The Future City as Imagined by Animated Films

Taro Igashi
Architectural historian
Born in 1967 in Paris. A graduate of the Department of Architecture at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Tokyo, where he also completed a master’s degree. PhD in engineering. Professor at the Graduate School of Tohoku University since 2009. He curated the exhibition Cities as Depicted in Animation Background Art (2023).

In rendering worlds removed from reality with credibility, background art plays a decisive role. This function is all the more crucial in animation, where every element must be constructed from the ground up, unlike in live-action cinema.

In Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Innocence (2004), directed by Mamoru Oshii, the urban environments of a near future—set respectively in 2029 and 2032—evoke Asian metropolises. The former draws on photographs taken in Hong Kong, the latter on images captured in Taiwan, Shanghai, and Italy. Whereas Oshii’s earlier films, such as Patlabor: The Movie (1989) and Patlabor 2: The Movie (1993), offered a faithful depiction of contemporary Tokyo, Ghost in the Shell introduces an Asian visual register to underscore the emergence of a society shaped by cybernation and network technologies.

It is worth noting that the original manga by Masamune Shirow (1991) did not necessarily rely on such an aesthetic. The association between cyberspace and an Asian imaginary—what might be described as a form of techno-orientalism—thus stems from a deliberate choice on Oshii’s part.

Within the history of science fiction cinema, visions of the future long tended toward clean, streamlined environments. A decisive shift occurs with Blade Runner (1982), which, without precedent in its source material, introduces an urban crowd marked by Asian references, thereby reshaping the visual language of future cities. In Ghost in the Shell, this imagery may appear markedly unfamiliar from a Western perspective, while for Japanese audiences it produces a more subtle sense of dissonance with the everyday.

The New Port City conceived by Oshii unfolds as an urban extension built over the waters of a bay, connected to the mainland by multiple routes. At its center rises a dense cluster of administrative high-rises, while the surrounding areas are composed of lower structures. The transportation network, designed with considerable complexity, calls to mind the architecture of an integrated circuit.

In Innocence, the Etorofu Special Economic Zone appears. Overlooking a forest of slender, needle-like skyscrapers, Batō reflects: ‘If the essence of life lies in the information transmitted through genes, then society and culture are nothing other than vast memory systems. And the city, in that sense, is a gigantic external memory.’ As bodies become mechanized and minds are digitized, blurring the very grounds of what defines the human, the city seems to compensate for this loss, covering itself in human traces to the point of saturation and impurity.

By contrast, the S.A.C. series directed by Kenji Kamiyama reanchors its narrative in an urban landscape continuous with contemporary Japan. Set in the fictional city of Niihama, off the coast of Kobe, it draws in particular on the facilities of Harima Science Garden City and the Akashi Bridge. It also depicts refugee reception zones reminiscent of the historical model of Dejima. Meanwhile, the ARISE series, overseen by Kazuchika Kise, extends this approach while incorporating buildings marked by wartime destruction as well as architectural forms recalling the Shōwa era.

As these works engage with contemporary issues—cybercrime, migration, and post-truth—the Asian imaginary, as mobilized in Oshii’s films, may no longer be required in the same way.