I love a good fantasy or sci-fi anime story but find the need for writers to show off their world building, scientific knowledge, or vocabulary can really drag on a story. Good sci-fi and fantasy organically integrate their fantastic or futuristic settings without drowning the viewer or reader in exposition. However what really makes the genre shine for me is the exploration of characters and possibilities. 2019 certainly gave us plenty of that.
Please note, the nominees and winning choice are entirely my own opinion and are not based on any rigid criteria. Feel free to nominate your own winners for the categories in the comments. Help other readers find some awesome anime from 2019 to watch.
Best Sci-Fi Anime of 2019
Narrowing down the options for this category was harder than I thought. In the end as long as there was some kind of futurisitc or technological lean to the premise and setting I decided to count it under the sci-fi banner rather than worrying too much about whether any of the science was sound. On that note, my nominations:
No Guns Life
And the winner is…
Astra Lost In Space
Of course it was Astra. While this one minimises the science jargon and focuses more on the adventure of being in space, far from home, it manages to tell a complete story within its run time and builds up some very fun characters over the duration. Of course there’s the requisite space ships and the food analyser one of the kids fixes up so they don’t poison themselves as well as the threat of encountering a wormhole that will launch them back across the galaxy, but this is one case where the story took precedence over cramming in as much science-ish terminology as the writer could fit and it definitely paid off.
Honestly, Astra Lost in Space, or Kanata no Astra, is just plain fun to watch. Largely due to the interactions in the cast and the fact that they are planet hopping which means regular scene changes and quite distinct transitions throughout the series moving the story along. While the ending is a little bit too wrapped up nicely in a bow, given the number of non-anime endings out there, I’m not going to complain when a story gives me a solid resolution. Astra Lost In Space gets a solid recommendation from me and was my favourite sci-fi for the year.
There’s a lot to choose from and I know I didn’t watch all the sci-fi last year so I’m looking forward to hearing which sci-fi anime was your favourite?
Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James
I would have made the same call: Astra Lost in Space. It’s been awhile since I’ve enjoyed such a tight union between the characters and plot. Everything just worked!
It was awesome the way it came together and one of my favourites for the year.
Yes, it’s Astra for me, too. I don’t think i found any of the choices so far this obvious.
(I still wish Price of Smiles had lived up to its potential. At it’s best it was *very* good, but it didn’t really have the courage to face its implications head on. The ending, especially, felt way too consolatory.)
I really wish the price of smiles had stepped up as well.
I was going to say, with that list of anime it couldn’t be anything but Astra.
Astra kind of cleaned the field here. Then again, I watched a lot more fantasy than sci-fi last year.