Anime movies occupy a unique space in cinema. The theatrical format allows animation studios to produce work at a level of craft that television schedules don't permit — and the best anime films are genuinely among the greatest films ever made, by any standard, in any medium.
These are the 15 best. Not the most popular or the highest-grossing — the best. The ones that justify the medium.
1. Spirited Away (2001)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki · Studio: Studio Ghibli · Where to watch: Netflix
The best animated film ever made. A ten-year-old girl gets lost in a spirit world and has to work in a bathhouse to survive while looking for a way to free her parents. Spirited Away won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and is the only non-English film ever to gross over $300 million before Hollywood remakes existed. Forty years from now it will still be on this list in first position.
What makes it exceptional: The world-building is the densest of any animated film — every corner of the spirit bathhouse is populated with invented creatures, each with their own logic. And underneath the visual invention is a story about work, identity, and the cost of forgetting your name.
2. Your Name (2016)
Director: Makoto Shinkai · Studio: CoMix Wave Films · Where to watch: Crunchyroll, Netflix
Two teenagers in different towns swap bodies intermittently and leave each other notes. Your Name is the most emotionally effective anime film of the past twenty years — it builds to a sequence in its third act that remains one of the most devastating things in modern cinema. CoMix Wave's backgrounds are the most beautiful in animation. The film grossed $380 million globally and turned Makoto Shinkai into the most commercially successful anime director alive.
3. Princess Mononoke (1997)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki · Studio: Studio Ghibli · Where to watch: Netflix
An epic about industrialisation, nature, and the impossibility of moral clarity in a world of conflicting needs. Princess Mononoke has no villain — it has humans doing what humans do, and nature responding, and no one being entirely right. The battle sequences remain among the most viscerally effective in animation. Miyazaki made this as a film for adults and it shows in every frame.
4. Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
Director: Isao Takahata · Studio: Studio Ghibli · Where to watch: Streaming platforms vary by region
The most devastating film on this list. Two children — a teenage boy and his young sister — try to survive in Japan in the final months of World War II. Roger Ebert called it one of the greatest war films ever made. He was right. Grave of the Fireflies is not for entertainment. It is for understanding.
5. Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle (2026)
Director: Haruo Sotozaki · Studio: Ufotable · Where to watch: Theaters now, Crunchyroll after theatrical run
The most technically accomplished anime production in the medium's history. Our full review gives it 9.2/10 and we stand by that score. The animation quality, the Yuki Kajiura score, and the sustained 40-minute final sequence put this in a tier with the best theatrical anime ever made. It may not surpass Mugen Train's emotional clarity but it surpasses it in almost everything else.
6. Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (2020)
Director: Haruo Sotozaki · Studio: Ufotable · Where to watch: Crunchyroll, Netflix
The highest-grossing anime film ever made. A focused, emotionally devastating standalone story about what it costs to be strong — and whether that cost is worth paying. The Flame Hashira Rengoku gets more character development in this film's runtime than most anime characters get in full seasons. The ending holds.
7. Akira (1988)
Director: Katsuhiro Otomo · Studio: TMS Entertainment · Where to watch: Crunchyroll, various platforms
The film that introduced anime to the Western mainstream. A biker gang, a psychic government experiment, and a post-nuclear Tokyo. Akira's animation was hand-drawn on a frame-by-frame level that hasn't been matched since — 68,000 animation cels, 327 different colours. The plot gets dense but the visual experience is irreplaceable. Every cyberpunk film made since 1988 is downstream of Akira.
8. Howl's Moving Castle (2004)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki · Studio: Studio Ghibli · Where to watch: Netflix
A hat-maker is cursed into an old woman's body and finds refuge with a wizard whose castle walks on mechanical legs. Howl's Moving Castle is the most visually inventive film in the Ghibli catalogue and one of the warmest. It's messier than Spirited Away but the imagery — the walking castle, the fire demon Calcifer, the witch's curse — is some of the most purely magical in animation.
9. Perfect Blue (1997)
Director: Satoshi Kon · Studio: Madhouse · Where to watch: Various platforms
A pop idol transitions to acting and loses her grip on what is real. Satoshi Kon invented the psychological thriller as an animated form. Perfect Blue is cited by Darren Aronofsky (who officially purchased rights to recreate a scene in Requiem for a Dream) as a direct influence. It's unsettling in a way that lingers. Watch it once to understand why it matters; don't watch it alone.
10. Wolf Children (2012)
Director: Mamoru Hosoda · Studio: Studio Chizu · Where to watch: Various platforms
A woman falls in love with a werewolf and raises their two children alone after he dies. Wolf Children is the most emotionally generous film on this list — a story entirely about what parents sacrifice for children who grow up and leave. The final sequence earns everything the film builds toward.
11. A Silent Voice (2016)
Director: Naoko Yamada · Studio: Kyoto Animation · Where to watch: Netflix
A former bully seeks redemption from the deaf girl he tormented in elementary school. A Silent Voice handles its subject — bullying, disability, guilt, and the difficulty of forgiving yourself — with a precision and honesty that most live-action films don't manage. Kyoto Animation's character animation is at its finest here. The bridge sequence is one of the best-directed scenes in modern animation.
12. Millennium Actress (2001)
Director: Satoshi Kon · Studio: Madhouse · Where to watch: Various platforms
A documentary filmmaker interviews a retired actress and the film blurs the boundary between her memories, her films, and reality. Kon's most ambitious structural work — the movie shifts between timelines and genres seamlessly, using cinema's own language against itself. If you respond to Frieren's meditation on time and memory, Millennium Actress is required viewing.
13. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki · Studio: Topcraft · Where to watch: Netflix
The film Miyazaki made before Studio Ghibli existed. A princess protects her valley from a poisonous jungle and the warring nations that want to burn it. Nausicaä is the origin of everything Miyazaki has since refined — the environmental themes, the female lead who refuses to choose sides, the compassion for all living things. Forty-two years old and it doesn't show.
14. I Want to Eat Your Pancreas (2018)
Director: Shinichiro Ushijima · Where to watch: Netflix, Crunchyroll
A terminally ill girl keeps a secret diary that a classmate finds. What follows is one of the most quietly devastating animated films of the past decade. The title is explained in the film and the explanation recontextualises everything. Not for viewers who want to avoid grief. Recommended strongly to everyone else.
15. The Wind Rises (2013)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki · Studio: Studio Ghibli · Where to watch: Netflix
Miyazaki's final film (the first time). A fictionalised biography of Zero fighter plane designer Jiro Horikoshi — a man who loved beautiful machines and didn't fully understand what they would be used for. The Wind Rises is Miyazaki's most personal work: a meditation on creation, compromise, and the cost of following your dream when your dream serves a machine that kills people. The most complex and ambiguous film he ever made.
Where to Start
Never seen an anime film: Spirited Away on Netflix. There is no argument.
Want something emotional: Your Name on Crunchyroll or Netflix.
Want the best new theatrical release: Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle is in theaters now.
Want to understand anime's history: Akira → Perfect Blue → Millennium Actress in that order.
Keep Reading: Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle Review — 9.2/10 · Best Anime of All Time · Frieren Season 2 Review
