Ask Lemmy

Really would have been my all time favourite if it didn't get fucked over.

Eh, breaking bad' is an extremely well made show. You might like it or not, but qualitatively, it's one of the best shows out there

Yes.

The Expanse if you haven't seen it.

Have you watched Love Death and Robots?

The Expanse if you like Altered Carbon

Anime and Altered Carbon?

You might like Ghost in the Shell. There's a handful of different movies and timelines, but I think the anime show Stand Alone Complex is a good entry point. For that continuity, after SAC is SAC 2nd Gig, then the movie Solid State Society, and finally the recent Netflix CG show SAC_2045.

Cyberpunk future, although not as gritty as Altered Carbon or Cyberpunk 2077. This trailer gives a good idea of the action scenes, but the show isn't mainly about that, instead more about the psychological themes. Story follows a cyborg special forces group in the Japanese Government. Lots of side plots about stuff like privacy and being able to trust your senses when hackers can hijack your eyes, what does conciousness and self mean when someone can literally shove their brain in a self sustaining VR box effectively forever, at what point does AI reach personhood, when brains can be fully digitized and be treated as data how do you ensure abscence of tampering, how do you even begin to handle people that opt into a gestalt existence, and more. The idea of self is a core thing repeatedly. Main plot of Stand Alone Complex is some wide reaching thing about corporations and billionaires holding critical medical knowledge hostage from the public and a specific hacker fighting to get the info out.

Speaking of Cyberpunk 2077, go watch Edgerunners if you haven't yet. The dub is great, but I can't find that trailer dubbed. If you're even remotely aware of the videogame or the tabletop you know the kind of thing to expect. Gritty, dark. Starts about a year and a half before the game, ends around half a year before. Holy shit, nothing I could say would do it justice and it's best to go in blind. Just... be prepared to hurt. There are no happy endings in Night City.

If you're up for a little less cyberpunk but still heady sci-fi future, give Psycho-Pass a try. Hard to find a good trailer for this one, the dub is fine but I was only able to find a decent subtitled trailer. The world is one of near omnipresent surveillance by "the sybil system" which can analyze a person's mental state to detect criminal intent before it happens. MC is a fresh graduate who has just started her job as a police detective, and has to adapt quickly to the reality that detective work is no longer true investigation, but mostly using the reports from the system together with using a troop of people flagged as criminals by that system to hunt down the other potential criminals. Of course cracks in the surveillance and the system itself begin to show pretty quickly, even before someone starts fucking with it for fun. First season is the best and works very well as a standalone thing. The movie and other seasons aren't bad, just not as good.

If you just want some good anime without the cyberpunk elements, Cowboy Bebop is universally considered a classic. Great great stuff. Struggling bounty hunters just trying to make ends meet as their pasts eventually catch up with them through background details episode to episode. Heavy jazz influence and wonderful jazz soundtrack. You're gonna carry that weight.

If you only pick one, go with Edgerunners, if you pick two, add Bebop. Edgerunners is a short show, I think 12 eps. Bebop is 25 episodes (and a movie technically between I think episode 23 and 24, but it came out years later and isn't needed for the overall plot).

What genre of anime? I'm obsessed with Frieren right now, it's a really good fantasy anime. And I'm also catching up on Jujutsu Kaisen atm, quite brutal with its themes, but I'm loving the story, can't wait to read this manga once I've caught up on the animated series and finished Claymore for the first time (I know I'm super late to read this one).