Animate This! My Top 15 Favorite Anime Movies

Let me start this list off with a little cheat. We all know that Quentin Tarantino's Bruce Lee homaging revenge saga is a live action film. But I'm sure that everyone is also equally aware that contained within the first volume of this two-parter is an animated flashback directed by Kazuto Nakazawa, a popular designer of Japanese animation.
Running just under eight minutes, this is an anime sequence which pulls no punches in it's quality of art and spares no bucket when it comes to it's blood soaked violence. Superbly capturing the spirit of both the manga style of storytelling and the flying fists of cheesy chop socky, it depicts the "origin" story of O-Ren Ishii, a member of bad guy Bill's serpentine strike force, the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, and the prime antagonist in this first half of the Bride's voyage 'o' vengeance.

Eastern folklore and environmental symbolism meet head on, anime style, in this richly textured and complicated fairy tale.
Even though I enjoyed this as a movie that features mythological beasts and forest gods, gremlins and spirits, that focuses more on the adult sensibilities of it's viewers, I probably would have liked it a bit more had I not been so distracted by the heavy accented (and IMO, the terribly miscast) voices of Billy Bob Thornton and Minnie Driver in the English dubbed rendition.
In other words, if I were to recommend to anybody to watch this movie, I would advise to sticking to the original version, which is undubbed and subtitled.
Plus, as far as I'm concerned, I think the original language helps to enhance atmosphere of the Japanese fable that this story is supposed to be.

Back in the early 80's, I wasn't the biggest fan of anime. Even those few that reached a high level of acclaim had a hard time of gettiing me to sit through 'em.
Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind was one of the first that finally began to open my eyes to the potential that lay within the paints and brushes that colored the cells of these films.
An ecological fable that treated it's premise with the maturity that's found in most adult oriented fantasy books and yet with the innocence of the Disney flicks, Nausicaa was able to strike a uniquely fine balance that appealed to kids and adults alike.

Love knows no bounds.
Even in the midst of an intergalactic war with a buncha Martians (in this case, they are particular type of Martian known as "Tarsians"),
this movie shows that as long as you've got a cell phone, a good distance carrier and a hell of a lot of patience,
long distance relationships can work.

And as most of us who've been stuck in a short distance relationship for awhile know,
sometimes, the idea of flyin' around in space in cool manga tech-gear and battling a buncha aliens, light years away from Earth, sounds a lot like heaven.

To be honest, I was never a big fan of animation that told stories that could've told as a live action film. To me, it always felt like if you had the unlimited tools of animation at your disposal,not using it to go into realms of the "too fantastic" for the real world (like a sci-fi, the talking animals genre or what have you) or use it to distort features or creatively caricature it's characters and/or elements of the story to enhance the plot's premise. Therefore, even though I heard a lot good things about Fireflies, I held off on it for a while before I finally got around to watching it. As it started, I felt the same blase feeling that I usually get from such a feature. But as the movie progressed, I did find myself eventually surrendered into a story that untraditionally seemed more to center on victims of war that it does on the basic heroic (and according to formula, usually triumphant) struggles of war.
Though there have been countless tales of the human effects of this period in human history, this movie is reminder that for those lives that eventually become reduced to numbers in the tolls of such conflicts, each one of those numbers is an individual story that essentially, at best will be forgotten, or more typically, will never even be told.

Here's an anime movie with a very conventional anime title but with a very unconventional plot. Written by Katsuhiro Otomo, most famous for Akira, Roujin's premise is set in early 21st century Japan, about the invention of a type of hospital bed that has been super-mechanized to provide all around care for the patients who are unfortunately targeted to lay in it.
It is a story that is told with a kind of originality that is usually reserved more for the graphic hardware of these kinds of productions (although there is enough of that to still meet the quota of the genre). What is missing are the post-apocalyptic destruction, fairy-tail folklore fantasy or female characters running around in schoolgirl outfits that usually tend to get in the way of the moral mindset that Roujin Z atypically wraps itself around in.

A simple story of a simple girl who discovers that she can simply leap thru time. But instead of using her powers for good, or even for evil for that matter, she uses it in a manner that we all wish we could if we were so magically endowed (especially if we were her age): to make up time when we were late, to retake exams we didn't study for, to get to our favorite snacks in the fridge before our annoying little siblings got the chance to polished 'em off, etc..
Which all leads up to a simple coming of age story that is as simply and beautifully told as it is simply and beautifully animated.
Simply put, simply beautiful.

I grew up watching animated films during the late 70's and through out the 80's. And back then, the medium's horizon seemed vast and open and full of endless possibilities. By the new millenium, with the symbiotic monopoly of the genre by Disney and Pixar, that potential had pretty much dissipated.
The only chance we now have of seeing outside the norm of Pixney is through the rare outside efforts of non-American countries and particularly through Japan's anime industry.
Expanding on the quality of their style (although, I still feel at times that their mode of artwork can get a little stifled), anime animators can reach new heights when they cover epics like Diana Wynn Jones Howl's Moving Castle.
Twisty-turny plotlines with really big organic visuals help tp provide a healthy alternative to computer-generated hoopla that's takes up the majority pf space in theaters today.

Many years before this movie came out, I watched another animated not-so-much-for-kids film called Heavy Metal. And though it lacked the technical and story skills required to make it something really worth mentioning, I did see in it a potential for an interesting anthology series whose rock'roll/sci-fi/animated integrated format was bound by neither PC rules or those that result from the kid-targeted genre.
Then came the Animatrix and showed us (well...me, at least) what that potential could look like.

A trio of animated shorts that I like basically for the same reasons that I stated for Heavy Metal and The Animatrix.
I really enjoy the format of an anthology, because, as it is demonstrated here in Memories, it allows for a wider choice ideas of stories that probably wouldn't be big enough to fill up an entire movie.
It also allows for a bit more risk in the creativity of the plot, without having to commit all the time of work that it would take to make a full length feature that is dependent on the tastes of a wider audience.

So far, the most updated amazing computer animation in any animated feature.
Simply put, the computer-generated visuals in this film truly have to be seen in order to be believed.
However, even though the story is solid, as the sci-fi epic that Appleseed's visuals aspire to be, it does lack some originality in it's plot-line. It is for this reason, combined with the indistinguisnness of the faces (as is usually common for most 3-D anime) that prevented this film from being ranked higher on this list, despite the fact that the graphics are, so far, some of the most favorite that my eyes have ever laid upon.
That said, there wasn't a frame in this movie where I just wasn't completely stunned with awe. The technical details and intricate designs in Ex Machina are some of the most striking ever to be generated on film.
Iron-Man's armor looks like it was created by Fisher-Price compared to the "hardwear" that these guys are sporting.
A true marvel to behold.

First let me start off by saying that, for me, this particular anime movie displays a lot of the same drawbacks that I find in most manga movies as far as the somewhat distant emotional appeal of the characters that has a tendency to be part of this genre. However, the action sequences in SOTS are definitely some of the best I've seen in 2D animated form. Very smooth and successfully executed in a manner that make 'em flow with a visual energy that the viewer can follow without any confusion of what just happened (as is the case with many of today's action films, animated or not).
Also, I like how this film shows that manga stories are starting to evolve in a manner where even the secondary characters are not just throwaway characters simply to be used as target practice.
Not to mention that despite their fleeting screen-time, the abundantly numerous and beautifully "painted" backgrounds were obviously not meant to be targeted to the trash bin afterward.
Overall, a visual treat that effectively displays the direction that the art-form that is this medium should be moving.

Really cool childlike fairytale visuals with a level of creativity that reminds us why mythic tales fascinated us so much during our young ages, yet with enough of a few dark undertones to keep the interest of that part of our spirits that were crushed by the reality of becoming an adult. Fantasy fun with a slight twist of macabre for the whole family.

   This is Katsuhiro Ōtomo's follow-up to his landmark feature, Akira, and right off the bat, it is pretty obvious that there are some big benefits that come from being a legend in the manga and anime industry. To date Steamboy features Some of the tightest integration between CGI and 2-D animation that has been created on film.
  The detail in this full length feature is just about as intricate and comprehensive as we’ve seen in an anime movie and the dynamicism  and flow of the movements of man and machine shows no sacrifice as a result. And the top quality of this project is not just limited to the visuals. The English language version was treated exceptionally well here, so that the dialogue flows much more smoothly than the clunky translations that are most often found in many other anime films.
Multiple viewings are required to just be able to capture and appreciate all the beautifully elaborate and absorbing designs.
  But of all the animated beauty that fills up the “mangan” take of the burgeoning steampunk genre, I would have to say that my favorite is the way that, even though the human figures are still drawn in the typical manga style of lightweight frames, there's still a strong more western "realism" to the caricature element to their design. The physique elements are drawn here with a lot more weight to their forms, which not only adds more volume to the characters look, but also brings more kinetic energy to high speed action that one would expect from this story’s premise.The end result is that it allows the physical forms of Steamboy and Co. to integrate more effectively into the multi-dimensional visuals so that their typically rendered simplicity is not so overwhelmed by the deeply designed backgrounds.

My first look at anime. Well, kick @ss anime that is.
When I first saw this, I realized that, if I didn't have to work, I would spend all of my time lookin' up at what those crazy asians were concocting on the animation tip, yo.