Soreyuke! Uchuu Senkan Yamamoto Youko (1999)

In the year 2999: humanity is split into two factions, Terra and Ness, in a war fought by starships. One of the foremost of the pilots is the cocky teenager Yamamoto Yohko, and during one of her missions, she and her crew are sucked into a temporal anomaly (a la Star Trek) that sends her back to our time. Amnesiac, she only thinks of herself as a typical high school student - until a course of events sends her back to her ship the TA-29, with her newfound friends fighting at her side in a war that looks suspiciously like an arcade game (complete with 100 yen ignition costs!).

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Vandread 78%

13 eps · 2000

Space battles crash into an ordinary crew's daily bickering here too, though the gender-war premise swaps in louder comedy for your found-family stakes.

Metal Fighter MIKU 77%

13 eps · 1994

Trade starships for wrestling rings, but you still get plucky girls leaning on friendship to push through every impossible match.

Martian Successor Nadesico 75%

26 eps · 1996

A reluctant pilot dragged into a war he didn't choose gives you the same fish-out-of-water charm you loved in your heroine's amnesia arc.

Generator Gawl 74%

12 eps · 1998

Time travel becomes the whole engine of the plot here, letting boys from the future rewrite history the way your captain rewrote her own timeline.