It wasn't until the '90s that the West began to appreciate how many great anime movies were coming out of Japan, and within a few decades, anime movies became mainstream. How could they not? Beautifully and distinctively animated, imaginative, and frequently touching on themes and stories that traditionally more kid-oriented American cartoons don't traffic in as much, anime movies are cinematic wonders.
However, these are the 32 best anime movies of all time. Please note that they are being evaluated from a Western perspective; there are, no doubt, incredible anime movies that never made it across the Pacific or made much of an impact in the United States that a native Japanese list of great movies in the medium might include. This list also does not include any movies that are spin-offs of the best anime series around. You won't find Jujutsu Kaisen 0: The Movie, Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Movie: Mugen Train, none of the Neon Genesis Evangelion films, or even Hayao Miyazaki's first movie, Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro, down below. Even though some of these TV spin-off flicks work as standalone films and don't require prior knowledge of the series, it's better to just have a blank slate when considering eligibility. So, with that out of the way, it's time to dive into the greatest anime movies ever made.
32. The First Slam Dunk
Year: 2022
Director: Takehiko Inoue
Takehiko Inoue directs this film adaptation of his sports manga series, Slam Dunk, resulting in one of the best basketball movies ever made. The film manages to compress the plot of the manga, which ran from 1990 to 1996, without feeling rushed or like it's leaving too much else. Set during the Shohoku High School's basketball team's championship match, The First Slam Dunk eloquently weaves in flashbacks that show how point guard Ryota Miyagi and the rest of his scrappy teammates got here.
31. Ride Your Wave
Year: 2019
Director: Masaaki Yuasa
Ride Your Wave will turn on the waterworks, which is fitting because this lovely, tear-jerking romance with fantasy elements is all about water. Hinako Mukaimizu is a college student who moves to a beach town mainly because she wants to surf, and she soon meets and falls in love with local firefighter Minato Hinagesh. When he tragically drowns rescuing someone, she's distraught, until she starts seeing him inside water any time she sings a song they loved together. This aquatic ghost is comforting for the grief-stricken Hinako, but it's also perhaps stopping her from moving on.
30. Ninja Scroll
Year: 1993
Director: Yoshiaki Kawajiri
One of the anime films that helped adult-oriented anime become popular in the West, Ninja Scroll is an exciting, lurid, and violent action romp. Set in feudal Japan, Ninja Scroll follows a mercenary swordsman who agrees to battle a team of ninjas known as the Eight Devils of Kimon. All of his opponents have strange and dangerous powers, like unbreakable skin or snake tattoos that come alive with deadly venom. It's definitely for mature audiences without being all that intellectually mature itself, but it's a great and gnarly bit of cinema all the same.
29. Metropolis
Year: 2001
Director: Rintaro
An adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's 1949 manga (which itself was very loosely based on the seminal 1927 German expressionist silent film), Metropolis is a complex, trippy, and visually astounding sci-fi tale. Incorporating more of the plot of the movie than the manga did, the anime is set in the titular futuristic dystopian city, and concerns the creation of an advanced, lifelike android girl named Tima, who is the key to a plot to control the whole city, though she doesn't know it.
28. Pom Poko
Year: 1994
Director: Isao Takahata
Possibly the weirdest movie that Studio Ghibli has ever made, Pom Poko is vaguely styled like a faux-documentary following the exploits of a group of Japanese raccoon dogs (tanuki) who are trying to fight a human development encroaching on their lands. Tanuki are magical shape-shifters—or at least they were, though the magic seems to be fading. Nevertheless, this community bands together to try to fight back using all their wits and supernatural muster… to mixed success.
27. Angel's Egg
Year: 1985
Director: Mamoru Oshii
Difficult to watch in the West until a 40th anniversary remaster and re-release made it more accessible, Mamoru Oshii's Angel's Egg is a unique experimental anime. The loose plot follows a girl in a post-apocalyptic city who is carrying around an egg and a boy she encounters whose dreams challenge everything she believes. A dense and visually astounding feast of allegories and symbolism, Angel's Egg is an ambiguous film that's unambiguously a cult classic.
26. Vampire Hunter D
Year: 1985
Director: Toyoo Ashida
A gothic, fantasy, sci-fi, post-apocalyptic horror anime with some Western vibes thrown in there for good measure, Vampire Hunter D is an astounding blend of genres all working in perfect harmony. Set in a world long since ruined by nuclear war and now haunted by vampires and other monsters, the 1985 movie follows the titular D, a half-vampire dhampir who agrees to hunt down the evil count who bit a young village girl before she turns. He rides a robot horse to do so, naturally. Vampire Hunter D (and its sequel, 2000's Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust) are like nothing else in the best way.
25. The Girl Who Lept Through Time
Year: 2006
Director: Mamoru Hosoda
A loose adaptation of Yasutaka Tsutsui's 1967 novel of the same name, The Girl Who Lept Through Time is a sci-fi romance with, you guessed it, a time travel element. Makoto Konno is a 17-year-old girl (and the niece of the original novel's protagonist) who learns that she can leap backwards through time. She begins using this ability willy nilly to fix all sorts of little mistakes and mishaps, but when her powers begin to fade, she'll need to think carefully if she hopes to get her life—and her love—together.
24. Paprika
Year: 2006
Director: Satoshi Kon
Satoshi Kon's final film before his death is a dazzling, mind-blowing adventure into dreamland that some allege Christopher Nolan ripped off when he made Inception. (There are certainly parallels between the two!) Dr. Atsuko Chiba is a buttoned-up researcher working with a device that allows scientists to see inside of people's dreams, and she uses this device to moonlight as a dream detective as her more outgoing alter-ego, Paprika. When the device falls into the wrong hands and the line between reality and dreams begins to blur, she'll have to try to keep the waking world from becoming a nightmare—literally.
23. The Belladonna of Sadness
Year: 1973
Director: Eiichi Yamamoto
A strange and psychedelic work of anime from the 1970s, The Belladonna of Sadness is an ambitious and singular film. Inspired by a 19th-century book about the feminist history of witchcraft, the movie follows a woman in medieval France who is abused by an evil baron on her wedding night. She makes a deal with the devil—literally—to obtain the power she needs to get her revenge. Violent, lurid, and either feminist or misogynist, depending on how much grace you're giving it, The Belladonna of Sadness is a cult film like few others.
22. Look Back
Year: 2024
Director: Kiyotaka Oshiyama
Based on a one-shot manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Look Back is a devastatingly and beautifully poignant look at friendship and what drives people to create art—and it does it all in less than an hour runtime. Ayumu Fujino is an elementary school student who prides herself on being the best at drawing in her class, and her comics in the school paper are popular. However, when she encounters another anxious student, Kyomoto, whose comics seem to effortlessly be even better than hers, it sparks a rivalry, friendship, and creative partnership that takes some unexpected turns.
21. Ponyo
Year: 2008
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Quite possibly the legendary Hayao Miyazaki's most whimsical film, Ponyo is about a little goldfish who runs away from her overbearing-but-well-meaning sea wizard father and meets a little boy, Sōsuke, in his seaside town. She decides that she wants to be a human (and eat lots of ham!), though this transformation will have catastrophic effects. Despite the climax being a disaster movie, everything in Ponyo is wonderfully fun and silly—a low-stakes Miyazaki film for the youngest audiences that adults can still find plenty enjoyable.
20. Suzume
Year: 2022
Director: Makoto Shinkai
Makoto Shinkai, an anime director known for his fantastical premises and hyper-realistic backgrounds, is a thrilling and stunning coming-of-age tale. Suzume, a 17-year-old girl, encounters a mysterious, alluring stranger, and later finds him attempting to close a mysterious door. He explains that it's his job to go around Japan closing these doors to prevent disaster, but when he's transformed into a chair (long story), Suzume takes it upon herself. Filled with dazzling images, heartfelt characters, and roots in Japan's very real (and recent) history of natural disasters, Suzume is a wondrous movie.
19. Only Yesterday
Year: 1999
Director: Isao Takahata
Taeko Okajima is a 27-year-old living and working in Tokyo in this lovely, humanist Studio Ghibli film. When she decides to take a trip to the countryside to visit her older sister's in-laws and help out with their harvest, she begins reflecting on her own childhood, back when she was a 10-year-old with dreams for the future that might not be the same as where her present self ended up. The film elegantly toggles between her child and adult experiences, painting a vivid and insightful picture of what it's like to grow up.
18. In this Corner of the World
Year: 2016
Director: Sunao Katabuchi
Suzu is a young girl living in a town near Hiroshima during World War II in this sweeping war film, which, when it was released in 2019 as an extended cut, became the longest theatrical animated film ever at that time. The film follows her as she lives during wartime Japan, balancing typical coming-of-age things like crushes with the harsh reality of food rations, loved ones dying in war, and the devastating effects of Allied bombs—including the big one. It's a very observed and powerful look at this moment and place in history from an intimate point of view.
17. Tokyo Godfathers
Year: 2003
Director: Satoshi Kon
Three unhoused people on the streets of Tokyo—a teenage runaway, a middle-aged deadbeat bum, and a trans woman—find a seemingly abandoned baby on Christmas Eve in Satoshi Kon's most grounded film (though there are still plenty of miracles to be found). A funny and earnestly emotional story about lost people finding community and second chances, Tokyo Godfathers deserves a place on any list of great Christmas movies in addition to its status as one of the finest anime films.
16. The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl
Year: 2017
Director: Masaaki Yuasa
An exuberantly over-the-top ode to the magic of having a crazy night out, Masaaki Yuasa's The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl follows an unnamed young college student as she decides to say yes to anything the evening throws at her. She soon finds herself meeting all sorts of colorful characters (including some supernatural ones), crashing weddings, getting in wild drinking contests, doing guerrilla theater, and more. Meanwhile, the slightly older student who has a crush on her is having a wild—and less fun—night. Madcap and delightful, The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl is really something special.
15. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya
Year: 2013
Director: Isao Takahata
Among the most distinctive and beautifully animated anime films ever made, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, directed by Studio Ghibli's Isao Takahata, is a gorgeous adaptation of a folktale from 10th-century Japan. Brought to life in part with minimalist watercolor-style illustrations, the film follows a bamboo cutter who finds a tiny girl inside of a stalk of bamboo. She soon grows to become a lovely princess with many suitors, though she has another destiny.
14. Millennium Actress
Year: 2001
Director: Satoshi Kon
A documentarian and his cameraman score an interview with Chiyoko Fujiwara, an old woman who was once one of the biggest stars in Japanese cinema but has long since retired. As Chiyoko recounts her life story to the pair, her recollections fluidly become intermixed with the various films she starred in, and director Satoshi Kon does a masterful job of weaving the narrative in and out of various genres that blurs the line between fiction and real-life in a way that's ultimately inspiring and uplifting—a marked contrast to Kon's previous masterpiece, Perfect Blue.
13. Wolf Children
Year: 2012
Director: Mamoru Hosoda
One of the most agonizingly beautiful films about being a parent, Wolf Children follows a young woman, Hana, who meets and falls in love with a werewolf. They have two children together, but when he's suddenly and tragically killed, it falls on Hana to raise her half-werewolf children all by herself—keeping them and their secret safe. Though it's a difficult task, Hana steps up as a mom, moving to the countryside with the pair as they grow into kids, each with their own personality and relationship to their lupine heritage. It's a truly incredible movie that will bring parents to tears, showcasing both the lengths parents will go to in order to give their kids a good life and the joy and heartbreak of seeing little babies become their own people.
12. The Boy and the Heron
Year: 2023
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
The Boy and the Heron can be viewed as a capstone on Hayao Miyazaki's legendary career, as the 2023 movie is full of themes and visual homages to his decades-spanning filmography. It's also a wonderfully complex and mature film on its own terms, following a boy during World War II who moves to the country after his mother's death, where he encounters a mysterious, somewhat ominous heron who beckons him into a fantasy world, saying he can save her. Filled with some of the most incredible animation of Miyazaki's career and loaded with allegory and metaphor, The Boy and the Heron would be a more than fitting final word from one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.
11. Whisper of the Heart
Year: 1995
Director: Yoshifumi Kondō
Hayao Miyazaki wrote but did not direct this incredible coming-of-age movie from Studio Ghibli. The director was Yoshifumi Kondō, an animator who was eyed as a potential successor to Miyazaki before his sudden, untimely death in 1998. Whisper of the Heart is his only film, and seeing how wonderful it is really makes you lament the fact that he wasn't able to make many more. The movie follows a junior high student who wants to be a writer and the friendship she forges with a boy who wants to be a master violin craftsman, with the pair bonding as they encourage each other to pursue their passions.
10. Porco Rosso
Year: 1992
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
"I'd rather be a pig than a fascist." Hayao Miyazaki's love of airplanes is out in full force in Porco Rosso, a joyful adventure about a former World War I flying ace who is cursed to have the head of a pig and who spends his days lounging in the Adriatic in between picking up jobs fighting sky pirates. When those pirates join forces to hire an American pilot to take out Porco faces his toughest challenge yet, and he'll have to return to Italy to get his special seaplane in dogfighting shape. It's a delight.
9. Kiki’s Delivery Service
Year: 1989
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Kiki is a 13-year-old witch, and when a witch turns 13 they have to head out on their own and find their special niche. In this movie, one of Hayao Miyazaki's most lovely and thoughtful films, Kiki and her talking cat, Jiji, get on her broom and head to the big city. Upon arrival, she starts a little delivery service, flying packages on her broom. She's a good kid who just wants to work hard, but growing up and the responsibility that comes with it can have anybody feeling down and doubting themselves, at times. It's magical to watch Kiki regain her self-confidence as she matures.
8. Your Name
Year: 2016
Director: Makoto Shinkai
Makoto Shinkai's fantasy romance follows a teenage girl living in rural Japan and a teenage boy living in Tokyo. Inexplicably, they start waking up in each other's bodies despite not knowing one another or having any connection. As they live each other's lives, they begin to form an intimate bond with one another, even though they've technically never met. When they try to meet for real, they encounter a disaster—literally—and must try to overcome it. A poignant film about love and longing, Your Name is a modern anime masterpiece that established Shinkai as one of the great directors of the 21st century.
7. Ghost in the Shell
Year: 1995
Director: Mamoru Oshii
Arguably the defining work in the cyberpunk genre, Major Motoko Kusanagi is a cyborg public security officer in a near-future Tokyo where cybernetic body modifications have become commonplace. The Major is a step more modified than most; her entire body is a machine with her human consciousness inside of it. When a terrorist hacker known as the Puppet Master starts committing crimes, the Major and her team must try to track him down—but the questions of what constitutes "real" hit especially close to home for her, and the line between machine and mankind might be irreparably blurred.
6. Grave of the Fireflies
Year: 1988
Director: Isao Takahata
Grave of the Fireflies is probably the best movie you'll ever see that you'll only want to watch once. A devastatingly sad and effective anti-war movie, the film follows a young boy and his little sister who are orphaned during the firebombings of Japan during the last year of the Pacific War. Grave of the Fireflies documents these innocents as they attempt to survive on their own in a war-torn country, though starvation eventually catches up with them. It's a brutal watch but an important one, and it's profoundly effective.
5. Perfect Blue
Year: 1997
Director: Satoshi Kon
One of the most prescient films ever made, Satoshi Kon's paranoid thriller masterpiece Perfect Blue predicted internet culture, fandoms, and what celebrity would look like in the 21st century. Mima Kirigoe is a singer in a J-pop idol group who decides to quit in order to pursue a career in acting, but some of her fans don't approve of the choice. When a stalker seems to be threatening her—online at first and then in reality—Mima begins to doubt her decision. And, soon after, she begins to doubt her very reality and sense of self.
4. My Neighbor Totoro
Year: 1988
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Though originally (and somewhat infamously) released as part of a double feature with Grave of the Fireflies, My Neighbor Totoro could not be more different in tone than its fellow early Studio Ghibli masterpiece. One of the most perfect depictions of childhood joy and wonder ever put to film, My Neighbor Totoro follows sisters Satsuki and Mei as they move into a house in the Japanese countryside. Once there, they encounter friendly forest spirits like the titular Totoro. It's a sweet film with a bit of a meandering plot, but that only makes it all the more wonderful.
3. Akira
Year: 1988
Director: Katsuhiro Otomo
Neo-Tokyo is about to E.X.P.L.O.D.E. in this '80s anime masterpiece, a cyberpunk action flick with mind-blowing animation. Set in the then-future of 2019 after World War III, Akira takes place in a rebuilt Tokyo where Shōtarō Kaneda leads a youth biker gang. When his childhood friend Tetsuo Shima gains incredible psychic powers after a freak accident, it sets off a chain of events that unravels a great conspiracy and dark secret that threatens the entire metropolis. Akira is a staggering work of art, full of iconic moments like the much-imitated "Akira slide" when Kaneda brings his motorcycle to a stop.
2. Princess Mononoke
Year: 1997
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke is both a thrilling, action-packed fantasy epic and a profoundly thoughtful and complex look at mankind's relationship with Nature. Ashitaka is a prince who has been cursed and forced to leave his community, and in his travels, he encounters ancient forest spirits and the human girl whom one of the wolf gods raised as her own daughter. He also meets the people of Iron Town, a scrappy human city led by the driven Lady Eboshi that's trying to make its way in the world, too. Ashitaka soon finds himself in the middle of this conflict, though he's unsure where his loyalties lie. Princess Mononoke's masterstroke might be that there aren't really any villains, a nuance that makes the fighting all the more complex and makes the themes hit that much harder.
1. Spirited Away
Year: 2001
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Commonly cited as one of the greatest animated films ever made, as well as being in conversation for the title of the greatest film of all time, Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away is a transcendent masterpiece. A lavish fantasy, the movie follows Ten-year-old Chihiro when she and her parents accidentally wander into the spirit world. Her mom and dad are turned into pigs, and she's forced to take a job at a grand bathhouse for the spirits. Can she find a way to save her parents and escape? Not without maturing and rising to the challenge.
