No more dystopia!

[Soviet Heavy]

Do yourself a favor and go watch some Cowboy Bebop. It has all the trappings of a dystopian universe. Incompetent law enforcement, vicious criminal syndicates, pirates, apocalyptic worlds like Earth, murder, betrayal, warfare, corrupt government, illegal research, megacorporations, poor living conditions, overcrowding, pollution, poverty, etc.

It also happens to be a very uplifting show that has a blast with itself despite the shitty future it presents. Just because something shows the future in a less than perfect light doesn't mean its automatically the shitheap of our successors.

Another good 'positive look at a shitty world' is Ghost in the Shell, especially Stand Alone Complex. When Section 9 is in the spotlight it's very much 'post-cyberpunk' where the government isn't actually evil, there are good people in it working to help society, even against internal conspiracies. But whenever the camera pans out to show the larger world it get very cyberpunk with huge societal in-equality (but there's still a functioning middle class), government surveillance (used by the heroes for good, which is an interesting look at the concept) and world at large being a mix of good and bad (Europe and Japan are mostly fine, South America is one giant pile of collapsed governments, and one of the three nations that made up the former United States is turning into a classic cyberpunk dystopia).

Isn't GITs in the same universe as Appleseed, or something? Except like a hundred years earlier and no real connection apart from the world shaping wars and economic collapses.

 

[stringtheory]

Do yourself a favor and go watch some Cowboy Bebop. It has all the trappings of a dystopian universe. Incompetent law enforcement, vicious criminal syndicates, pirates, apocalyptic worlds like Earth, murder, betrayal, warfare, corrupt government, illegal research, megacorporations, poor living conditions, overcrowding, pollution, poverty, etc.

It also happens to be a very uplifting show that has a blast with itself despite the shitty future it presents. Just because something shows the future in a less than perfect light doesn't mean its automatically the shitheap of our successors.

Another good 'positive look at a shitty world' is Ghost in the Shell, especially Stand Alone Complex. When Section 9 is in the spotlight it's very much 'post-cyberpunk' where the government isn't actually evil, there are good people in it working to help society, even against internal conspiracies. But whenever the camera pans out to show the larger world it get very cyberpunk with huge societal in-equality (but there's still a functioning middle class), government surveillance (used by the heroes for good, which is an interesting look at the concept) and world at large being a mix of good and bad (Europe and Japan are mostly fine, South America is one giant pile of collapsed governments, and one of the three nations that made up the former United States is turning into a classic cyberpunk dystopia).

Isn't GITs in the same universe as Appleseed, or something? Except like a hundred years earlier and no real connection apart from the world shaping wars and economic collapses.

Yep, Masamune basically copied all the archetypes from Appleseed into GitS.
I'm not actually a huge fan of the original GitS mangas or the movies, Stand Alone Complex all the way for me.

 

[DeimosMasque]

I'm just sick of the setting in general. So many zombie apocalypses. So many nuclear apocalypses. And to those saying there are no interesting stories in a utopian society, what about space exploration? Star Trek was pretty good, and hell, have you tried games like wing commander privateer? That was a good game even though it took place in a utopian society. Freelancer was pretty great too.

That's the thing, just because a society is perfect doesn't mean there still can't be any interesting conflicts in it.

Star Trek is actually set in a dystopian future that dragged itself up and became a Utopian one. In the Star Trek timeline we had a vicious war in the 1990s and another one in the 2020s. We nearly destroyed ourselves and then pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps and created a Utopia so perfect that Earth hadn't even had a state of emergency for a century. There was is no hunger, no crime and no war on the all of Earth because we came so close to destroying ourselves that we grew up and stopped.

The truth is there are just as many examples of Utopian futures as there are Dystopian futures in science fiction writing. The difference comes that the Dystopians are talked about because they play to our own cynicism and fears. The Utopian ones play to our optimism and hopes.

It's easier to talk from cynicism than it is from optimism.