One reason I like anime is that it’s a very visual medium in which futuristic and/or fanciful ideas can be presented to a wide audience for their consideration. In the currently running anime Guilty Crown, a gorgeous show by the staff that created Code Geass, there’s a futuristic “auto insect” style robot device called Fyu-Neru, similar to the Tachikoma robots from Ghost in the Shell, that runs around acting cute and sometimes being useful. To my mind it’s about the best-designed robot ever from the standpoint of actually being something we might actually have someday. It’s got rollers for traveling over normal surfaces as well as legs that enable it to climb stairs and furniture. It’s a network-connected device for information retrieval and interacting with people, and I’ll bet it can play MP3s, too. Maybe the devices we’ll be using in the next decade or two will be based on designs explored in anime? If so, can we get those cat ear antenna things like Tsumugi wears?
Will the technology seen in anime will show up in the future?
