12 Best Animation Movies to Watch

Foreign

Good Movie

71% Vouch

95% Users

Tokyo Godfathers

This is a great movie to watch on say a Sunday.. The story of three homeless people who find a newborn baby while foraging through trash on Christmas eve and decide to care for the baby and track down its parents. Middle-aged Gin, aging transvestite Hana and teenage runaway Miyuki form a makeshift family haunted by its members’ past and troubled by their present. As expected, Satoshi Kon (who also directed Paprika) delivers a beautifully animated story with unique characters and unique dynamics. The result is a very humane and moving animation, not to be missed by both Kon fans and those willing to be introduced to his style.

Amazon

Sunday

2003

Award Sweeper

Foreign

Best Film

90% Vouch

93% Users

Spirited Away

This is director Hayao Miyazaki and producers Studio Ghibli at their best. On the surface level, it’s a film about a young girl who stumbles into an abandoned theme park with her parents. She accidentally finds herself in a creepy spiritual world wherein she must find a way to save her parents and escape. More broadly, however, this is a film about the struggle for Japanese cultural identity in the wake of the economic crisis of the early 90’s. A deep and deeply hypnotizing movie about a little girl’s journey.

Amazon

Animation / Family

Sweet

2001

Foreign

Best Film

90% Vouch

93% Users

Wolf Children

If you’re living alone and just came back home from a bad day, it could make you feel like everything’s alright again. This is the kind of movie that feels like a warm hug, that you’d keep in your hard drive to watch over and over again, just because it makes you feel so damn good! The story offers a realistic yet ultimately forgiving view of maternity, and growing up in general. From director Mamoru Hosoda, who’s known for his other works like “The Girl Who Leaps Through Time”, “Wolf Children” is another kind of beautiful that can only be fully understood after you watched it.

Amazon

Animation

Beautiful

2012

Best Film

90% Vouch

83% Users

World of Tomorrow

How often does a short film get picked as movie of the year? The answer: not often but it happened with World of Tomorrow. The 2016 Oscar nominated masterpiece is an insight-packed journey of a little girl who gets a peek into her distant future. It is directed by Don Hertzfeldt, the genius who also gave us the other mind-bending stick-figure animation It’s Such a Beautiful Day. The little girl in question? Hertzfeldt’s young niece who also contributed lines to the film! World of Tomorrow is a must-watch – a piece of art so beautiful it will revive your love for cinema for a long time.

Amazon

Animation / Comedy

Thought-provoking

2015

Weird

Good Movie

76% Vouch

86% Users

Waking Life

Waking Life is composed exclusively of a series of conversations involving the main character, with him sometimes participating and sometimes just as a spectator. The discussions revolve around issues such as metaphysics, free will, social philosophy or the meaning of life. The title refers to a quote from Jorge Santayana: “sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled.”, and the whole movie wanders around the state of a lucid dream, emphasized by the rotoscoping technique in which it was filmed. Waking Life is not just a movie worth watching, it is a movie worth watching a thousand times, because you will always notice something that you have previously missed out.

Amazon

Animation / Drama

Weird

2001

Good Movie

79% Vouch

89% Users

Song of the Sea

This movie is absolutely wonderful. It’s an Irish animated movie, and the drawings/graphics are so beautiful and different from what you usually see in this genre, that this alone would be a good reason to watch this. On top of that the music is beautiful as well. But what really touched me about this movie is the story – it’s about a boy who, dealing with the loss of his mother, embarks on an adventure into the underworld of feelings in order to save his sister. I found it to be refreshingly original, sometimes quite intense (I cried a lot during this movie), and heartwarming. The details are great. And I love the way the story was interwoven with Irish mythology, making it magical.

Netflix

Animation

Original

2014

Foreign

Best Film

90% Vouch

93% Users

Princess Mononoke

A fantastic animated period piece set during the Muromachi era in Japanese history. It follows a young man who is looking for a cure for his curse from a demon before he dies. At the same time, the film explores environmental issues, showing the effects of a brutal war between the nature gods and humans. The story is action packed and fast paced, drawing freely from Japanese mythology and modern hot topic political issues. Similarly, the renowned animation is a combination of classic hand drawn animation and pioneering 3-D rendering.

Amazon

Animation / Sci-Fi

Beautiful

1999

Foreign

Good Movie

79% Vouch

87% Users

Paprika

A splendid animated movie by the legendary animator and director Satoshi Kon. A team of scientists and psychologists have created a device allowing them to enter someone else’s dreams. Even if the usage of this device is not allowed outside of her facility, Doctor Atsuko Chiba is using it to cure patients from depression. Things start to get complicated when a stolen device is being used by someone to implement confusing dreams in various victims, causing them to mentally break down.

Amazon

Animation

Thought-provoking

2006

Good Movie

85% Vouch

83% Users

It's Such a Beautiful Day

Two-time Oscar nominee Don Hertzfeldt crafts this provocative film in the most skillful way. With only stick figure drawings and some stock footage, he compellingly walks you through the crumbling mind of a man. It is funny. It is sad. It is unsettling. Unlike most movies – or perhaps any movie – there is no point in the film where you feel safe. Unpredictable. Engrossing. Disturbing. By the end of it, you will not be sure what you’ve just seen, but you will feel as if it has changed you. **Personal suggestion: do not watch alone late at night**

Amazon

Animation / Comedy / Drama

Thought-provoking

2012

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