The 32 Greatest Animated Movies of the 2010s

There have always been great animated films, but for most of the medium's history, animation had to fight against the idea that "cartoons" were inherently and only for children. Thankfully, by the 2010s, that notion carried less water than ever, as the decade was a feast of incredible animated movies—some for children, some for adults, and many for everyone.

These are the 32 greatest animated movies that came out in the 2010s. This was a decade when Pixar had already proven itself, DreamWorks Animation was looking for some credit, an anime talent was coming into his own, and a one-man indie animator was creating shorts that added up to something incredible. There are films from the United States, Japan, France, and beyond. Fire up any one of these incredible works of artistry, each of which is a high point of a great decade for an essential medium.

32. April and the Extraordinary World

Year: 2015
Directors: Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci

Though often not thought of as much as the United States and Japan when it comes to animation, France has a rich and continuing history with the medium. April and the Extraordinary World, a French steampunk alt-history tale, is a fantastic example of the country's distinct animation stylings. The film follows April, a young woman living in a world where technology hasn't developed for decades because the world's scientists have gone missing. This novel setup is only the start, as the movie's plot goes in some unexpected directions, not all of which are totally successful. Still, it's an enjoyable, unique adventure that showcases French animation.

31. The Red Turtle

Year: 2016
Director: Michaël Dudok de Wit

A French collaboration with Studio Ghibli, the iconic Japanese anime production company, The Red Turtle is a dialog-free tale of a castaway. When a man finds himself stranded on a deserted island following a shipwreck, his many attempts to flee are thwarted by a big red sea turtle. Eventually, the turtle is revealed to be more than just a simple turtle, and the man's desire to leave the island subsides and develops into something else. It's an elegant little fairy tale, and it nabbed a Best Animated Feature nomination at the Oscars.

30. Puss in Boots

Year: 2011
Director: Chris Miller

The 2022 sequel Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is rightfully celebrated, but the first Puss in Boots movie—a spin-off of the Shrek franchise starring Antonio Banderas as the titular feline swashbuckler—is pretty great, too. Whereas the Shrek movies are irreverent parodies of fairy tales, Puss in Boots is a straightforward Western with some fairytale elements. It's funny, of course, but there's a palpable sense of earnestness that comes through in the adventure, characters, and even, yes, drama as Puss reunites with figures from his past in a quest to steal golden eggs.

29. The Wolf House

Year: 2018
Directors: Cristobal León and Joaquín Cociña

Unquestionably the scariest movie on this list, The Wolf House is a Chilean film that uses unsettling, grimey stop-motion animation to tell a dark fairy tale. A parable about propaganda and indoctrination, the movie follows a young girl who runs away from the repressive colony she lives in and finds refuge inside an abandoned house. At first, the house, which changes and provides her with what she wants, seems like a dream, but it soon turns sinister, forcing her to wonder if maybe the colony wasn't so bad after all—and perhaps so too is the wolf that was chasing her. Surreal and deeply unsettling, The Wolf House is a testament to the many forms animation can take and is one of the best horror movies seen in animation.

28. Frozen

Year: 2011
Directors: Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee

If we're being honest, there are some parts of this Disney hit that are pretty janky, and Frozen hamstrings the central relationship between its two sister protagonists, Elsa and Anna (Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell, respectively). The songs, though, are dynamite, every toddler loves this movie, and it is a somewhat surprising subversion of a lot of the typical Disney princess tropes that audiences have come to expect—like not making Elsa and her ice powers out to be a villain nor having Anna's "true love" be the romantic sort fairy tale audiences are conditioned to expect.

27. My Life as a Zucchini

Year: 2016
Director: Claude Barras

My Life as a Zucchini, also known as My Life as a Courgette, is a coming-of-age story that's dark, tear-jerking, and ultimately uplifting. A French stop-motion effort, My Life as a Zucchini's colorful and cute animation belies the seriousness of its subject matter, following a boy, whose nickname is "Zucchini," following the death of his abusive mother. Now in foster care, Zucchini must try to open up, move on, and become part of a community. It's a unique, beautifully emotional, and humane movie.

26. Ernest and Celestine

Year: 2012
Directors: Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, and Benjamin Renner

Possibly the most charming animated movie of the decade, Ernest and Celestine is a lovely little tale about a young mouse, Celestine, who wants to be an artist but who is expected to become a teeth-collecting dentist, like all the other rodents. She makes an unlikely friendship with Ernest, a gruff bear that she's supposed to be afraid of, and the two end up taking on a big conspiracy and winning an important legal trial. It's all surprisingly, at times oddly specific, yet every bit of Ernest and Celestine's watercolor-like world is a joy.

25. Kubo and the Two Strings

Year: 2016
Director: Travis Knight

Laika, the stop-motion animation company behind movies like Coraline, delivered an epic adventure inspired by Japanese history and myth with Kubo and the Two Strings. Following the title character, a young boy who has one eye and a magical instrument, as he goes on a quest to defeat his grandfather, the Moon King, with the help of a snow monkey and stag beetle warrior, Kubo and the Two Strings is an exciting romp that looks spectacular. You can really see the detail and the effort in Laika's stop-motion, perhaps never more so than in this film.

24. The Tower

Year: 1966
Director: Keith Maitland

Animation might not be the typical medium for documentaries, especially ones about a historical event, but The Tower uses animation to vividly tell a story about one of the earliest and most infamous mass shootings in American history. By using rotoscoping—a technique where animators trace over live-action footage to give the animation a realistic fluidity—The Tower brings the recollections of survivors of the 1966 University of Texas tower shooting to life. The recreations are simultaneously clinical and vividly real.

23. Rango

Year: 2011
Director: Gore Verbinski

This off-kilter stop-motion flick with a very unique style stars Johnny Depp as Rango, a chameleon who finds himself stranded in the Mojave Desert and in the middle of a classic Western-type of plot; an outsider who must help save a town (of animals) from a dangerous outlaw. Full of homages to classic Westerns—and more than a few nods to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which Depp also starred in—Rango is one of the more singular animated movies of the decade in a wonderful, odd sort of way.

22. Teen Titans Go! To the Movies

Year: 2018
Directors: Peter Rida Michail and Aaron Horvath

Teen Titans Go!, the follow-up to the original Teen Titans cartoon that ditched any serious superheroes in favor of being a sublime vehicle for comedy, reached its apex with the theatrically released film Teen Titans Go! to the Movies. A relentless spoof of the glut of superhero movies at the box office—with several shots fired at the many other DC Comics movies of the era—the film is clever with plenty of meta humor, silliness, and a surprising amount of bite.

21. The Adventures of Tintin

Year: 2011
Director: Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, who produced the film, used motion capture animation to bring the iconic Belgian Tintin comic book series by the great cartoonist Hergé to life. That animation style might be a tad too deep in the uncanny valley for everybody's liking, but The Adventures of Tintin is an undeniably thrilling and delightful romp. Following the intrepid young reporter as he embarks on a quest to find a missing ship called the Unicorn and the famed treasure rumored to be on it, The Adventures of Tintin is dazzling. You can tell that Spielberg, helming his first animated film, was having a ball exploring the new possibilities that the medium allowed him.

20. Incredibles 2

Year: 2018
Director: Brad Bird

The first Incredibles movie is one of the best superhero movies ever made, and it came out in 2004, before the MCU and before the era when superheroes were ubiquitous box office dominators. The sequel came out in 2018, arguably the peak of the superhero boom, so it couldn't benefit from being ahead of the curve. What it could benefit from was Pixar's masterful animation and storytelling. There are several sequences in Incredibles 2—which has Elastigirl taking up costumed crime-fighting again—that are among the most visually inventive and thrilling scenes the genre has to offer.

19. Toy Story 4

Year: 2019
Director: Josh Cooley

With apologies to 2010's Toy Story 3, the fourth installment in Pixar's flagship franchise is the superior 21st Century Toy Story. Whereas the third film, with all of it's fiery emotional manipulation, was about Woody (Tom Hanks) and Co. responding to a change form without—Andy growing up and no longer needing his beloved toys—the fourth film is about a change from within, as Woody begins to wonder if maybe there's more to existence than being a child's toy. It's stealthily a much bigger theme, and Toy Story 4 also benefits from the introduction of Forky, one of cinema's great characters.

18. The Wind Rises

Year: 2013
Director: Hayao Miyazaki

The great Hayao Miyazaki released what at the time was meant to be his final film in 2013. (He changed his mind and came out of retirement for 2023's The Boy and the Heron.) Compared to the whimsy or fantasy of all of the director's other films, The Wind Rises is quite grounded—although it is about airplanes. A fictionalized biopic about Jiro Horikoshi, the Japanese engineer who developed the feared Zero fighter plane in World War II, The Wind Rises is a gorgeous, heavy film that asks whether the art of creating something beautiful like a plane can be worth the terrible cost when it's used for war.

17. Anomalisa

Year: 2015
Director: Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson

Charlie Kaufman, who is always good for an introspective psychological tale, wrote this stop-motion film, which he co-directed, that explores a condition known as Fregoli delusion, where a person perceives those around them to all be the same person. David Thewlis voices Michael Stone, a middle-aged guy to whom everybody in the world looks and sounds exactly the same—except for one woman, Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), whom he encounters at a hotel. It's a thought-provoking trip.

16. Weathering With You

Year: 2019
Director: Makoto Shinkai

A fantastic coming-of-age story mixed with a thorny metaphor for climate change, Weathering With You is also a visually dazzling film that boasts anime director Makoto Shinkai's distinctive hyper-realistic backgrounds. Teenage runaway Hodaka finds himself in rain-drenched Tokyo, where he meets Hina, a bubbly young woman who is also a "sunshine girl" able to dispel the rain. As these two form a tight bond, the cost of Hina's powers soon becomes apparent, culminating in one of the most stunning and cathartic sequences in animation history as the pair falls through the sky together.

15. How to Train Your Dragon 2

Year: 2014
Director: Dean DeBlois

The sequel to what's probably DreamWorks Animation's best film does everything you could hope for from a sequel. After the first film had Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) realize that dragons could be friends rather than bitter enemies and changed the Viking isle of Berk's way of life, the sequel has a more mature Hiccup and his friends facing a new foe—a villain who controls dragons to achieve his own ends. Add to that a lost parent reveal, as Cate Blanchett voices the mother Hiccup had long thought dead, and you've got a world-expanding sequel that soars narratively just as Hiccup and his dragon Toothless soar amongst the clouds.

14. World of Tomorrow

Years: 2021
Director: Don Hertzfeldt

World of Tomorrow, a collection of three short films from indie animator Don Hertzfeldt, is one of the most ambitious and sweeping sci-fi stories ever conceived. Released in 2015, 2017, and the final chapter in 2020, the completed narrative deals with time travel, cloning, and the impossible questions of one's own identity, memory, and aging. World of Tomorrow does all this with stick figures. The saga begins with a cloned descendant of a little girl, Emily Prime, traveling back in time to visit with her originator and explore memories of a life long past. Funny, intelligent, and heartbreaking, World of Tomorrow is a triumph.

13. Night Is Short, Walk on Girl

Year: 2017
Director: Masaaki Yuasa

A madcap ode to youth, the unexpected communities you can find around every corner in a city, and the magic of just seeing where the night takes you, Night Is Short, Walk on Girl is one of the best movies that takes place over the course of a single day. A young university student decides to say yes to everything one night in Kyoto, while her admirer decides to do the same in an attempt to woo her. The pair have very different nights—crashing weddings, watching guerrilla theater, and encountering more than one mythical being. It's a joyful, exuberant, and whacky delight.

12. Song of the Sea

Year: 2014
Director: Tomm Moore

The Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon has a distinctive, hand-drawn style that stands apart from most of the animation coming out of America or Japan, and Song of the Sea, their sophomore feature, is a touching story that draws from Irish folklore and myth. Ben, a young boy, discovers that his mute sister Saoirse is a selkie, a creature of myth who can turn into a seal. While on a quest to free faerie creatures, Ben must protect Saoirse while also coming to terms with his resentment over his sister for her role in their mother's death. It's a beautiful modern fairy tale, one that feels both timeless and modern at once.

11. Moana

Year: 2016
Directors: John Musker and Ron Clements

Consider the coconut! Thanks in no small part to songs penned by Hamilton's Lin-Manuel Miranda, Disney's tale of a young Polynesian wayfinder (Auliʻi Cravalho) who heads to sea with the begrudging help of a cocky demigod (Dwayne Johnson) is one of the studio's modern masterpieces. Lavishly animated (look at the water!) and boasting a high-seas adventure that highlights a culture that hasn't gotten a ton of big-screen depictions, Moana has earned its place in the House of Mouse's hall of fame. (Let's not talk about Moana 2, though.)

10. Coco

Year: 2017
Director: Lee Unkrich

Pixar's imaginative, lush take on the Day of the Dead, Coco, is one of the acclaimed studio's best films as well as one of the best movies about music. When young Miguel wants to be a musician against the wishes of his family in a small Mexican town, he steals a guitar belonging to his idol, the singer Ernesto de la Cruz. Upon doing this, he finds himself in the afterlife, meeting the colorful skeletal residents of the Land of the Dead and meeting ancestors—some he didn't even know he had. It's a lovely film, and if you aren't tearing up when they sing "Remember Me," then maybe it's you who is dead inside.

9. The Tale of Princess Kaguya

Year: 2013
Director: Isao Takahata

The last film of Isao Takahata, the co-founder of Studio Ghibli along with Hayao Miyazaki, The Tale of Princess Kaguya is a fairy tale that uses delicate watercolors to tell a sweeping historical story with feminist themes and complex characters. Based on The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, a story from Japanese folklore that dates back to the 9th or 10th Century, the 2013 film is about a young girl who is discovered inside of a stalk of bamboo. Her father, the bamboo cutter who discovered her, wants only the best for his little girl—but doesn't necessarily stop to ask what she wants for herself. It's one of Ghibli's greatest and one of the best anime movies you can choose to watch.

8. Klaus

Year: 2019
Director: Sergio Pablos

Entering the canon of classic Christmas movies is tough for any newer film, but Klaus certainly qualifies. A gorgeous film with a unique look (despite what viewers might think, the entire thing was traditionally animated, a stunning feat of artistry), Klaus serves as a take on a Santa Claus origin story. Jason Schwartzman voices a postman who is reassigned to a remote, miserable-seeming town on the far north island of Svalbard. Once there, he encounters Klaus (J. K. Simmons), a big, reclusive woodcarver. They spark a friendship that eventually turns into Christmas magic.

7. The Lego Movie

Year: 2014
Directors: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

The Lego Movie has absolutely no right to be as good as it is. An IP movie based on a toy that has a bunch of other IP inside it—like Batman, Superman, Star Wars, and all the other franchises Lego has licensed over the years—The Lego Movie transcends crass commercialism to be a smart and funny story about the nature of creativity. The animation style, a faux stop motion down to details like fingerprint smudges you might see if these were real Lego toys that have been played with, certainly helps.

6. How to Train Your Dragon

Year: 2010
Directors: Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois

How to Train Your Dragon doesn't really reinvent the YA fantasy wheel. The beats of the story are clear from the outset; Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is a young protagonist who isn't like his Viking leader dad, and he's the one who will have the heart and the courage to discover that dragons are not the evil enemy the people of Berk have been led to believe they are. What's so great about How to Train Your Dragon is how perfectly it nails all of these characters, tropes, and story arcs, resulting in a high-flying coming-of-age fantasy.

5. Inside Out

Year: 2015
Director: Pete Docter

Pixar sometimes gets knocked—not unfairly—for making movies that seem geared more towards intellectual adults than children, the ostensible primary audience for these films. Granted, that's a narrow way of looking at animation, and the best "kids" movies are really films that are "all-ages" in the most celebratory and broad sense of the phrase. Inside Out is very heady—literally, as it's about the emotions inside a tweenage girl's mind as they try to help her navigate life (and deal with their own emotions)—but it's also a wildly popular mainstream movie that teaches kids an essential lesson: It's okay to be sad. It's important, even. This is up there with Pixar at its best.

4. Wolf Children

Year: 2012
Director: Mamoru Hosoda

An absolutely devastating movie that will elicit complicated, cathartic tears from any viewers who are parents, Mamoru Hosoda's 2012 anime follows a young woman who meets and falls in love with a werewolf. When he unexpectedly dies, she must raise their two young children—who are also werewolves and are too young to control or hide their powers—all by herself, moving to the countryside in the hopes that they won't get found out. It's a delicate, beautiful movie about the sacrifices parents make for their children, and the ways that children mature past them.

3. Your Name

Year: 2016
Director: Makoto Shinkai

Taki Tachibana, a teenage boy living in Tokyo, and Mitsuha Miyamizu, a teenage girl living in a small rural town in Japan, suddenly and inexplicably find themselves swapping bodies in anime director Makoto Shinkai's masterful, genre-bending romance. Your Name dispenses with Freaky Friday-esque body-swapping hijinks pretty quickly to tell a much more nuanced and impactful story about love and, perhaps more importantly, longing, using these two characters who have a bond they don't fully understand but whose significance they cannot escape despite the fact that they've never actually met face to face.

2. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Year: 2018
Directors: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman

One of, if not the greatest, superhero movies ever made, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse should be celebrated in animation history because of how it unlocked a new potential in what computer animation could do. Prior to Spider-Verse, most CG-animated movies were fairly rigid, and Spider-Verse's deliberate blurring of the form and mix-and-match simulation of other mediums and styles seemed to be a wake-up call that the rest of the animation world needed. Beyond its artistic importance, Spider-Verse is also an incredible superhero story, one that uses the infinite potential of a multiverse to tell a very specific and personal tale about a kid from Brooklyn who becomes a hero—with all the great power and great responsibility that entails.

1. It's Such a Beautiful Day

Year: 2016
Director: Makoto Shinkai

Bill is a stick figure who is suffering from some sort of memory loss in the first installment of the great auteur indie animator Don Hertzfeldt's animated short films, released as Everything Will Be OK (2006), I Am So Proud of You (2008), and It's Such a Beautiful Day (2011) before being compiled as one complete narrative under the final chapter's name. From there, this acclaimed masterpiece of animation explores life, mortality, death, and immortality. With offbeat, jarringly crass humor seamlessly blended with some of the most profound philosophy you'll ever see on screen, It's Such a Beautiful Day is an unparalleled achievement, one that might make you take stock of your own limited time on this planet and cherish it.