"Nowadays it is getting difficult to create cool, global science fiction. It is because reality has surpassed the future we imagined. Cool SF stories turn up just before the big bang of a new social infrastructure. This time, it was the Internet. Ghost in the Shell was the forerunner and a favourite." — Kenji Kamiyama

The issue of an aging population first appeared in Japanese science fiction in the early 1990s. Katsuhiro Otomo's Roujin-Z satirised the use of robots to care for the elderly, but