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Top 10 Best Anime Films from Japan – Anything Missing?

Look to Japan for some of the best anime films. Japan is an animation powerhouse! Whilst Hollywood has Disney, Japan had Studio Ghibli, led by Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. The creativity of the Japanese films in this list are often unmatched by their American counterparts. You are missing out if you haven’t seen at least a handful of these!

The Top 10

1. Princess Mononoke

Princess Mononoke is a classic. It is Miyazaki’s return to the more political realms of Nausicaa and Laputa – films which promote awareness of global issues such as discrimination, global warming, and war. Plus, the animation is beautifully created and the storyline is an adventure epic. For more, follow this link to check out my analysis of Princess Mononoke.

2. Spirited Away

Spirited Away is Miyazaki’s most celebrated work, and rightly so. The film follows a young girl who gets lost in a spirit world which she has to navigate to save her parents. I am in awe of how Miyazaki dreamed up everything in this film, it is the one of the most magical films you could watch.

3. Pom Poko

Oh yes! Pom Poko! This entry from Isao Takahata is framed as a sort of documentary. It follows some shape-shifting raccoons who rise up against the growing industrialisation/expansion of Tokyo to protect their habitat. One of the comedic highlights is seeing these raccoons parachute using their scrotum (don’t worry it’s completely PG). Pom Poko promotes awareness of industrialisation with this hilarious comedy.

4. Laputa: Castle in the Sky

Whilst not the best film title to translate into Spanish, this animation is another excellent addition from Miyazaki. It was the first film released by Studio Ghibli and set a very high bar for the rest of their films. In this adventure, a young girl searches for the island in the sky whilst trying to evade those who want to find it before her.

5. Howl’s Moving Castle

Yes, Studio Ghibli rounds out my top 5. Howl’s Moving Castle is one of Miyazaki’s most recent films and one of his most imaginative. Moving castles, talking fire, and a jumping scarecrow are three things you’ll find in this movie. Another brilliant example of Miyazaki’s celebrated career, this one also serves as an allegory for war.

6. Grave of the Fireflies

Isao Takahata’s animation of the bombing of Japan during World War Two is heart wrenching. There are some pretty sad moments in a number of Pixar films, but nothing on this level. This will hit you on another emotional level. In addition, learn about life in Japan during World War Two and how terrible war is!

7. Paprika

You thought Inception was original? Well you obviously didn’t see Paprika when it came out in 2006. Paprika is set in a future where patients can use devices to start lucidly dreaming. The problem is that some people are hacking into other people’s dreams. Not great if these skills fall in the wrong hands…

8. My Neighbour Totoro

This is the perfect film to watch for the little ones. My Neighbour Totoro is very peaceful and calm – there are no chases or conflict like some of the other Miyazaki films. However, in true Miyazaki fashion there is his trademark fantasy. And of course, there is Totoro! (a great addition to all the Disney merchandise).

9. Akira

Set in a dystopian future where society is crumbling, Akira is the anime equivalent of The Matrix. Pay attention to the superbly animated setting of ‘Neo-Tokyo,’ a city which resembles a mix of Bladerunner’s Los Angeles and Tron. Read a full preview of Akira here.

10. My Neighbors the Yamadas

Rounding out the top 10 is another entry from Isao Takahata. The star of this film is the hilarious skits of a family living in Tokyo. The snippets reminded me of things my family would do. The bare-bones animation adds to the simplicity of the film. It’s an ode to the regular family.

Conclusion

There are plenty more Japanese anime films to check out, so take this list as an entry point. I’ve included some more to watch later, that only just missed out on the top 10.

Nausicaa, The Wind Rises, Whisper of the Heart, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

Best Films imagineNATIVE: 5 of the Best from imagineNATIVE 2021

The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival is an international hub for the presentation and celebration of Indigenous media art. It’s the largest festival of its kind in the world and plays a crucial role in providing a platform for Indigenous artists to reclaim their voices and express their own perspectives (as the vast majority of films about Indigenous peoples are made by non-Indigenous filmmakers). The Festival’s 6 days featured a range of great Indigenous storytelling from stop-motion animation to polished dystopian sci-fi movies. Here are 5 of our favorite films – feature length and short – that we caught for the 2021 edition of the imagineNATIVE film festival.

5 of our Best Films from imagineNATIVE Film Festival

Angakusajaujuq – The Shaman’s Apprentice

Zacharius Kunuk, the World’s most famous Inuit filmmaker, is back with something completely new: his first stop motion animated film. In which, an apprentice travels with her grandmother into the underworld in search of a cure for an ailing community member. The brief glimpse into another realm is on the level of Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth with its eery dark spirits. However, we never feel lost thanks to the comforting guidance of the apprentice’s grandmother.

Tote Abuelo

Another film featuring a grandparent-granddaughter relationship is Tzotzil filmmaker Maria Sojob’s Tote Abuelo. In her debut feature, Maria returns to her ancestral home in Chiapas to reconnect with her estranged grandfather. The slow pace of the documentary matches both the slow straw-hat making process, as well as Maria’s patient questioning. Her conversation with her grandfather slowly opens up stories of her ancestors and treatment of her people in Southern Mexico – allowing her to carry on the history of her family.

Hiama

If you love movies which feature school-kids getting revenge on their bullies, Hiama is for you. The star decides to embrace her Hiama (shamanic guardian spirit) in a weirdly empowering horror-filled climax. No settler-colonialists have an answer for this.

Run Woman Run

If you’re looking for a movie that feels like a mug of hot chocolate, Run Woman Run is the most heart-warming film we saw at imagineNATIVE. It follows Beck, a single mum, that sees visions of historic runner Tom Longboat who works to inspire her to get back on her feet following a diabetic coma. Her journey is emotional: she’s recovering from generational and intergenerational trauma to get her family back together. But it’s also full of humor – helped by Beck’s lazy college student attitude – and even has a few rom-com moments.

Night Raiders

Night Raiders is an awesome take on the dystopian sci-fi genre. Like in Children of Men, seeing children in Night Raiders’ dystopia is rare as they’re all considered property of the state and institutionalized into schools to be indoctrinated into the regime. After years of evading the state, Niska loses her 11 year old daughter to the modern reincarnation of the residential schools system and has to team up with a bunch of Indigenous outcasts to rescue her and their community.

For more news on upcoming Indigenous films, follow imagineNATIVE online or keep track of upcoming events on their website. Also for more of our Film Festival coverage head to our Film Festival hub.

Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds (France)

By Sebastian Torrelio

In the sparsest year for animation in some time, France has quietly put out what has been highlighted by the press as an “oddity.” Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds sports Juliette & Carmen, two young sisters staying with their neighbor Agnés for a spontaneous sleepover. Upon the first recess of supervision, they stumble into one of Agnés’ authored children’s books, are re-imagined as human-sized cats and seized by fantastically unevolved creatures. Within the book’s confinement they are assisted by Selma, an avian opera singer, who has connections to both the author’s past and to the most powerful figure in the land, the air-bound and unpredictable magician Sirocco.

Chieux’s Annecy Audience Award-winning feature is as simple as the art-house form ever presents itself, a fairy tale guided by so many instantaneous decisions the room to breathe compresses just short of heart-stopping. As Juliette and Carmen stumble into their neighbor’s tales, so does curiosity bite their new cat-like instincts near immediately, finding them in various states of ownership, imprisonment, freedom, and heroic resplendence within as little as 30 minutes of runtime. Nothing about Sirocco is hard to follow, a credit to Chieux’s knack for embedding a child’s perspective into his wonderland of immense proportions, yet the story’s constant moving target of new objectives does hinder its otherwise easygoing nature. Even in the opening minutes, the rug is pulled out by a change of perspective, the protagonist quickly redirected from a sleepy Agnés to the children’s hurricane of energy.

For what may prove more divisive in the Kingdom of Winds is Chieux’s choice of art-style. Sirocco is not crude-looking, per se, but intentionally rough and sparse in between the lines. Layers of atmosphere and Earthly settings in Selma’s world are rendered in light, ambient colors, near nothing to saturation, over layers of even further comparable color swatches. The character designs, aside from Selma herself, are rather spare – crowds of minions, flying beasts and assistants all with a bulb-like rounded figure, clone-like blobs fighting frenetic stick-limbed beings. Even the first fantastical character Juliette and Carmen encounter, a small wooden toy, humorously reminded me of a cheap Adult Swim character. Still, many will find the minimalism of anything presented at two dimensional-face value as charming these days.

Far and away, Sirroco’s biggest asset is its score – classical and orchestral, booming in its symphony, particularly in the theatrical setting it will get minimal playtime for in the United States. For all its public anime comparisons, the music of Sirocco is what ties it closest to recent Studio Ghibli efforts, a bountiful mixture of adventure and climactic overture to soundtrack the sights of Selma’s overhead journey. French vocalist Célia Kameni provides Selma’s singing voice, a baroque operatic performance that stuns in its un-poplike nature, her gorgeous, sustained notes an instrument in their own right.

If this review did not imply otherwise, Selma’s very existence is the only thing that holds Sirocco together as a story. Strong and goodhearted, but not without emotion, she keeps the value of a more considered, budgetary (real world) animation intact while engaging with naivete at every plot turn. Her most sagely words of wisdom echo what Chieux may have thought bringing her into this world: “Such a shame. The audience gets to see what artists they want. But the artists do not get to choose their audience.” With its bounty of unrestrained whimsy, Sirocco will be buried under other European efforts into the second half of this year, where it will advocate on its own modern merits for adolescent viewing attention. It should nevertheless not go unnoticed – many of life’s most pleasant joys are better stumbled upon, or into, anyway.

Seen at Laemmle Royal, Los Angeles