The heroes’ ships (which you can find in my Last Exile tag) are like Art Deco X-Wings almost. But don’t get too excited Steamboy is not to steampunk what Akira was to cyberpunk. STEAMBOY: It’s worth noting that this is a Katsuhiro Ôtomo movie he created the manga Akira and the movie based on it. Although the movie has a proper conclusion, it only covers about ¼th of the manga it was based on. The only bad thing I have to say about it is that it’s just 1 movie, not 4. This is another Miyazaki/Ghibli movie, except its older and has more of an emphasis on environmentalism and world design. It’s a Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli movie so its on a lot of people’s 'top 5 anime movies ever’ list, not just a niche one like this. It has airships, sky pirates, adventure, ancient robots and a floating sky castle.

Watch it for the gorgeous art and the setting. Honestly I saw this a while ago, and although it jumped out to me as an immediate inclusion, I don’t remember too much about it other than it focuses on a robot-girl and has great visuals. The only problem I have with it is that the designs and world design is better than the story. This is based around pilots and airships, with airship designs from one of my favorite concept artists of all time. This is probably the best example of 'do you want a steampunk anime? watch this.’ Great art and tons of emphasis on the steampunk technology used.

The list is in no particular order and is biased toward my preferences.

My Toplist Rules: I need to have seen the show/movie and they need to be something I’d recommend watching. This might end up being 2-3 lists as I think up more. Initially I wanted to split them into their own lists, but in most cases the anime are a blend of dieselpunk, steampunk and some form of magic (or ancient scifi so advanced it might as well be magic). This list for diselpunk and steampunk anime was tricky. This gave me the idea to make a couple of posts like it. It’s often I get friends asking me ‘do you know of any anime like _?’ I’ve seen enough anime that I can usually recommend several shows that either fit the tone or setting they are going for.

Steamboy anime gif