisis follows a Tokyo decimated by an earthquake and built up into a cyberpunk dystopian world on the backs of machinery called Boomers.

These Boomers were then advanced further into weapons that can disguise themselves as humans. The series follows a vigilante force that serves to protect people from these devious new weapons who cannot discern the finer points of right from wrong.

DRAMAtical Murder

This series is definitely on the brighter side of the cyberpunk genre in terms of the color palate used. However, it still has just as bleak of a world in which people were displaced by the construction of a wealthy utopia then completely abandoned by society.

Now, some people play a game called Rhyme that requires an AI to play. Those who do not have an AI have themselves old school turf wars instead, but all these non-Rhyme players have been mysteriously disappearing and games of Rhyme have been getting more dangerous.

While this particular cyberpunk anime is based off a boy’s love game, they actually cut a good bit of the boy’s love out of it. Unless you watch the OVA, then it is both filled with BL and graphic gore as it shows off the bad endings from the visual novel.

Denno Coil

While the art makes this series seem more childish, it is actually one of the better technological sci-fi anime out there.

The world of Denno Coil has not quite reached that level of hopelessness that other cyberpunk anime have, and it still has a nice sense of levity. However, it also deeply explores cyberspace, augmented reality, and the characters as they investigate the various corruptions going on within their augmented reality.

No Guns Life

While it has a classic sort of noir detective plot, the several characters in No Guns Life are cyborg super soldiers created by a corporation. At first they were weapons for war, now they lack any great purpose and turn to crime.

The main character who works as a detective is one with no memories of his past and a gun for a head. He tries to quell these other super soldiers causing trouble while also unraveling his own lack of memory.

Battle Angel Alita

I almost lumped this OVA in with the movies because it is egregiously short, but an OVA is still an OVA and not a movie. It would also be a tragedy if people only remember Battle Angel Alita for the terrible Hollywood movie and not the cyberpunk gem its manga and OVA are.

Anyway, if you have a thirst for the cyberpunk anime, Battle Angel Alita is one of the best representations of it. Unfortunately, you miss so much by just watching the OVA and not reading the manga.

Battle Angel Alita takes place in a world below a grand city of wealth where a man finds a cyborg in the trash heap in the slums where he lives. He repairs it and treats it like a daughter, but when she learns of his night job hunting down cyborg criminals, she mysteriously remembers a powerful martial art and begins to help him.

Cowboy Bebop

There is some debate as to whether Cowboy Bebop is just sci-fi or if it dwells in the cyberpunk, but I’m of the mind that anything can be two things, right? Especially when one is just a sub-genre of the other.

There are moments of Cowboy Bebop where the world can fit into many different genres, but that’s a varied and interesting universe for you.

You’ll note cyberpunk elements in characters like Jet and especially in the backstory of Mai Valentine. You’ll see the cyberpunk in the worlds they visit where some live in wild wealth, and most scrape by in squalor. Surprisingly, as far as technology goes, it isn’t as cyberpunk in that respect at times.

In essence, Cowboy Bebop is a cyberpunk anime that has a lot of Wild West charm dripping off it.

Dimension W

In Dimension W, cybernetics isn’t the driving force of change in the world as is traditional in cyberpunk anime, but rather it is a coil technology that harnesses energy from the fourth dimension.

As you would expect, odd things are starting to happen and a character that is highly against coil technology gets pulled right on into the middle of the intrigue.

Cyberpunk Edgerunners

If Cyberpunk 2077 brought the cyberpunk genre back to life in general media, then Cyberpunk Edgerunners breathed new life into cyberpunk as a genre of anime.

While based on the setting from the game, you need not have played Cyberpunk 2077 to fully enjoy Cyberpunk Edgerunners.

The story of Cyberpunk Edgerunners follows a boy whose mother scrimps and scrapes to send him to a good school so he can climb the corporate ladder and become a wealthy Corpo. However, after her death, he begins working with a group of people as a mercenary, fully embracing cybernetics for power and giving away progressively larger pieces of his humanity.

Cyberpunk Edgerunners is really as hype as people make it out to be. It is quintessential cyberpunk in everything from the wild technology to the small life that most people have to eek out.

Akudama Drive

After a nuclear war, only small portions of Japan are livable. Forced into crowded cities under authoritarian control, most people live normal lives. However, they are told of constant threats by notorious and powerful criminals known as Akudama.

During the execution one of the most notorious Akudama, an ordinary girl finds herself caught up with several other Akudama and told to rescue him for a huge pay off. It is this event that gets her caught in a whirlwind of intrigue.

If you enjoy your cybperpunk anime bleak in world, but wildly colorful and creative in design, Akudama Drive is one of your best options alongside Cyberpunk Edgerunners. Neon runs wild in the future, as it turns out.

That said, while the world of Akudama Drive is technological, cybernetic augmentation doesn’t play as large of a role in society as in some other cyberpunk anime.

Do you have more cyberpunk anime recommendations? Let fans know in the comments section below.