Some people believe that everything has a purpose, or that everything is ordained by some form of higher power. Some believe there’s an inherent meaning to individual lives and life in general. But what happens if higher powers don’t exist? What if good and bad things happen not because of morality, but just because stuff happens sometimes?
Some philosophers connected these dots to nihilism, where morality, life, knowledge, etc., has no inherent meaning. Others have said that it's up to each individual to find a rational cause in an irrational universe, or make their own meaning for living. Finding that meaning, among other dilemmas, became the basis for existentialism, which these anime shows and movies attempted to explore. Watch out for spoilers.
7 Now and Then, Here and There
- Director: Akitaro Daichi
- Studio: AIC
- Availability: Digital Purchase via Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play
Now and Then, Here and There is a little obscure. It’s an isekai show from 1999, just over a decade before the genre exploded. It’s also one of the more interesting ones, as it’s not about some virtual world or fantasy realm. Instead, Shu finds himself transported to a post-apocalyptic wasteland after trying to rescue a girl called Lala-Ru from mech-riding abductors.
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It’s a brutal world that sees Shu beaten, tortured, and forced into a unit of child soldiers. The girls he meets go through worse, and their pains are all because of the maniacal villain Hamdo and his pursuit of Lala-Ru, who has grown disillusioned with humanity. Yet she and the others gradually find cause in their suffering to press on, in the hope that they can turn the wasteland into an oasis.
6 Texhnolyze
- Director: Hiroshi Hamasaki
- Studio: Madhouse
- Availability: Streaming on Funimation
If Now and Then, Here and There sounds too happy and heroic, Texhnolyze offers an equally dark yet more introspective look on the topic. The show follows Ichise, a prizefighter from the underground city of Lux who loses an arm and a leg after upsetting an unnamed bigwig. Through ‘texhnolyzation’ he’s given special prosthetic limbs, which run on raffia, the sole element that keeps Lux running.
From there, he’s caught in a power struggle that sees Lux threatened by the Class. Their leader, Kano, wants to texhnolyze everyone in Lux completely until they become cyborgs called 'Shapes.' Ichise tries to warn the people on the surface, but they'd rather go extinct peacefully than keep life going. Lux's people are still technically alive, but their fate isn't any better as they succumb to tech meant to help them thanks to one charismatic bad actor and his forces.
5 Serial Experiments Lain
- Director: Ryutarou Nakamura
- Studio: Triangle Staff
- Availability: Streaming on Funimation
At first, Serial Experiments Lain seems like a rather quaint, old-school take on fears about the internet. Yet while the World Wide Web has advanced a lot since 1998, Lain’s approach to identity, reality, and humanity’s interactions with the digital world are still prescient today. To think it all started with Lain and her classmates receiving a text from a deceased friend after she died.
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As Lain tries to find out what happened via ‘the Wired,’ she develops a more outgoing, online persona to interact with her contacts. Eventually, the line between physical and virtual reality gets distorted as Lain grows lost in her new selves. It shows that, even if society had a higher power to look to, it wouldn't necessarily make things better or easier for them, nor do much for the higher power either.
4 Puella Magi Madoka Magica
- Directors: Akiyuki Shinbo and Yukihiro Miyamoto
- Studio: Shaft
- Availability: Streaming on Funimation and Hulu
Wrapped in the guise of an ordinary magical girl show like Sailor Moon or Cardcaptor Sakura, Puella Magi Madoka Magica sees its magical girls discover they’re pawns in a bigger plot. Their emotions were being farmed by their cutesy advisor Kyubey to stave off the heat death of the universe. It means the girls have to give up their souls and risk turning into the witches they fight.
One of Madoka’s colleagues, Homura, tried to stop Madoka from joining Kyubey across multiple timelines, but she failed in each one. Kyubey wasn’t going to give her the chance to spoil his plans. If the show was purely nihilistic, it would have ended there. But Madoka manages to turn things around on Kyubey by getting her wish granted, becoming powerful enough to undo his schemes and rewrite fate itself.
3 Neon Genesis Evangelion
- Directors: Hideaki Anno, Masayuki, and Kazuya Tsurumaki
- Studios: Gainax and Tatsunoko
- Availability: Streaming on Netflix
There are reams of essays and theses on how Neon Genesis Evangelion treads the line between nihilism and existentialism. The University of Tsukuba has a 10-page article on it by Gabriel Tsang Ph.D, with footnotes and extra reading on the show's nihilist and existentialist rhetoric. It goes much more in-depth on the subject, but the original show’s ending provides a small example.
The Human Instrumentality Project makes humanity one without the sensitivity to the pains of existence, by reducing them to primordial goop. Shinji, the lead, almost joins them until he realizes he was acting in bad faith. His father doesn’t define his worth. He does, and that his sense of self is worth maintaining. (“Perhaps the real world is not bad, but I just hate myself…but maybe I can like myself.”) Hence, the show's original but curious 'Congratulations' ending.
2 Ergo Proxy
- Director: Shukou Murase
- Studio: Manglobe
- Availability: Streaming on Hulu, Funimation, and Tubi
With most of the world rendered inhospitable, Ergo Proxy sees humanity live in domed cities with androids called AutoReivs. Things go fine until the AutoReivs get infected with the Cogito virus, which makes them self-aware and prone to committing murder. Inspector Re-L (“Real”) Mayer goes to investigate, only to come across a new kind of humanoid called ‘Proxies.’ It sounds straightforward enough, but that’s without going into the cities' societies.
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Like the AutoReivs, humans don’t choose their own reason for living. They don’t even reproduce naturally, thinking they were rendered sterile. They’re reproduced artificially for a specific role, or 'raison d’etre,' in society. What makes the humans so special if they’re not that different from the AutoReivs? It’s a tender balance that the conspiracy behind the Proxies and Cogito virus threatens to upend.
1 Ghost in the Shell
- Director: Mamoru Oshii
- Studios: Production I.G, Bandai Visual, and Manga Entertainment
- Availability: Streaming on Amazon Prime, Tubi, and Freevee
The most popular anime to tackle existentialism has to be Ghost in the Shell. Whether it’s Shirow Masamune’s original manga, Mamoru Oshii’s movies, or the different series, they all contend with what happens to humanity when cyber technology goes too far via the Public Security Bureau Section 9 and its cyborg Major Motoko Kusanagi. The 1995 movie is a good place to start, as it delves deeper into the Major's issues.
She’s technically a cyborg, but she doesn’t really feel human. The only thing separating her from a shop dummy is her brain case, which is all that will be left of her once she’s done at Section 9. How can she be her own person when she’s essentially government property? She may find her answer in the Puppet Master, a master hacker who can rewrite people’s lives by manipulating their memories. Except he's not exactly 'human' either, providing his own issues.