I enjoy Rogue Flight a lot despite mostly hating its influences

I have no nostalgia for the anime cartoon mangas. The few I eventually watched after school people insisted on their greatness were mostly terrible, and I generally consigned them to that bin of arbitrary things people assume you must like if you like games.

Rogue Flight isn't an exercise in nostalgia though. More knowledgeable anime sufferers may discern specific influences, but even I can identify a particular vibe that spacey 80s/90s animation sometimes carried. Action and explosions and agile ships doing dramatic turns, yes, but also a faint melancholy, and exactly the right, light touch of drama. And nobody even screams at each other, or stops mid-fight to cry about their dad, or becomes sexually obsessed with the blandest boy in history. It's as if they know what was good and what was bad, instead of copying everything wholesale? Weird.