The year is T.C. 4767. Four thousand years have passed since humanity abandoned its birthplace, the planet Earth. Beset by the hostile alien Gnosis, mankind is now scrambling to find ways to defeat this threat to their existence. The development of KOS-MOS (a specialized android with amazing capabilities) by Vector engineer Shion Uzuki was one response to the threat. But when their ship is destroyed by the Gnosis, Shion and her companions find themselves thrust into the middle of a battle with no clear sides...
Categories
Action Action anime usually involve a fairly straightforward story of good guys versus bad guys, where most disputes are resolved by using physical force. It often contains a lot of shooting, explosions and fighting. Airforce Anime with this category, like anime with Military as category concerns an organised armed force, but with the difference that they should primarily conduct aerial warfare.
Note: Just because the anime contains a bunch of planes or similar, unless the anime is actually about a fighting airforce, you might not want to add this genre. Aliens An extraterrestrial life-form, possibly intelligent and/or extremely threatening. Aliens come in all shapes and sizes: They may be ethereal beings as in "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within", quite humanoid as most of the female space-faring cast in "Tenchi Muyou! GXP", or totally incomprehensible as in "Gantz". Not the sky is the limit, but the anime author`s imagination. Androids Androids are robots created to look like humans. A very famous example is Data from Star Trek, but they need not be as human-like as him. Gunfights Fights where two or more parties are firing guns at one another. Humanoid Humanoids are aliens, intelligent beings who do not originate from Earth, but have a striking similarity to humans or at least show the basic body layout, i.e. two arms and legs, head with two eyes and ears, one nose and mouth. Though the latter - head-related features - may vary. As "DearS" shows some aliens actually exhibit super-human beauty, or as in the case of "Onegai Teacher" they are genetically compatible to humans for some strange reason. Mecha Mecha in Japanese basically means mechanical things; everything from an electric whisk or a car to a spaceship or a robot. Here however we limit it to the more exotic things usually referred to as mecha anime: robots, whether controlled by a human or not, and their ilk. Military The anime concerns an organised armed force, and its members. Said body should have both the equipment and hierarchy found in military groups, and should ideally be actively utilising their power against an opponent. Characters are either employed as professional soldiers or enlisted on a volunteer basis, for ideological reasons. Original Work: Game Based on an interactive (even if minimally so) form of entertainment software, generally available for PCs, consoles or arcade machines. Original Work: RPG Any anime that is based on a role-playing game aka RPG. A role-playing video game is a video game which includes elements of non-electronic role-playing games. The player assumes control of one or several fictional characters (a party) who have joined forces in order to perform quests and overcome a great number of challenges and enemies, usually monsters inspired by fantasy, and, to a lesser extent, science fiction and classic mythology. During the course of the game the characters, or avatars, which are generally defined by quantized characteristics, evolve and improve in that their various attributes increase, as well as by gaining more powerful artefacts. Parasites Parasites are aliens, usually intelligent life-forms that feed off other beings in some way. For shock value, and to avoid having to draw aliens all the time in anime, the prey of parasites is preferably human in nature: Parasites may see humans as food, as a puppet for mind control, or simply as a temporary body host. In every case the human is the victim of the "merging" - not to be confused with the more "amicable" symbiosis. Piloted Robots Piloted Robots are, as the name suggests, robots that cannot control themselves; they need to be steered from somewhere, this can be from a human sitting inside or a remote controlled option. SciFi Science fiction stories usually focus on how situations could be different in the future when we are more technologically advanced; due to either our own achievements or having met with other civilizations whom we have learned from. Shipboard Beam me up, Scotty! Space stations (think Death Star) also count. Basically, this category is to tell if the setting takes place onboard a spaceship in space. This category is not applicable if the spaceship lies on a planet and never actually gets into space. Shoujo Ai Shoujo Ai means girls love, and as such it explores what happens when two girls (or women) fall in love. This is not to be mistaken for Yuri which is a hentai genre. This is not. Meaning no graphical sex. Shounen A style of anime and manga intended for boys, characterized by high-action, often humorous plots featuring male protagonists. The camaraderie between boys or men on sports teams, fighting squads, etc. is often emphasized. Unrealistically attractive female characters are also common (see fanservice), but are not a requirement. The art style of shounen also tends to be less flowery than that of shoujo. Space The final frontier. Space Travel Space Travel usually refers going to space or travelling there with or without a spacecraft. There are different forms of space travel like Interplanetary travel, Interstellar travel or Intergalactic travel. Since it isn`t possible to travel faster than light, most anime series involve some sort "sub-space travel mechanism" as a way to travel faster than light. Time: Future Anime that fall under the future category are the ones that have a society that could have originated from ours. In most cases it should go hand to hand with sci-fi since we expect the future to consist of advanced technology, however, in the case where it`s explicitly stated in the story that the anime takes place "x years into the future", the state of technology doesn`t matter as long as it`s long into the future. The anime can be set in an alternative universe not tied with our own, as long as it has a futuristic feel to it.
This category sports quite a lot of anime, mostly stemming from SciFi, but not necessarily only from there.
