The future is already broken and these 5 sci-fi anime films know it

Dead Dead Demons Dededede Destruction (2024)

Where to watch: Crunchyroll and Crunchyroll via Amazon Prime Video in the UK. Available as an 18-episode series adapted from the two theatrical films, with additional footage. JustWatch

What happens when the end of the world becomes so familiar that nobody bothers looking up? Some of the most interesting recent science fiction is less concerned with spectacular disasters than with our ability to accommodate them. Based on Inio Asano's manga and released as two theatrical films, "Dead Dead Demons Dededede Destruction" imagines Tokyo living beneath an enormous alien spacecraft. Years after its arrival, teenagers still worry about relationships, education and growing up, while politicians, the military and the media construct their competing versions of reality. The brilliance of the premise lies in how little imagination is required to recognise it. A generation raised on climate anxiety, permanent political emergencies and the relentless circulation of disturbing images has become remarkably skilled at continuing ordinary life alongside extraordinary threats. The film also challenges a familiar division between innocent humanity and dangerous outsiders. As state violence becomes routine, the question of who represents the real threat grows increasingly uncomfortable. Its youthful characters are neither heroic revolutionaries nor passive victims. They are trying to develop identities inside a society that seems incapable of imagining its own survival.

Jinsei (2025)

Where to watch: No confirmed UK streaming or rental availability. The film is listed for digital purchase and rental internationally, including through Apple TV in certain markets. Plex.tv

Fame promises that the world will finally recognise who you are. Ryuya Suzuki's extraordinary independent animation explores what happens when recognition destroys that possibility instead. Following a troubled young man across a century, the film moves through childhood alienation, the Japanese entertainment industry, shifting social identities and an increasingly unfamiliar future. Its protagonist, voiced by underground rapper ACE COOL, repeatedly acquires new names and public roles, gradually becoming somebody defined by other people's expectations. The connection to contemporary music culture is particularly uncomfortable. Artists are encouraged to establish identities, construct narratives and turn their personalities into recognisable products. Yet the more successfully somebody becomes a brand, the harder it may become to distinguish personal experience from public performance. "Jinsei" pushes that contradiction beyond the entertainment business and into a world of political upheaval, violence and existential uncertainty. Suzuki's independently produced visual language also stands apart from the immaculate surfaces of mainstream animation. Its unconventional storytelling feels appropriate for a life that refuses to develop into a coherent personal mythology. Here, the future does not reveal somebody's true identity. It raises the possibility that identity was always something imposed from outside.

Junk World (2025)

Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video in Japan. No confirmed UK streaming or rental availability. 「JUNK WORLD」公式サイト

If cyberpunk has become an aesthetic that can be purchased, "Junk World" restores some of its original unpleasantness. Takahide Hori's stop-motion science-fiction film takes place within a vast underground civilisation populated by humans and artificial beings originally created as a workforce. The relationship between creators and creations has already fractured, leaving behind political hostility, strange belief systems and competing claims to autonomy. An expedition investigating a mysterious anomaly encounters forces capable of disrupting time and reality itself. Beneath the film's grotesque humour and bizarre biological inventions sits a recognisable political problem: what happens when a society creates intelligent workers but refuses to accept the consequences of their intelligence? The question extends naturally into contemporary arguments about artificial intelligence, automation and the economic value assigned to human labour. Visually, "Junk World" belongs closer to the handmade, confrontational tradition of underground art than the smooth futurism of corporate entertainment. Its physical models give artificial life an almost disturbing material presence. The film's absurdity is important, too. A genuinely unfamiliar future ought to contain things that resist our attempts to categorise them, rather than simply rearranging the technological fantasies we already understand.

Make A Girl (2025)

Where to watch: Available digitally in selected international markets, including Apple TV in some territories. No confirmed UK streaming or rental availability. Plex.tv

The contemporary obsession with optimisation has reached almost every aspect of personal life, from productivity and appearance to romance. Gensho Yasuda's "Make a Girl" follows a young inventor who decides that creating an artificial girlfriend might improve his own circumstances. His creation, No. Zero, gradually develops an emotional existence that complicates the purpose for which she was designed. What initially resembles an eccentric romantic experiment becomes a troubling examination of ownership, autonomy and the expectations people place on intimate relationships. The disturbing element is not simply the idea of an artificial person capable of affection. It is the assumption that another consciousness might legitimately be manufactured to satisfy somebody else's emotional requirements. In a culture increasingly comfortable with algorithmic companionship, personalised virtual identities and technologies designed to eliminate social friction, that assumption no longer belongs exclusively to fiction. The film also exposes a contradiction within the language of self-improvement: another person is treated as an instrument for becoming a better version of yourself. Its computer-generated aesthetic provides an appropriate setting for this uncomfortable proposition. If love can be constructed according to a specification, the distinction between companionship and consumption becomes dangerously unstable.

All You Need Is Kill (2026)

Where to watch: Available to rent or buy in the UK through Amazon Video, Apple TV Store and Sky Store. Rental prices start at approximately £3.49. JustWatch

Repetition is supposed to make us better. We practise, fail, learn and eventually overcome our limitations. But what happens when repetition becomes a system from which improvement offers no escape? Studio 4°C's adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka's science-fiction novel follows Rita, a young woman caught in a lethal time loop involving a mysterious extraterrestrial organism. Every death returns her to an earlier moment, forcing her to confront the same catastrophe while carrying the psychological burden of experiences that the surrounding world cannot remember. The premise previously reached mainstream cinema through "Edge of Tomorrow", but this animated interpretation centres Rita's experience and gives the familiar concept a different emotional perspective. Its dystopian force comes from the relationship between time, trauma and relentless performance. Contemporary life frequently presents perseverance as an unquestionable virtue, particularly to younger people expected to remain adaptable amid economic and technological instability. Yet adaptation can also become a form of captivity. Rita's repeated attempts at survival suggest a world in which personal transformation is demanded without any corresponding transformation of the conditions producing suffering. Her struggle leaves a disturbing possibility unresolved: becoming exceptionally good at surviving a broken system may also mean becoming exceptionally good at remaining trapped inside it.

Cover image by Inio Asano/Shogakukan/DeDeDeDe Committee