I would argue that it's still quite popular. I think people are incredibly entitled these days as well, our standard of living is the best it has ever been and it's only getting better but people want more and more all the time and take more and more for granted.

For whatever reason, it was a cold war thing.

I've heard this, but I'm not sure if it's true. I personally have less hope for the future than I did back in the 90s and 00s, but I don't know how common that is. I think it's easy to be irrationally hopeful when you're a kid.

It's surprising that I've never asked my dad this, but he's not much of an intelectual anyways. I figure that the fear of nuclear appocolypse inspiried people to think about how we can fix the problems of humanity. Then when that war ended and problems shifted to climate change.
So now our flavor is how profitability can be what dooms humanity and makes our lives miserable. A longing for a stable past where we didn't have to worry about things that defeat our common values in productivity over ethics and morals.

>>72423
Things are getting political because people are feeling insecure about their futures.
There are several "if we don't fix this now, we're in for some bad times" scenarios - some of which mutually incompatible - that are competing with each other for your attention. Would you prefer to save the world from X or would you like to invest your energy into preventing Y from ending civilization instead?
Oh, but the government is apparently not doing anything about any of them, so we are really fucked, regardless of which one ends up being true. This is mainstream thought now, not some fringe doomsday cult's ideas.
(I hope that my omission of any keywords will allow this conversation to remain civil)

I think that rather than scifi being no longer in the interest of people, as a society we just haven't been able to agree on an aesthetic and theme yet.
I keep thinking that CyberPunk is the most appropriate form of expression for our modern time, (but arguably that just goes to show where I stand in the debate of which global catastrophes are most likely to kill us all).
As far as aesthetics go, I really love the silent solitude of space. I know I am quite an oddball in that regard.

Society would be much happier if everyone was an alcoholic

>>72425
I blame the internet, it's quite easy to spread misinformation particularly if it's dramatic and the vast majority of people don't know enough to know that the things being told to them are exaggerated far beyond reason and are not actually much of a threat.

>>72420
A lot of sci fi anime in the 90s wasn't very hopeful.

>>72426
Who the HECK drinks alcohol out of a carton with a straw? Does such a thing really exist?

Dear my Future

>>72442
Mia ga iccchibaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan~!

>>72442
>>72443
>>72444
Nice shoegaze song. It's my favorite music genre.

I feel like it's more to do with the fact that what was futuristic is rapidly becoming mundane. Something like Do It Yourself! if made a few decades earlier would have been fairly sci-fi, but now it's more believable and mundane. The sci-fi element ceases to be sci-fi and becomes nothing more than a setting backdrop. There's not really much to explore as a concept, other than using it as a time displaced setting for parables on current issues a la Star Trek.

>>72445
Good taste, my friend!

It's best when mixed with vocaloid.

>>72491
Do you honestly believe that the breadth and width of possibilities of science and technology have been thoroughly explored now and thus made mundane?

I doubt that we have even explored the more popular topics satisfactorily.
If you look at bestsellers such as Do Androids Count Electric Sheep, it did not really bring any new tech to the table, that other authors hadn't thought about before. It just tried to figure out what society might look like, further down the line.

>>72526
No, but I do believe that the novel usage of science fiction to explore technological concepts has been eroded to the point where the technological aspects are now more often better conveyed in a contemporary setting. The Jetsons makes sense in an era where electric appliances such as refrigerators, dishwashers, and ovens were themselves revolutionary. It is less relevant in an era where you can have voice activated home automations, that extend from controlling lights to turning on robot vacuum cleaners, all controlled by a smart watch on one's wrist while not even having to be home. Replicators feel less magical when anyone can order a 3D printer, holodecks less unreal when VR headsets are commonplace, robots less magical when you can get a DJI drone capable of following you for recording, AI less unthinkable when everyone can access ChatGPT for free. I could go on. Short of what technological advances will likely never come in our lifetimes, the attainable and personally relatable aspects of science fiction are less fiction than they are mundane now in many respects.

To the extent that I think sci-fi "makes sense," as mentioned, is in using it as a time-displaced parable; Captain Kirk can kiss Lt. Uhura in 1960s America because Star Trek doesn't take place in 1960s America.

This is of course ignoring hard sci-fi concepts that have no bearing on current society, and fiction that uses sci-fi simply for aesthetic purposes. That's fine and good. Exploring the idea of a Dyson spheres and ring worlds is fun and all, but it doesn't have much, if any at all, direct relevance to contemporary reality. Similarly, Star Wars could more or less be retold exactly the same in a contemporary setting because the extent to which it is science fiction mostly comes down to aesthetics.

>>72507
Mikgazer might actually be my favourite shoegaze album

>>72434
Not even just the 90s. I certainly wouldn't describe series like Macross, Gundam, Akira, Bubblegum Crisis, and so forth as being at all hopeful. Most of the classic futuristic anime are about dystopian mega-cities or planet-destroying wars - I'd honestly struggle to name any that are utopian or give anything much to be optimistic about.

Where Japanese sci-fi tends to be more upbeat is with the non-futuristic stuff that is just fantasy/magic with no more than a vaguely sci-fi coat of paint: think of stuff like Urusei Yatsura or some of the early super robot anime.

>>72595
Patlabor? Royal Space Force?

>>72596
I haven't watched Patlabor yet, but Honneamise is a fictionalized space race narrative (which even at the time it released was a quarter-century in the past) and based around then-current Cold War politics, not anything futuristic. And as much as it had a positive perspective on scientific advancement, from what I remember it looked to the future with a great deal of uncertainty, rather than being optimistic as such.

I watched Royal Space Force yeeaaars ago but found the realism in it, but the animation and story, to be just right.
Hope and Fear, that is the desire to step forward or hesitate standing in place, should always be side by side on the most razor thin of coins.

>>72596
Rsf as for me got huge "everyone but me is dead" issue and patlabor, in case of manga, is a huge deal of hypocricy stating obviously state affecting tropes it produces artificial conflicts and phony choices. Criminals and cops, money and brute force, experimentations and reputation all of this perfectly outshadows god-children, sacrifices, nature-as-enemy tropes and most of all it demonstrates most dirty and ugly ways to manipulate media, a textbook in a way, in what got to became a colored revolution. Not to mention it clearly sets the task to undermine japanese industry! Read patlabor, think about yellow press!