Animation movies are always a bliss to watch as they express a fantasy and undesirable experience of a beautiful world. If you are a newbie to watching anime and want to start watching anime movies, we are here to provide you with a list of the best anime movies that should be in your watchlist. Anime movies from Ghibli Studios and Makoto Shinkai are known as the big names in making anime films. A few sets of films should be on your priority list.
1. Your Name
Director – Makoto Shinkai
Released Year – 2016
Genre – Drama, Fantasy, Romance, Supernatural
Animated studio – CoMix Wave Films
Your Name enthralled millions of people and turned into one of the sensational animated movies to watch out of Japan by Comix Wave Films and the mastermind behind the movie, Makoto Shinkai. The story can be classified as a paranormal mystery because the swapping of bodies makes the story, as two teenagers wake up to find that they are in each other’s bodies in different states. Of course, the relationship felt confused at first, and the journey in which both of the characters are presented is fresh and told engagingly.
Your Name contains thematic material that some fan bases could potentially like: social drama or True Romance fans. All in all, viewers have quite an extensive selection of animated films and keep on satisfying the demand left by Your Name. Two adolescents meet with unexpected significance with each other when they wake up only to find that they have changed bodies. Well, as if things were not complicated enough, the boy and the girl get to arrange for a physical encounter.
2. Weathering with You
Director – Makoto Shinkai
Released Year – 2019
Genre – Drama, Fantasy, Romance, Supernatural, Adventure, Coming-of-age story
Animated Studio – CoMix Wave Films
Weathering with You is a rather dreamlike story on the idea of individuality and self-determination. Odaka is a lonely teenager in a world full of rain and he is on his own with inadequate skills to provide for himself. He lives the rest of his life with Hina and her brother.
The two meet when Hodaka rescues Hina from a risky situation and the few form a little family as they look out for each other. Hina informs Hadoka that she is the reason for the rain and that she has to be offered to the spirits to cease it. Hadoka prevents her from escaping while urging her to stay alive for herself, however, the freedom to choose is not an absolute freedom from the result of that choice. The climax of the story pulls the viewers to the corner which makes watching the movie worth it.
3. Grave of the Fireflies
Director – Isao Takahata
Released Year – 1988
Genre – Animation, Drama, War
Animated Studio – Ghibli Studios
An unflinchingly realistic and appalling view of Japan towards the close of the Second World War, Grave of the Fireflies depicts the sufferings of Seita, a boy, and his little sister, Satsuko, after their parents are killed by an American air raid on Kobe. No longer thinking twice about the step he is taking out of desperation to protect Satsuko, Seita first turns to his relatives, only to be deceived and left at his own notice – and it gets much worse for him. But, amid so many dramatic episodes where people are shown basically and mercilessly devastated emotionally, there are moments of some sort of beauty when the world seems at its worst.
Quite ironically, this is antithetical to the House of Ghibli animation studio, which produced comfort and joy in most of the animated films born out of the sensitive soul of Isao Takahata, Heartbroken, The are faithful lens through which one of the most vital pieces of Japanese animation folklore can be viewed – a desperate tale of national suffering, disaster and mourning.
4. Spirited Away
Director – Miyazaki Hayao
Released Year – 2001
Genre – Drama, Fantasy, Supernatural, Adventure, Coming-of-age story
Animated Studio – Ghibli Studios
Spirited Away is a completely wonderful, delightful, and beautifully illustrated fairy tale that definitely will leave the viewers a tad more curious and interested in this world. In the movie Chihiro who is only ten years of age finds herself in the middle of the world of gods and spirits. For the reverse of turning her parents into pigs by the witch Yubaba, she is compelled to serve at a bathhouse.
Also, what is important, Spirited Away received an Oscar in the category of Best Animated Feature Film. Spirited Away received tremendously favorable reviews and grossed box office worldwide, $395. 8 million worldwide.
5. I Want to Eat Your Pancreas
Director – Shinichiro Ushijima
Released Year – 2018
Genre – Drama, Romance, Teen, Animation
Animated Studio – VOLN
I Want to Eat Your Pancreas is a real-life narration of the few days that Shiga Haruki and Sakura Yamauchi feel like they know each other. The two teens go through many days together; Shiga is a very reserved and quite introverted boy, but Sakura, who is full of brightness and cheerful buoyancy, helps him free himself. The main character of the anime series Sakura Yamauchi has pancreatic cancer, but she does not lose hope in enjoying life with a cheerful disposition. Sakura has her daily account of ‘Living with dying’ of her coexistence or struggle with the disease.
This is why the title of the book is “I want to your Pancreas”Sakura tells the reader about the customs of some people that when a person is sick, he or she eats the part of an animal that doesn’t have the disease and gets better. Thus, she pretends to wish to eat the pancreas as her disease gets better.
6. My Neighbour Totoro
Director – Hayao Miyazaki
Released Year – 1988
Genre – Drama, Fantasy, Supernatural, Adventure, Comedy
Animated Studio – Studio Ghibli
My Neighbour Totoro revolves around two daughters, Satsuki and her four-year-old sister Mei who have been moved to the countryside by their mother to look after the house because she is seriously ill and needs to recuperate. Finding themselves outside the city they transition into a mysterious world, they meet several unique creatures and spirits of the forest ranging from susuwatari soot sprites that dwell in the recesses of the rural dwelling they now call home to the large To Totoro, a kind and friendly forest spirit that takes the girls on a journey into his enchanted realm.
Yeah, absolutely, it is one of the best, if not the best coming-of-age movies, but it is also interesting in terms of traditions and nature. Besides the cartoon, Totoro has become rather popular in Japan and acts as the official symbol for the studio that produced the movie.
7. Wolf Children
Director – Mamoru Hosoda
Released Year – 2012
Genre – Drama, Fantasy, Romance, Adventure, Coming-of-age story, sports
Animated Studio – Studio Chizu
Wolf Children is one of those rare movies that features a very bleak narrative of a young mother raising multiple outcast children. Hana, now in college, has an affair with a young boy, her classmate in college. At some point, the man of her interest is not of the same race but this does not make Hana change her mind; they build a family together. Due to this, Hana is forced to move the family to a secluded village for privacy, she will do anything to protect her children from the world. A retelling of a modern fairy tale, as usual intricately animated, Wolf Children dwells a fair share of dramatic rocky moments as it touches on the parenting of children.
8. Suzume
Director – Makoto Shinkai
Released Year – 2022
Genre – Action, Science Fiction, Mystery, Drama, Adventure, Coming-of-age story
Animated Studio – CoMix Wave Films and Story Inc
Makoto Shinkai does not fail and brings fantasy and cinema into another creative form. It is a film about the community, every time jumping from one place to another, showing Suzume and Souta meeting people affected by disasters, large and small at some level; it is also surreal for most of Shinkai’s works – for most of the movie, Souta is a transformed anima, a broken children’s chair; however, it is still a creative decision that pays off greatly.
9. Princess Mononoke
Director – Hayao Miyazaki
Released Year – 1997
Genre – Drama, Fantasy, Action, Historical Fiction, Adventure, war
Animated Studio – Studio Ghibli
Prince Ashitaka is cursed by a demon boar and is cast out from his village, the animated movie is set in the 13th century. Ashitaka follows the cursed god West in his search for the cure and ends up in a struggle between San, a human raised by wolves to be the protector of the forest, and Lady Eboshi, a woman who tries to transform the society’s outcasts by giving them work mining iron in the forest.
10. A Silent Voice
Director – Naoko Yamada
Released Year – 2016
Genre – Drama, Romance, Teen, Animation, Melodrama
Animated Studio – Kyoto Animation
Silent Voice is an anime film which has been produced by Yoshitoki Ōima. This is a well-developed drama of social norms, personal misery, individuals, and forgiveness. The storyline revolves around Shouya a former aggressive class bully whose mischief lands him in the wrong side of the class after he attacks Shouko a classmate with a disability.
An NTD girl named Shoko is abused by a popular boy named Shoya. When Shoya goes on bullying Shoko and the rest of the class, they abandon him. Shoko moves away and Shoya has to live his life as a social reject. Though now alone and struggling with depression the regretful Shoya looks for Shoko to apologize.
