10 anime that highlight environmental issues

Anime that highlights environmental issues uniquely brings important issues to light through compelling stories and characters. Over the years, many anime have focused on environmental challenges we face in the real world - from humanity's impact on nature to visions of ecological collapse.

These stories make us think more deeply about topics like pollution, climate change, deforestation, and biodiversity loss. The environmental messages in these anime often cut close to home. They highlight both the fragility and interconnectedness of the ecosystems around us.

Some take an activist stance, while others focus more on impact. Some depict hopeful futures, while others paint bleaker pictures to drive the urgency home. But all give audiences a lot to think about when it comes to mankind's relationship with nature.

10 must-watch anime that highlight environmental issues

1. Princess Mononoke

Princess Mononoke (Image via Studio Ghibli)

One of the most acclaimed anime that highlights environmental issues is Hayao Miyazaki's epic Princess Mononoke. Set during a time inspired by Japan's late Muromachi period, it follows Prince Ashitaka's involvement in a struggle between an iron-mining town and the spirits of a nearby forest.

The story highlights the destruction caused by unchecked industrialization and the consumption of natural resources. The forest spirits retaliate violently when the town cuts down trees and pollutes water sources with iron.

But there are no clear-cut heroes and villains - characters on both sides have valid arguments, questioned by Ashitaka. In the end, technological advancement isn't rejected entirely, but a message of balance and conservation comes through.

2. Ergo Proxy

This dark, atmospheric anime takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth where humans live in utopian yet confined city-domes to escape the wasteland outside. In the domed city of Romdeau, a series of events calls into question whether this artificially engineered environment is as utopian as it seems.

The story gradually unravels a past ecological disaster that made the planet uninhabitable - never clearly defined but hinting at both climate catastrophe and biotechnological impacts. Ergo Proxy suggests that in humanity's quest for progress, the seeds of their own destruction had been sown.

The domed cities maintained by an authoritarian system are then held up as a necessary yet distorted environment built from the ashes of the old, unsustainable world.

3. Trigun

On the desert planet Gunsmoke, where water and vegetation are extremely scarce, Vash the Stampede finds himself torn between defending life and preventing further loss.

The anime occurs in a post-apocalyptic setting where resource wars have resulted in environmental devastation that makes most of the planet inhospitable. With water scarcity as a central theme, the anime shows how communities scrape by to survive and sometimes come into conflict over resources.

Trigun highlights environmental challenges in a marginalized world as well as ideas around scarcity versus abundance mindsets.

4. Origin: Spirits of the Past

Origin: Spirits of the Past (Image via Gonzo)

In a post-apocalyptic world heavily inspired by the Miyazaki classic Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, mankind's misuse of genetic engineering results in out-of-control forests of mutated plants that produce deadly toxins and overwhelm the land.

Set 300 years later, what's left of humanity has retreated into underground strongholds. The main character Agito stumbles into one of these enchanted forests and befriends a young girl named Toola who awakens from a cryogenic sleep - suggesting a possible harmony between man and nature.

They discover that the mutated forest is not simply humanity's enemy but has grown out of control trying to contain the toxins to protect the small pockets of untouched nature left in the world. It highlights technology gone wrong but balances this with messages of hope and regeneration centered around Toola's existence.

5. Blue Gender

In a grim vision of Earth's future, Blue Gender depicts a world where unchecked population growth, resource depletion, and biodiversity loss have resulted in the planet being overrun with insectoid monstrosities known as the Blue.

Humanity is on the brink of extinction and has fled to an orbiting space station while awaiting the reclamation of Earth. The anime explores harsh environmental warnings around issues like overpopulation and plague-like consequences of ecosystem imbalance.

As an epidemic story, it also explores humanity's moral choices around bio-weapons developed to counter the insectoid threat, which could further unravel the planet's wounds.

6. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Image via Square Pictures)

This sci-fi CGI anime highlights environmental issues and follows scientists working to contain an infestation of spectral insectoid creatures known as Phantoms. These ghostly creatures have overrun the planet, consuming diverse life forms and rendering Earth inhospitable.

Set several hundred years into a post-apocalyptic future, remaining humankind has retreated into barrier cities as they search for means to eliminate the Phantom threat. Central to the story is an effort called the Gaia project, which believes the Phantoms were brought to Earth by a meteorite crash.

The film highlights an environmental cautionary tale about the planet developing aggressive defense mechanisms when pushed to extremes by human activities. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within also shows notions of the whole planet having a collective ecosystem that can hit a tipping point.

7. Wolf Children

While not overtly science fiction, Wolf Children shows emotional connections between human single mother Hana and her two children, Yuki and Ame, who are half wolf, half human. It tenderly explores a changing maternal relationship as the children come of age and gradual urbanization eats into countryside wolf habitats.

The anime film sensitively highlights the encroachment of nature by expanding towns as well as people's tendency to criticize and misunderstand things they label threats from outside their comfort zones.

Through Hana's perseverance despite discrimination and hardship, it also shows love stretching across blurred boundaries of species, as well as the wolfish side living on even within growing children.

8. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (Image via Topcraft)

Considered one of Hayao Miyazaki's most quintessential environmental works, this anime film builds tension between the peace-loving people of the Valley of the Wind and Tolmekians - a military state aggressively using violent ancient bioweapons to expand territory.

Central character Nausicaa attempts to understand the Sea of Decay - a toxic forest spreading over kingdoms following an apocalyptic war. They discover the forest is actually purifying Earth's polluted soil and waters - albeit aggressively.

As one of the seminal anime that highlights environmental issues, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind strives to find harmony between kingdoms that don't understand the forest and its creatures equally perturbed by hostile human activities.

9. Pom Poko

Another anime film from Studio Ghibli directed by Isao Takahata, Pom Poko, focuses on Japanese magical creatures called Tanuki who are faced with urban development destroying their forest homes. The Tanuki band together to scare away humans and fight the losing battle to preserve ancestral land rights.

But as the modernizing town keeps growing to meet human population needs, the magic of the shape-shifting Tanuki struggles to keep up. Beautifully animated in trademark Ghibli style, Pom Poko is a bittersweet ode to the spirits of Japan's rural past giving way to unavoidable urbanization - analogous to the broader destruction of nature by spreading human civilization.

The occasionally humorous battles of the Tanuki underpin the anime's more serious message around conservation as well as cultural heritage tied to the land being permanently lost.

10. Princess Arete

This lesser-known anime highlights environmental issues directed by Sunao Katabuchi, showing the princess Arete confined in a tower by her father due to a prophecy. She is, however, connected to the land and uses her intelligence and compassion to restore her kingdom - weaving protective spells, blessing crops, and planting forests outside.

When Arete eventually escapes the tower after several years, the world has changed due to the rapid industrial advancement of nearby realms. The land around her kingdom has also become barren due to endless mineral extraction.

In the end, Arete's love for the valleys of her childhood kingdom brings back light and nature - suggesting environmental damage can be reversed when nature's gifts are valued above materialism. It carries hopeful messages about humanity living again in balance if we choose right over might.

Conclusion

Anime that highlights environmental issues have great power through imaginative visuals and storytelling to underscore the environmental threats we collectively face on the planet today. The medium isn't afraid to create exaggerated visions of ecological collapse or unsettling future scenarios to provoke emotions and thoughts in audiences.

Anime also understands nuance - balancing bleak warnings with uplifting solutions and exploring how humanity might write a different ending through compassion and coexistence with nature. Ultimately, it makes us sit up, and think more critically about our own choices that shape the future as well as that of coming generations.