T5W#23-Top 5 Anime Inspired by Blade Runner

A week ago, I got the chance to see my all time favorite movie on the big screen at a revival screening.  The film follows Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard as he hunts down rogue Androids, known as Replicats, in an over populated 2019 Los Angeles.  Blade Runner is one of the most life defining movies I have ever seen.  It’s brilliant scifi, great storytelling, a visual marvel, it’s…yeah the greatest movie ever made.  It’s had such an effect on the world of scifi and movie making that you can imagine, it’s effect has been felt in Anime as well.  So today I’m counting down the 5 Anime I know of that have inspirations (spiritual or directly) originating in Ridley Scott’s 1982 scifi masterpiece.

 

#5-Metropolis

You may call this one a cheat.  I call it more of a full circle effect.  Fritz Lang’s 1927 film of the same name is almost one of the Godfathers of scifi storytelling.  So much so, it inspired Osamu Tezuka, aka the Godfather of Anime, to create his own version following his inspirational first hit Astro Boy.  In 2001, Director Rintaro (Galaxy Express 999) and writer Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira) gave us an updated but still close to heart edition featuring a futuristic city where the lines between Man and Machine are bordering dangerously close to an all out war.  The central focus on character Tima, and her coming to realize she is not human as she thinks is very reminiscent of Rachel or even Deckard in Blade Runner.

 

#4-Armitage the Third

Besides being a featuring a beautiful and bad ass cyborg cop, Armtiage features battles between humans and robots taking place across two worlds: Earth and Mars.  In Blade Runner we only heard bits and pieces about off world colonies and action involving rogue combat Replicants.  While they don’t say Mars specifically, it can be implied the Red Planet has been colonized.  So we get to see action off world as Naomi Armitage and Ross Sylibus, a bio android and her human partner, clean up crime between the two planets.

 

#3-Silent Mobius

What if Blade Runner axed Replicants all together and gave the world a more supernatural foe to deal with?  Not that cybernetics aren’t still a thing here, they are.  Silent Mobius follows a special unit of all female exorcists utilizing a combination of sorcery and technology to prevent the apocalypse in Tokyo.  The hovercrafts and police vehicles are clearly Blade Runner inspired (I think theyre even called Spinners too) and as aforementioned, even a couple of the AMP’s special warriors are cybernetically enhanced to fight monsters.  Needless to say, beautiful cops with magical powers doesn’t hurt anything either.

 

#2-Ghost in the Shell

This is the obvious one.  Newport City in the far future, is a world where the line between man and machine is merging past what we know to be normal.  Cyborg cops look human and so do the terrorists.  That’s where Section 9 comes in.  A mix of Cyborgs and Humans led by the beautiful and fearless Major Motoko Kusinagi, this team is the one force bringing law to the lawless in a digital age.  What does it mean to be human?  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  Would we escape our humanity to live forever?  All questions Blade Runner has asked and is most famous for.  All carried over into this Anime.  Need more proof of how good Ghost in the Shell is?  Take a look back at my earlier reviews where ive covered the entirety of the Stand Alone Complex series.

 

#1-Bubblegum Crisis

It doesn’t get any more clear cut than this one.  A fusion of Blade Runner and the 80’s cult rock opera “Streets of Fire” Bubblegum Crisis sees four iron suited beauties battling rogue robots called Boomers in future Tokyo.  Besides the mecha designs, BGC names it’s lead character after Daryl Hannah’s innocent femme fatale Priss.  Heck I even realized her love interest is named after another Blade Runner character, Priss’s replicant comrade Leon.  Both the classic late 80’s anime and the 90’s relaunch feature amazing action and thrilling rock soundtracks.  It may not ask all of Blade Runner’s deeper questions, but the visual inspiration is clear and a proper nod to the dystopian future of 2019 Los Angeles.