High quality animated sci-fi shows?

[Theonethatis]

Space Battleship Yamato. The people of earth resurrect a WW2 Japanese battleship and turn it into a spaceship. They have one year in order to travel to another galaxy in order to find a cure for earth. Its the grandaddy of all sci-fi epics.

Macross and Macross Frontier. Macross 7 is fun but it is incredible silly.

Legend of the Galactic heros is like the Japanese B5. Lots of huge battles and politics.

 

[Anwar]

Shadow Raiders/War Planets, Beast Wars/Beast Machines, the DCAU, the 90s X-Men show, X-Men Evolution, the current Avengers show.

That's just off the top of my head.

 

[ReadyAndWilling]

Ok thanks. Big list for me to look at.

is there anything out there with big robots that don't have a pilot? i'm thinking about the sentinels from x-men.

 

[ReadyAndWilling]

this is what i'm talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz_6XZmPgps

things get going at 1:45 until the end.

 

[Myasishchev]

Like the Sentinels? Challenge of the Go-Bots, I guess. Except the Go-Bots were more interesting.

I mean, there are a lot of shows that feature robots with no pilots. Go watch Max Fleischer's rotoscoped Superman shorts (no, seriously, they're wicked cool), or any number of Superfriends episodes (probably, I'm guessing here), or the last twenty-five or episodes of Gundam Wing (where manned mobile suits are progressively replaced with robotic mobile dolls), or every episode of G.I. Joe featuring a B.A.T.

There are no shows that focus on robots with no pilots, unless you expand your definition of "no pilot" to include in-built humanlike AIs, which makes them entirely unlike the Sentinels (barring Master Mold and Nimrod and the occasional interpretation of them as being more personable than a death-ray-and-metal-tendril wielding UAV).

You might like the movie Stealth? I don't know.

It seems like I'm harping on this at length, but it's just a very strange condition on which to attempt to recommend something.

All that said, Transformers: The Movie is absolutely the greatest animated film of all time. It only has like two humans in the whole thing, and they both suck to lesser or greater degrees.

 

[Caliburn24]

I have fond memories of Gargoyles, although once it became The Goliath Chronicles it took a big dip in quality.

There are even some giant robot suits in it of a sort.

And plenty of sci-fi elements. Giant airships, weapons of all sorts, etc.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Well, I like Star Wars: The Clone Wars, but I'd pretty much only put that name out there if you're a diehard Star Wars fan.

I'd highly recommend The Clone Wars and I'm not a diehard Star Wars fan. More like, after the PT, whatever fannish feelings I'd ever had for Star Wars was dead.

However, the first season is pretty much just battle stories. The story types start to broaden out with S2. Now the show is in S3 and it's showing signs of breaking out even further.

I'm not ordinarily interested in sci fi animated series. Reading though the other posts in this thread, it's mostly gibberish to me. So The Clone Wars has managed to impress me despite having to get through several layers of resistance due to being in categories that don't interest me.

For instance, I checked out Cowboy Bebop once. Meh, didn't care for it.

 

[Saul]

For instance, I checked out Cowboy Bebop once. Meh, didn't care for it.

The first few episodes and the movie of clone wars were pretty meh too. But dedication pays off.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Yeah I bailed on TCW but tried it out again when I saw a lot of positive reviews of it here. But that might be because, while I found the PT to be a huge botch (I know I'm all alone in that opinion ), the basic ideas behind it were good and the characters had terrific potential. So it wasn't hard to imagine that in the right hands it might all turn out a lot better.

So what is it about Cowboy Bebop that makes it worthwhile, that you couldn't tell by the first episode?

 

[DigificWriter]

I've got a slew of recommendations that, in some fashion, fall into the Sci-Fi genre:
Silverhawks
Biker Mice from Mars
He-Man
She-Ra
Digimon
Lion Voltron (either the original 80s dub , its 3D sequel/continuation series The Third Dimension, or the forthcoming series Voltron Force, which doesn't premiere till next spring on Nickelodeon)
M.A.S.K.
Transformers: Beast Machines (the sequel to Beast Wars: Transformers, and which I actually enjoyed more than its predecessor)
Robotech (the American dub of Macross from the 80s)
C.O.P.S.

 

[Kegg]

However, the first season is pretty much just battle stories. The story types start to broaden out with S2. Now the show is in S3 and it's showing signs of breaking out even further.

Yeah I really need to get around to the third season. My comments mostly reflect an opinion of the show's first two years.

But there was part of me who liked the first season for, well, doing things like including Grand Admiral Thrawn strategies (and then calling them out in the online commentaries). The show often shows a geeky affection for the Star Wars franchise that's fairly endearing,

 

[Christopher]

I've got a slew of recommendations that, in some fashion, fall into the Sci-Fi genre:
Silverhawks
Biker Mice from Mars
He-Man
She-Ra
Digimon
Lion Voltron (either the original 80s dub , its 3D sequel/continuation series The Third Dimension, or the forthcoming series Voltron Force, which doesn't premiere till next spring on Nickelodeon)
M.A.S.K.
Transformers: Beast Machines (the sequel to Beast Wars: Transformers, and which I actually enjoyed more than its predecessor)
Robotech (the American dub of Macross from the 80s)
C.O.P.S.

I wouldn't apply the label "high quality" to many of those. Silverhawks in particular was awful, a ridiculously silly premise. It, MASK, and COPS were basically just about selling toys.

As a Filmation buff, I want to praise He-Man and She-Ra, but while they were a little ahead of the curve in some ways for their period, they're very much kids' shows and tend to be repetitive. They're largely about selling toys too, though they occasional rose above that to some extent thanks to writers who had bright futures, such as J. Michael Straczynski, Michael Reaves, and Diane Duane.

There's not much else on that list that I was actually fond of. I liked Beast Machines, but not nearly as much as Beast Wars. Robotech was pretty good, and is the only show on the list that wasn't primarily targeted at kids (at least, the anime shows it was based on weren't, I don't think), but it's often criticized for its extreme departures from the originals.

Of the things mentioned there, I'd give my highest recommendation to season 3 of Digimon, or Digimon Tamers as it was known in Japan. That season -- that incarnation of the concept (each season after the first two is in a separate reality and continuity) -- was the oldest-skewing of the bunch and the smartest. It was written by the creator of Serial Experiments Lain, one of the most brilliant, bizarre, and mindblowing anime series ever made, and though it's still geared toward relatively young audiences, it gets into some pretty intense areas. It's also the most science-fictional and least fantasy-based incarnation of Digimon.

 

[DigificWriter]

^ I never really watched Tamers, primarily because I really didn't understand the reasoning behind packaging it as the third season of Digimon despite the fact that it had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the previous two seasons; the premise and characters are actually pretty neat, but, IMO, it really would have been better served if it had been ported over under its Japanese title.

The reason I enjoyed Beast Machines more than I did Beast Wars is that the animation was much smoother and less blocky, and because the storyline felt, to me, like something that was simultaneously both completely original and a faithful homage to the original Transformers cartoon(s) that I grew up on, much moreso than Beast Wars, which felt, to me, like it was simply rehashing what had been done on the earlier cartoon, but with a different set of characters. Beast Machines introduced enough new and interesting ideas and story elements into the TF universe that it was able to avoid this problem. I also really enjoyed the villains in BM moreso than the villains in BW (the only villains I really liked in BW were Dinobot and Black Arachnia, who became a good guy).

 

[bigdaddy]

No-one's mentioned Futurama yet?!

I was thinknig that too!

Shameful on the first few repliers!

 

[ReadyAndWilling]

I have fond memories of Gargoyles, although once it became The Goliath Chronicles it took a big dip in quality.

There are even some giant robot suits in it of a sort.

And plenty of sci-fi elements. Giant airships, weapons of all sorts, etc.

ya, those were some great episodes man. really well done.

 

[ReadyAndWilling]

i'm looking at wiki on gargoyles and just saw this: Xanatos later used an Iron and Steel Clan robot to aid Coldsteel and Coyote 5.0 in retrieving the Stone of Destiny.

what episode was this?

 

[ReadyAndWilling]

this is what i'm talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz_6XZmPgps

things get going at 1:45 until the end.

anyone else enjoy this?

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

If you're in the mood for some Tron type action, Reboot is coming out on DVD soon.

 

[ReadyAndWilling]

ok, just found it: http://gargoyles.dracandros.com/Rock_and_Roll

was just a comic :S

 

[Saul]

Yeah I bailed on TCW but tried it out again when I saw a lot of positive reviews of it here. But that might be because, while I found the PT to be a huge botch (I know I'm all alone in that opinion ), the basic ideas behind it were good and the characters had terrific potential. So it wasn't hard to imagine that in the right hands it might all turn out a lot better.

So what is it about Cowboy Bebop that makes it worthwhile, that you couldn't tell by the first episode?

I think with the first episode you're only introduced to two characters, the other two come in later episodes. The inner turmoil that these characters feel can't be really caught the first time round because we know nothing about them and it's quite ambigous and stays that way for a lot of the series but their are glimpses of their past that is catching up with them. The series can be symbolic, philosophica,l funny and sad. There are a lot of influences from sci-fi to westerns to film noirand action movies. I think it has something for everyone.