I don’t know much about anime, but I would like to know what anime series have you seen that are located in an advanced and realistic worlds of the future, particularly in space cities.
I have seen Planetes, and I would like to know if there is other similar series.
The story takes place in a future where the human race has expanded and inhabits a multitude of planets in the universe with fantastic technology. Unsurprisingly, crime has grown alongside technology, and thus the GOTT, Galactic Organization of Trade and Tariffs, is formed as a sort of universal police force.
The series takes place in the year 2196. Earth is at war with a race of alien invaders called the “Jovian Lizards”. A company called Nergal designs a space battleship, the ND-001 Nadesico. While the ship is powerful and its crew consists of the top civilian experts in their fields, these individuals tend to have “some slight personality disorders”.[3]
Most anime has teenagers in major roles and a lot less realism than Planetes, alas. Two good ones that might meet your criteria at least somewhat and are not mentioned yet are:
Banner of the Stars (Seikai no Senki) – far future space opera that has FTL travel but that otherwise is quite down to earth.
Infinite Ryvius (Mugen no Ryvius) – a bunch of teenaged pilot students get stranded inside a weird spaceship after a terrorist attack. Has a Lord of the Flies thing going on, no FTL travel but the world’s not quite realistic.
IIRC most of the old Gundum series revolve around a war between Earth based humans and those living in massive “O’Neill Cylinder” type space station colonies orbiting the Earth. In particular the 08MS series they showed on Cartoon Network about a decade ago was fairly realistic as it told the story of a typical armored “Mobile Suit” platoon piloting generic mass-produced “Gundams” (giant fighting robots). As opposed to say, superstar ace pilots driving super-powerful custom robots.
Sora Kake Girl, which goes by the title The Girl Who Leapt Through Space (no doubt to cash in on the name-recognition of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, which unrelated), features a future with people living in what appear to be O=Neill-type space colonies. You can see lights from the other side up in the "sky’ at night, and the background looks appropriately weird during the day.
I just saw a couple of episodes of this over the weekend.The background isn’t entirely clear, and the internet pages don’t completely clear it up. People have apparently been living in these colonies for over 300 years, but it’s not clear how far in the future that is.