I am looking for story where group of characters (family or friends) form together a group that is NOT dysfunctional.
Them dealing with problematic/oppressive/bureaucratic/evil world is fine, in fact I want to have some conflict. On the other hand I do not want them to win effortlessly or get some insanely OP powers that invalidate any opposition. I do not want tragic/bad ending, I also do not want obvious 100% perfect absurd success thanks to blatant plot armor.
I also want story to not feature blatantly stupid setting or characters that make no sense whatsoever. Initially I phrased it as "no unrealistic stuff" but I am in fact fine with dragon-flying slave traders as antagonists, as long as suspension of disbelief is achievable.
I strongly prefer avoidance of current politics in either direction, I have seen remarkably few cases where it was done well. I also do not want books that would be recommended only due to current politics, quality of that is even worse.
Story may be small scale. I actually prefer to avoid "saving the world" story. I think that within last decade I seen two stories that did it and were done well (House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds, Deepness in the sky by Vernor Vinge). And maybe few more that I read earlier (LOTR, Ursula K. Le Guin)
I was thinking about fiction when I was writing this, but if you have anything that is nonfiction and fits - even better!
I hope that it is fine to ask for book recommendations here? If not, then please delete/downvote this and let me know what went wrong.
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Notes -
Can I convince you to try old children's cartoon series, like the original Digimon Adventure anime?
Digimon was a 1999 children's monster anime from Japan centered around a group of children who meet at a summer camp and find themselves in another world. There they are met by monsters both friendly and not as they try to survive and understand the new world they find themselves in, even as their goal is to find their way back home and return to their families. The story follows the children's efforts to survive, which depends on their personal growth, their relationships with each other, and their partnership with the monster-partners who met them on arrival claiming to have been waiting for them from the start. The later is part of the mystery of the plot that unfolds over 54 episodes, each less than half and hour.
This was isekai before isekai became a power fantasy cliche, more Swiss Family Robinson than Sword Art Online. While the format of the show is a literal monster-of-the-week setup, at nearly every stage of the adventure the children are the underdogs running from a far, far more powerful adversary. Rather than an escapist fantasy from Japanese life, it is fundamentally a story of lost-and-seeking-to-return to home and family.
While the production quality is terribly dated by modern standards- late-90s era animation, pre-modern adaptation practices, etc.- it also had strong character writing. 'Came for the monsters, stayed for the children' is how I fondly remember it. Now, that is on the admittedly biased recollections of a children's show from literal decades ago, but japanese anime has (had?) that trait of sometimes smuggling better writing into anime than American children's media of the time.
(There are various sequel series- some direct sequels, some in other settings. The third series, Digimon Tamers, starts as more of an urban fantasy genre, but arguably is better polished due to a smaller character caste and thus more focus on individual character arcs over time.)
What makes me think this might be appropriate to your ask is that the series (or at least the earlier iterations) is that the series is fundamentally a bildungsroman- a narrative focusing on the protagonists' formative years and spiritual education.
The series is fundamentally a collection of character development stories, in which the monsters and the adventure are the framing device for the children to grow, with that maturation being the narrative payoff as much as the ultimate outcome of the adventure. This isn't a mere 'the power of friendship means we win' spiel either- the series takes an Aristotelian approach to character traits, in which a virtue can become a flaw both by its absence and its excess. And this struggle is the basis of character arcs that track the entire series, even as this process is central to the world-building system.
So I thought of this when I read your criteria.
By line...
I think this qualifies. The groups that form have internal conflicts, but they are conflicts that are worked through. When there is an enduring conflict, it is character-appropriate and often plot-significant.
As a bildungsroman, the story is characters forming into better people. This does mean they start as worse people, but this is generally in terms of 'good-faith kids who are out of their depth and not yet mature' rather than malicious / incompetent / immoral. There is a generally consistent sense of progression, as the character development of the episode is generally permanent going forward rather than something forgotten in the next episodes.
Digimon Adventure starts as a survival story in which the world is dangerous, but with heavy distinctions between evil, morally flawed, and dangerous. Most of the series entails the children on the run or otherwise hiding from the Big Bad.
The series is an isekai. The nature of the isekai isn't exactly a meta-mystery (digimon = digital monsters), but is one to the character cast.
If you can adopt the lie of the isekai premise, it is consistent enough in that context. It reflects a now-archaic 'the internet as a wild new frontier, both dangerous and amazing' mentality rather than any current political concept like disinformation or some such.
The series is a Japanese series that predates the post-2000 culture war. It also predates the Japanese moe-phase or isekai-escapist trends of the late 2000s/2010s.
As an episodic series, there are many smaller-scale stories within the larger plot. While there is a constant the-stakes-are-survival context from the start, many individual stories are fundamentally smaller-stakes, like imposter syndrome, overcoming personal failures and guilt, or familial challenges born of love and complication. There is even a story about trying to help a friend who is being scammed and feeling like you are being dragged down with them.
The series does grow in scale and stakes as the internal mysteries are developed, but they fundamentally start at much, much lower scale in their initial premise. The first series starts with a survive-and-return-home premise, and keeps that for most of the series.
(The urban-fantasy series 3 starts as 'how do I keep my baby dinosaur a secret and out of trouble' child's-secret-pet tale, before the real adventure is about trying to find a lost friend. Again, everything else is framing for small-at-heart struggles.)
...so, have I gotten you to consider watching a 25-year-old children's cartoon with terrible-by-modern-standards production levels for your serious fiction fix?
Speaking of children's cartoons, Dennou Coil is probably another one that might actually fit.
Early 2000s anime had some interesting takes on internet implications. It's something of a time capsule- plenty of acknowledgement of danger / risk / threat (viruses as monsters, etc.), but also mystery / ambiguous potential.
Sword Art really ruined the genre by turning it pure isekai MMO power fantasy.
That's who I'm blaming, anyway.
Can you recommend any? I've been trying to get into classic anime lately (with all my spare time haha) but it's a minefield at best. Mostly trash or weird problems like when someone tells me to watch a series and it sucks and then they're like no not THAT version!
Incidentally the auto-subs on Crunchyroll's version of Berserk (i.e. the bad one) are hilariously awful. Often incomprehensible, always late, names are inconsistent, and at one point a horse demon is licking an uptight bound and topless blonde (just to scare her I guess) and then, per the subs, shouts 'EMAIL ME!' right as Gods or Guts or Gertzu decapitates him with the giant sword.
What kind of anime do you have in mind? "Classic anime" is extremely broad, while Dean's post is specifically about internet-related 2000s anime, which is also late enough that many wouldn't consider it "classic" to begin with.
I really like that 80s/90s vibe. Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Eva, Jin Roh, Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise, Trigun, Bebop, and so on. That era's animation and vision of the future just hits right.
LOGH is GOAT but there's really nothing else like it.
A more modern anime that landed well for me was Blame! though I think it could have been better.
What did you think of Psycho-Pass?
The first season, not the subsequent ones.
An absolute masterpiece. Watch it, if you didn't.
I agree!
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I'm unfortunately mostly familiar with (late) 2000s animes and you already mentioned most of the older ones that I know.
Some more niche pre-2000s ones: I enjoyed the first short of Memories (1995) very much, though the other two shorts were mediocre imo. Infinite Ryvius (1999) is basically Lord of Flies IN SPACE. Serial Experiments Lain (1998) has already been mentioned by others. Great Teacher Onizuka (1999) is a lot of fun, but also no SF.
If we extend to early 2000s: Texhnolyze (2004) has a dark & arcane atmosphere very similar to Blame!. Gankutsuou (2004) is the Count of Monte Cristo IN SPACE, this time literally. Haibane Renmei (2003) is by the same author as SEL and in my opinion one of the best animes of all time. But it's not SF.
On Blame!, I can definitely recommend the manga. Imo it's better than the movie.
Yeah, I did enjoy Haibane Renmei and Gankutsuo though the latter's ending was pretty disappointing. GTO was a lot of fun when I watched it 20 years ago. Maybe time to do that again!
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Amen.
Not internet-themed in the least. But great.
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For commentary on the internet,
For general worthwhile classic anime, with some fudging for what range "early 2000s" includes:
I watched it, and I recommend it. I am not anime watcher or even movie watcher and I liked it.
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Thanks, yeah. Think I did try Kino's Journey and may again.
Based on the description I thought you meant Mushishi but apparently this is a thing too. May give it a shot.
I can second Mononoke, if you like this style of story.
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Summer Wars, a 2009 movie, is an interesting short-ish experience. It was sort of a... not spiritual sequel, but a 'this is the story we wanted to tell' of one of the digimon movies. Basically an internet-of-things-meets-rogue-AI experience. A nice family story that also balances tradition and progress in a family story context. Only a few hours long.
I sincerely do think the third digimon series in particular, Digimon Tamers, is a well put together series and not-exactly-accidental AI allegory. On top of a bildungsroman for the children, it basically is an 'alignment and conflict between humans and AI' narrative. Once you accept that the digital monsters are AI, you can recognize AI metaphors that would be more coherent decades later, upto and including the limits of government capacity to keep control. This includes an AI developer not recognizing the implications of his invention and having to grow with it as much as guide it (kid makes magical monster who is fundamentally childlike), various AI-growth-risk metaphors, and even rogue AI.
Ghost in the Shell is an older and more adult-focused classic. It's far more in the cyberpunk field of things, but it's a gem for reasons, though reasons include some pretty abstract stuff.
Worth adding that it's mostly Ghost in the Shell the movie and Stand Alone Complex that are worth watching. The later spinoffs/prequel etc I thought were...kind of mid.
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