- Psycho Pass[1] (just providing a link, I know it's been said)

- Space Brothers[2] (It's a bit like a soap opera but scifi)

- Serial Experiments Lain[3]

- Texhnolyze[4] (The tone doesn't change and it can be difficult to watch)

- Dennou Coil[5] (No streaming sites found, so MAL link. Watch it if you can find it)

[1] http://www.funimation.com/shows/psycho-pass/home

[2] http://www.crunchyroll.com/space-brothers

[3] http://www.funimation.com/shows/serial-experiments-lain/home

[4] http://www.funimation.com/shows/texhnolyze/home

[5] http://myanimelist.net/anime/2164/Dennou_Coil/

Dennou Coil has been licensed by Maiden Japan.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2016-02-23/maiden-japan...

It's coming out on Blu-Ray and DVD on June 28th. It's possible it might become available for streaming at some point after that.

Just to add: Dennou Coil is taking Augmented Reality to the extreme...

Kaiba (award-winning animé; weird visuals that ultimately emphasise the underlying theme; all about memory and identity)

Eclipse Phase sourcebooks (tabletop RPG, the most coherent treatment of this kind of thing I've ever seen; open-source)

From the New World (animé again; further future and more fantasylike than cyberpunk, but very much about what it means to be human)

Someone has already mentioned Rainbows End

Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds (novel, further future - part of a wider series but this one has particular identity aspects to it. Can be a bit long and cumbersome - try Diamond Dogs for shorter Reynolds, though that's further detached from present reality)

Altered Carbon (and sequels) by Richard Morgan (novels (the first one in particular has a whodunnit aspect), near-future, about memory and identity, written from a fairly leftist perspective about a capitalist dystopia)

Various of Jon Courtenay Grimwood's novels, particularly 9tail Fox. Grimwood is... divisive, and sometimes hasn't done the research, but it's very much this kind of subject matter

Possibly Carlucci by Richard Paul Russo (novel with a police side, very much grounded in San Francisco - I can't remember this so well)

And why not Akira?

This is not the kind of question you can say "why not?" about. I simply didn't find Akira that thought-provoking, and I'm not aware of it having anything interesting to say about identity.

If they have not seen Akira, they should watch it, but not necessarily for the same reason you want him GitS.

Psycho-Pass is a lot like the GITS anime, with a side of Minority Report. Not quite identity stuff, but still classic sci-fi concepts in a near future setting in the form of a police procedural.

It spends much more of its time on multi-episode story arcs, and does them better than GITS does, but doesn't do as well at one-off episodes. For reference, I thought the one-off episodes were the stronger part of GITS; if you disagree you'll enjoy Psycho-Pass even more than I did.

Psycho-Pass is to GITS what Equilibrium is to Orwell/Huxley: what happens if an idiot tries to rewrite the original. The form is there, but there is no substance.

I agree for the first season of Psycho-Pass.

Second season wasn't nearly as well-done.

Vinge's _Rainbows End_ (note that's the correct punctuation) is excellent and much more relevant to near-future than his Deepness series.

Awesome, thank you! Yeah, the Deepness series isn't near future really, but it's one of my favorites and ends up being referenced all the time on HN.

I don't see punctuation, only decoration

Some good lists here. I'll add:

Planetes (2003) - deals with space debris [1]

Summer Wars (2009) - epic social MMO [2]

Sword Art Online (2012) - stuck in virtual world MMO [3]

Trailers:

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DakRYsUIiIE

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsLwVoZqEjk

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALCLCvNJ7iY

Well I'm a big fan of Planetes, so I'm just going to reply to you

Robot Carnival - collection of short stories [1]

Neo-Tokyo - same as above [2]

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou - an android running a coffee shop out in the countryside [3]

Ergo Proxy - androids becoming sentient [4]

Probably getting slightly off-topic now:

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind [5]

Cannon Fodder [6]

Tamala 2010 [7]

[1] http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=82...

[2] http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=20...

[3] http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=11...

[4] http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=51...

[5] http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=18...

[6] http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=42...

[7] http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=26...

+1 for summer wars!

Almost forgot:

Paprika (2006) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJzEW_eE1G0

In the near future, a revolutionary new psychotherapy treatment called dream therapy has been invented. A device called the "DC Mini" allows the user to view people's dreams. The head of the team working on this treatment, Doctor Atsuko Chiba, begins using the machine illegally to help psychiatric patients outside the research facility, using her alter-ego "Paprika", a sentient persona that she assumes in the dream world.

Took me so long to think of the obvious: A Scanner Darkly! I haven't read the book, but the movie is excellent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkjDUERgCQw

The movie is excellent and very faithful to the book. It barely count as SciFi though.

From a science-fiction point of view, the movie is underwhelming in what is related to the ever-present scanners of the book.

Ken MacLeod has some really good work in this vein. I haven't read the Engines of Light trilogy (which wouldn't pass your near-future filter, anyway), but the Fall Revolution series, and most of his stand-alone novels, do some really interesting things in just the neighborhood it sounds like you might enjoy. (Learning the World, while not near-future, is one of my favorite SF novels, full stop, and absolutely my favorite "first contact" story ever penned.)

His contemporaries (geographically, as well as thematically) Richard K. Morgan and Adam Roberts are probably also worth checking out.

Engines of Light I thought was a bit overblown, although it's got some really nice bits in it. The Fall Revolution series is amazing --- hugely fun despite being politically literate, and I find it particularly impressive how The Cassini Division and The Stone Canal portray the same society from diametrically opposed perspectives, and convincingly both ways. Plus all his books are a refreshing change from the overwhelming libertarianism-uber-alles majority of SF.

(Incidentally, my father lives in Lochcarron, where most of the action is set in The Sky Road. We can see the island where they shoot down a bomber with a nuclear RPG from his window.)

_Learning the World_ I totally agree with you. It's superb. And it's got alien space bats in it!

The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin is an excellent "near future" sci-fi that focuses on humanity's context and individual humans identifying with humanity. A good translation is available by Ken Liu.

This one is nice but a bit short and sometimes slow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Experiments_Lain

"Serial Experiments Lain (シリアルエクスペリメンツレイン Shiriaru Ekusuperimentsu Rein?) is an avant-garde anime series directed by Ryutaro Nakamura, with character design by Yoshitoshi ABe, screenplay written by Chiaki J. Konaka, and produced by Yasuyuki Ueda for Triangle Staff. It was broadcast on TV Tokyo from July to September 1998. The series is influenced by themes such as reality, identity, and communication,[1] and it demonstrates them by using philosophy, computer history, cyberpunk literature, and conspiracy theory."

Murakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is spectacular on identity.

Dennou Coil is very interesting and I think it contains tech we could really see in the near future.

Fractale has a different tone and would be a far future, but the questions it poses on AI can be interesting.

Densuke ;_;

I find anything cyberpunk very good "near-future" literature. Currently reading "Ready Player One" (Ernest Cline) and watching Caprica which are both about AIs and VR. Seeing much VR (ex: HoloLens) on HN frontpage lately adds to the fun of it. If it's your kind of stuff, you can try this list from GoodReads https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/487.Best_of_Cyberpunk

I long hopelessly for digital afterlife. But I can at least read about it. My favorites include Diaspora by Greg Egan, the Jean le Flambeur trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi, and Firefall (Blindsight plus Echopraxia) by Peter Watts.

Vinge's Deepness series certainly isn't "near future" science fiction, by your definition, is it?

Anyway, give Diaspora by Greg Egan a shot. I'm not familiar with a more visionary story that challenges the most fundamental aspects of identity in so many ways. It's definitely not "near future" either, though.

Egan's Permutation City is near future though, and pretty amazing that it was written in 1994 considering the topics.

I'll second Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon (but not the sequels) and Vinge's Rainbows End. You might also consider some of Bruce Sterling's stuff, Distraction, Holy Fire, and The Caryatids. Sterling has a more instrumental view of AI but I think he does a better job of addressing the social issues of technology than most of the other recommendations here.

Halting State, Rule 34, and Glasshouse by Stross might also be up your alley.

And Blue Remembered Earth by Alistair Reynolds but probably not the sequels.

Oh, and Nexus by Ramez Naam.

I'd certainly recommend Ken MacLeod in general but I'm not sure he's exactly what you're asking for unless you're also interested in examinations of radical political philosophy.

Avalon (2001) - live action movie by Mamoru Oshii

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0267287/combined

Avalon is a fantastic movie with an excellent soundtrack as well. A must watch if you loved Ghost in the Shell.

This might not quite be what you're looking for but the Netflix aeries "Sense8" had very similar concepts of humanity and identity.

The movies "Revolver" and "MR Nobody" might also be up you alley.

I really liked the book "Seveneves". It is definitely near future. Think "The Martian" style hyper realistic SciFi in space. It's decided into 3 parts. The first two are incredible, though I think the author let himself go in the 3rd. Still a wonderful book though.

I think Anathem is a better Stephenson, and touches on more interesting philosophical aspects.

I find "Time of Eve" to be of increasing relevancy each day that pass. A great anime focusing on ethical and societal impacts of man-robot societies.

äkta människor on sweden's SVT is great and at least noticeably influenced by GITS. highly, highly recommend it

The TV series almost human.

Its near future cop series about the effects of technology. Got a slight cyberpunk feal. I liked it a lot but unfortunately it was canceled after one season.

Serial Experiments Lain should entertain you.