The Gene of AI is an overlooked sci-fi masterpiece

For the better part of three decades, anime has been a rich forum for wrestling with artificial intelligence — from Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell and Yasuomi Umetsu’s “Presence” in Robot Carnival to Time of Eve and Netflix’s Pluto. In 2026, with AI feeling less like distant science fiction, Kyuri Yamada’s 2015 manga and its 2023 anime adaptation from Madhouse feel especially relevant.

Rather than staging world-ending conspiracies, The Gene of AI treats its questions like a medical drama. Each episode follows Dr. Hikaru Sudo, a physician who treats humanoids living alongside humans in the near future. His cases range from humanoids with psychological trauma to humans whose relationships with artificial beings raise knotty ethical problems, and every treatment risks redefining what it means to be human.

The show’s patient-procedural, anthology format makes it easy to binge: every episode poses a distinct moral question without demanding encyclopedic knowledge of a sprawling sci-fi universe.

anime, artificial intelligence, kyuri yamada, madhouse, hikaru sudo, humanoids, medical drama, manga, anthology format, pluto