There are many who appreciate mecha anime, but it is very obvious that the popularity of mecha has waned significantly in modern anime. Unfortunately, in many instances, those who enjoy space anime often had to look to the mecha genre in order to get that space setting that they wanted.
Even though the stars have enchanted humanity since our species began, I guess anime creators often thought that there needed to be a bit more going on up there. While more rare, you can find space anime that aren’t a battleground of clashing mobile suits.
If you enjoy a space anime, but don’t necessarily need to have robots fighting in it, give these anime about space that aren’t mecha anime recommendations a try.
Space Anime That Aren’t Mecha
Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Legend of the Galactic Heroes has the unfortunate lot of often being confused with Gundam. Both series are long-beloved space operas that enjoy intergalactic battle, clashing ideologies, and character drama, but Legend of the Galactic Heroes isn’t actually a mecha anime.
They aren’t fighting with mobile suits, they are fighting with space fleets like you see commonly used in non-anime space series like Star Trek.
As such, if you enjoy a good war epic that has a great focus on tactics and tells a gripping story where each side fights for reasons they believe to be the right reasons, there is a reason Legend of the Galactic Heroes is considered one of those “legendary” anime series.
Astra Lost in Space
While Astra Lost In Space does require a bit of a suspension of disbelief and “just going with it” when it comes to some things it presents, it is actually one of the rare space anime that shows actual diversity in the planets that the characters visit.
This series follows a group of teens who were on a planet camping trip planned by their school. However, a wormhole opened up on the otherwise safe planet and flung them 1,000 light years away in the middle of outer space. “Luckily,” they happened to appear right next to an abandoned space ship and use it to planet-hop their way home, gathering resources they need for survival from the planets they visit.
Alongside the space travel and using planetary problems as a catalyst for addressing character drama, Astra Lost in Space also explores an overall mystery surrounding who tried to kill these kids by opening that wormhole in the first place and why they tried.
Phoenix – Eden 17
This series is really the only anime that takes advantage of the creative potential of both storytelling through animation and the unlimited creativity of a vast universe.
The most recent iteration and loose adaptation of the sadly unfinished Phoenix manga series by Osamu Tezuka is the 4-episode OVA, Phoenix – Eden 17, and a movie, Phoenix – Flower of Eden. The central element in the story is a bird that flies around the universe and chronicles life, allowing the series to showcase the lives and adventures of a number of different characters, alien species, planets, and all that comes with that.
The Phoenix series truly is a series that can be – and was – such an expansive story, so perhaps it was for the best that the source material was left unfinished.
Planetes
Planetes is a near-future space anime that addresses an actual present problem with humanity’s activities in space – all the garbage we generate up there.
A screw cracking your windshield on the highway on Earth sucks, but a screw in space cracking the glass that sits between you and the endless expanse of space is ever-so-more-catastrophic. Scrap metal, loose parts, and other trash in space is actually quite dangerous to the structures up there.
As such, Planetes follows those employed as what are essentially space garbage men. They collect space junk and dispose of it to prevent it from causing problems and having a cascading effect.
While this series starts as a lighter sort of space workplace comedy, it does actually flesh out its plot and characters as the series goes on to become a rather intriguing drama.
Cowboy Bebop
Cowboy Bebop never really accentuates the “space setting” of it all. The crew, if not getting into shenanigans inside their traveling ship, is on planets getting into shenanigans. So while they are often planet-hopping, it never focuses on the actual space travel between those planets except for the rare occasion they need to jettison a moldy fridge out into it.
Regardless, Cowboy Bebop follows a ragtag crew of bounty hunters who are skilled fighters, but often kept chronically poor when the job goes south for one reason or another.
It doesn’t highlight space as much as some may like, but it definitely highlights the colonizing future of its setting.
Space Brothers
It is hard to call Space Brothers an actual “space” anime because ninety percent of the series actually takes place on Earth. However, it is impossible to leave off because it is the most realistic depiction in anime of what potential astronauts go through in order to eventually get to space.
Space Brothers follows two brothers that, since childhood, were enamored by space. While both wanted to grow up and be astronauts, only one actually ended up following that dream. The other brother, learning his little brother was picked to go on a moon mission, is spurred on to try and follow his childhood dream again. Furthermore, being the elder brother, he vows to outdo his younger brother by being the first one to Mars.
While you do, eventually, see the younger brother make it to space, Space Brothers is beloved for its likable, grounded, and realistic characters rather than time spent among the stars. It is refreshing to see, in a sea of sci-fi anime, one try to be firmly rooted in realism that might have actually inspired a few young watchers by showing them that maybe they too could be an astronaut if silly Rollin’ Mutta can do it.
Moonlight Mile
You know how Space Brothers was a realistic and detailed depiction of the steps potential astronauts have to go through to get to space? Moonlight Mile is kind of like that too, but unrealistically ridiculous via its main characters. It’s like if America tried to make Space Brothers.
Moonlight Mile is about two friends who, after kind of casually climbing Mount Everest, decide to set their sights even higher – Space. It just so happens that a new energy source is discovered on the moon and NASA launches a special project to fetch and harness it, and the main characters jump at the chance.
The series proper follows the two different paths the pair of friends take to get to the moon before the other. The main characters are portrayed as, what I can only describe as “ultra manly men” because everything they do either reckless action or laid-back womanizing.
Outlaw Star
Not unlike Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star follows outlaws in space. The series follows a guy who fulfills his dream of finally getting a spaceship, and starts taking whatever job, legal or not, to keep it flying.
It is definitely a series for those that don’t necessarily need sci-fi steeped in realism, but do enjoy endless space adventures that aren’t afraid to be a little silly.
Starship Operators
I think a lot of people looking for harder sci-fi anime set in space where battles are fought on radars and won by tactics write Starship Operators off, if not because it has a name easily confused with Starship Troopers, then because it has female main characters.
Anime has conditioned us to see a group of women as main characters and think the series is either a harem, ecchi, or directionless moe, Starship Operators being none of those.
Instead, you get a story about space cadets nearing graduation returning to their home planet on a new starship. They soon learn that their home planet was declared upon by a more powerful kingdom, and swiftly surrendered without struggle.
Instead of accepting this, they decide to launch their own fight for their home planet. This is not done through some reckless frontal assault with an ultra-powerful starship, but rather maneuvering out of deadly trouble to find allies, secure funding, and engage in smaller, purposeful skirmishes.
Bodacious Space Pirates
Although the premise of a high school girl finding out her long-absent father was a space pirate and she has now inherited his pirate ship and crew is kind of silly, Bodacious Space Pirates isn’t actually “over-the-top” sci-fi. If anything, it is a space anime that wobbles between space opera and slice of life series.
While Bodacious Space Pirates is actually a better “pirate” anime than it is a “space” anime, it is still a series for those that enjoy a more lawless universe.
Towards The Terra
Towards the Terra takes place in a universe where, after ruining Earth, humanity fled into space where they work on terraforming Earth to make it livable again. Instead of the colonies being driven towards war with each other through ideological differences like is usual in space sci-fi, Towards the Terra follows a main character who is part of an evolution of humanity, the Mu, that developed psychic abilities.
As is our way, the normal humans persecute and engage in strict population control of these individuals.
The series follows the main character as he grows to lead the group of beleaguered people. He travels and rescues Mu who have awakened to their abilities while trying to find a place where they can live in peace.
Edens Zero
Due to the immediate and very obvious similarities between the characters, Edens Zero is easily described as “Fairy Tail in Space.” It is a fair thing to say since they share a creator anyway.
While Edens Zero is its own thing with its galaxy-hopping space story, Eden Zero is still a shounen battler. Like Naruto, My Hero Academia, or indeed Fairy Tail, it features the characters going to a place, fighting a powerful enemy or solving some problem with the power of friendship, and then going to another place to do it all over again.
If you enjoy shounen battlers like many do, it is rare to find one set in space, but Edens Zero takes full advantage of the endless expanse of opportunities.
Space Dandy
Space anime is often terribly serious. It’s all politics and wars and characters who always have some sort of tragic past. Space Dandy takes the brave stance of being the silliest space-traveling anime you’ll likely ever watch.
This series follows Dandy who gets paid to catalog new alien species. In order to make money to fund his frequent visits to BooBies, the best diner in the universe, he travels the galaxy with his robot vacuum cleaner and alien cat.
The series is, as it sounds, comic chaos at all times. Juvenile humor and over-the-top action rule the day here, and that is just what some people want.
Crest of the Stars
While never becoming quite as legendary as Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Crest of the Stars tells a similar sort of universe-spanning space opera, but is told from the viewpoint of two teenagers who are children of what is essentially space nobility.
The series follows a human boy whose father sold their home world for favor with the Abh Empire. Traveling to his new school in the empire, his ship is caught in between a skirmish between Alliance fleets and Abh fleets. Suddenly, he is thrust together with a princess of the Abh Empire as the pair travel across the galaxy to safety in what has now burst into full-scale war between the Abh and mankind.
The Orbital Children
The Orbital Children tells the story of several children who are visiting a space station for various reasons when a disaster hit. Their path to evacuation blocked, the children must deal with a variety of deadly issues in order to escape to safety.
This is a short series, and it has a few problems, but it is also a more youthful adventure in space where these children, raised in an age of high technology, often have to depend on lower tech solutions to high-tech problems.
Do you know more space anime that are set in space, but aren’t mecha? Let fans know in the comments section below.
