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These Are the 15 Best Animated Movies of All Time, According to Letterboxd’s Updated List

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Ignacio Weil

Entertainment - March 12th 2026, 23:55 GMT+1

Song of the Sea cropped processed by imagy — 15. Song of the Sea (2014)

What hits first is the atmosphere: wind, water, and grief all move through the frame like they belong to the same old story. In *Song of the Sea*, Tomm Moore turns Irish folklore into something intimate, using hand-drawn imagery that feels delicate without ever losing emotional weight. Ben and Saoirse’s journey works because the fantasy is never just decoration; it mirrors a family trying to process loss and speak to each other again. The movie is visually rich, but it’s the tenderness underneath that makes people keep returning to it. That balance between mythic scale and very human pain is exactly why it keeps showing up in conversations about the best animated films ever made. | © Cartoon Saloon

Look Back 2024 cropped processed by imagy — 14. Look Back (2024)

At just about an hour, this one somehow feels bigger than a lot of epics. The emotional engine is simple – ambition, admiration, insecurity, friendship – but the way it’s observed is so precise that every creative breakthrough and every silence lands harder than expected. There’s no flashy excess here; the film trusts small gestures, awkward pauses, and the obsessive rhythm of drawing to do the heavy lifting. *Look Back* also understands a truth many artist stories miss: making art can be both joyful and quietly brutal at the same time. It’s devastating in a controlled, deeply human way, which is exactly why Letterboxd users have embraced it so quickly. | © Studio Durian

Cropped The Iron Giant — 13. The Iron Giant (1999)

Long before “family movie with emotional depth” became a marketing phrase, *The Iron Giant* was already doing it for real. Brad Bird’s film wraps Cold War paranoia, childhood loneliness, and anti-violence themes inside a story that still plays beautifully as an adventure, which is a hard trick to pull off. The relationship between Hogarth and the Giant works because it never feels overly sentimental; it’s funny, strange, and genuinely earned. Visually, the contrast between small-town Americana and the Giant’s imposing design gives the movie a timeless identity. Plenty of animated classics age well, but this one keeps getting rediscovered because its message still feels urgent without ever sounding preachy. | © Warner Bros. Feature Animation

Azur Asmar 2006 cropped processed by imagy — 12. Azur & Asmar (2006)

Color does a lot of storytelling here before the dialogue even has a chance. Michel Ocelot builds *Azur & Asmar* like a storybook illuminated from within, then pushes it further with a bold visual style that mixes flat, ornamental beauty with a real sense of movement and scale. What makes it special is how naturally it treats cultural exchange, language, and identity as part of the adventure instead of reducing them to a lesson. The film’s fantasy elements are enchanting, but the worldview is what lingers: curious, generous, and deeply respectful of difference. That combination gives it a unique place among animated movies that feel genuinely international rather than just globally distributed. | © Nord-Ouest Productions

Akira 1988 cropped processed by imagy — 11. Akira (1988)

Some movies are classics; others feel like detonation points, and this is one of them. The scale of *Akira* still shocks – the cityscapes, the motion, the destruction, the sense that everything on screen is under unbearable pressure and about to rupture. But what keeps it from being just a technical flex is the mood: political anxiety, youth rage, and body horror all collide in ways that still feel abrasive and modern. Even people who don’t usually watch anime tend to recognize its influence on sci-fi and cyberpunk imagery almost immediately. Decades later, the film remains a benchmark because *Akira* doesn’t just look ahead; it still feels ahead. | © Tokyo Movie Shinsha

Evangelion 3 01 0 Thrice Upon a Time — 10. Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time (2021)

Closure is one of the hardest things to write, especially for a franchise this emotionally loaded and symbol-heavy. What makes *Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time* stand out is that it doesn’t chase closure through neat explanations alone; it earns it through character healing, reflection, and a willingness to slow down when it matters. The movie still delivers spectacle and surreal apocalypse imagery, but the real payoff is watching the series finally make space for tenderness and choice. For longtime fans, it feels like a release valve after years of tension; for newer viewers, it lands as an ambitious, deeply personal sci-fi finale. That mix of scale and emotional resolution is why its reputation keeps growing. | © Studio Khara

Cropped Fantastic Mr Fox — 9. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

There’s a handmade confidence to this film that makes it instantly recognizable even in a single frame. Wes Anderson’s *Fantastic Mr. Fox* takes Roald Dahl’s setup and turns it into a sly, funny, oddly poignant story about ego, domestic life, and the thrill of being a little reckless when you absolutely shouldn’t be. The stop-motion texture is a huge part of the charm – the fur, the tiny gestures, the deliberate imperfections all make the world feel alive instead of polished into sterility. It’s very funny, yes, but it also has that specific Anderson melancholy humming underneath the jokes. Few animated movies feel this stylized while still being this warm. | © 20th Century Fox Animation

Cropped Howls Moving Castle — 8. Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)

Not every great fantasy explains itself, and this one is better because it doesn’t try to pin everything down. The magic in the world is unforgettable – the walking castle, Calcifer, the transformations – but the emotional pull comes from Sophie’s changing sense of self and the way love, fear, vanity, and war all coexist in the same dreamlike space. Miyazaki lets beauty and chaos sit side by side, so the film can be romantic, funny, anti-war, and quietly sad without feeling split in half. It rewards repeat viewings because different scenes click depending on what you bring to it. That’s a big reason *Howl’s Moving Castle* keeps climbing in “best animated movies of all time” conversations. | © Studio Ghibli

Its Such a Beautiful Day cropped processed by imagy — 7. It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012)

What starts like a minimalist experiment slowly turns into one of the most emotionally overwhelming animated films ever made. Don Hertzfeldt uses stick figures, split screens, repetition, and sudden bursts of imagery to build a portrait of memory loss, routine, fear, and mortality that feels strangely intimate from the first minutes. The brilliance of *It’s Such a Beautiful Day* is how it keeps shifting tone without warning, moving from deadpan humor to existential dread and then to something almost transcendent. It looks simple on purpose, and that simplicity makes every idea hit harder because nothing distracts from the feeling. Very few animated movies capture the inner chaos of being alive with this much honesty and control. | © Bitter Films

6. Perfect Blue (1997)

Psychological horror in animation rarely feels this sharp, and even fewer films stay this unsettling after multiple rewatches. In *Perfect Blue*, Satoshi Kon turns a pop-idol career change into a spiraling nightmare about identity, performance, obsession, and media consumption, all while constantly making the viewer question what is real. The editing is the weapon here: scenes cut like thoughts, not events, so the movie traps you inside confusion instead of just showing it from a safe distance. That’s why it still feels modern, especially in an era of online fandom and image control. Plenty of thrillers try to be disorienting; this one is disorienting with purpose. | © Madhouse

5. Princess Mononoke (1997)

The scale is enormous, but the thing that makes this film unforgettable is how unwilling it is to flatten anyone into a simple hero or villain. Forest gods, industrial expansion, survival, greed, and compassion all collide in *Princess Mononoke*, and the story refuses easy moral victories even when the action turns brutal. Miyazaki gives the world a mythic grandeur, yet the conflicts feel grounded because every faction believes it is protecting something real. It’s an adventure epic, an environmental warning, and a tragedy in the same breath. That complexity is exactly why so many viewers rank it near the very top of animation, and why debates about the best Ghibli film usually end with *Princess Mononoke* in the final argument. | © Studio Ghibli

Spider Man Into the Spider Verse cropped processed by imagy — 4. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

From the first swing, this movie felt like animation being reminded of how elastic and exciting it can be. *Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse* doesn’t just tell a superhero origin story for Miles Morales; it reinvents the visual language around him, blending comic-book textures, halftones, frame-rate tricks, and color explosions into something that moves like pure momentum. The film is stylish, but it also has real emotional clarity, especially in how it handles self-doubt, grief, family pressure, and the messy process of becoming your own version of a hero. It’s funny without breaking the stakes and heartfelt without getting sentimental. The result is one of the rare blockbuster animated movies that genuinely changed what mainstream animation could look like. | © Sony Pictures Animation

Spider Man Across the Spider Verse cropped processed by imagy — 3. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

Sequels usually get praised for being “bigger,” but this one earns attention because it becomes bolder, stranger, and more emotionally specific at the same time. The visual invention in *Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse* is almost absurd in the best way, with entire worlds animated in different styles that still connect through rhythm and character perspective. Under all that spectacle, though, the movie is really about control – who gets to write your story, who gets to define sacrifice, and what happens when a hero refuses the script. Gwen and Miles both get richer material here, which gives the film more heart than most franchise follow-ups. It ends on a cliffhanger, but the confidence of everything before it is what makes people rate it so highly. | © Sony Pictures Animation

Spirited away cropped processed by imagy — 2. Spirited Away (2001)

There’s a reason this film keeps showing up whenever people talk about the greatest animated movies ever made: it feels endless in the way only true classics do. The world of bathhouses, spirits, labor, greed, and transformation in *Spirited Away* is packed with visual wonder, yet the emotional center remains wonderfully clear as Chihiro grows from frightened and passive into someone resilient and compassionate. Miyazaki’s storytelling never rushes to explain every rule, which lets the film feel like a dream you have to navigate rather than a puzzle to solve. That mystery is part of the magic, but so is the empathy running through every strange encounter. Even after repeat viewings, it still feels like stepping into a living universe instead of revisiting a familiar plot. | © Studio Ghibli

Cropped Grave of the Fireflies 1988 — 1. Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

Some animated films leave you energized; this one leaves you silent, and that silence is part of its power. Isao Takahata tells a wartime survival story with such restraint that the emotional devastation comes not from manipulation, but from ordinary moments made painfully fragile: food, shelter, pride, childhood routines, and the illusion that things might still turn around. The film’s humanity is what makes it unbearable and essential at the same time, because it never treats suffering as spectacle. Its reputation on Letterboxd and beyond comes from that rare combination of craft and moral force – beautifully animated, deeply compassionate, and impossible to forget, *Grave of the Fireflies*. | © Studio Ghibli

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Animation rankings always start arguments, and honestly, that’s half the fun. Letterboxd’s updated list brings together the kind of movies people rewatch for comfort, obsess over for craft, and quote years after the credits roll.

What makes this one interesting is the mix: all-time classics, modern masterpieces, and a few picks that remind you how global animation really is. If you’re looking for the best animated movies ever – whether you’re catching up or revisiting favorites – this ranking is a great place to start.

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Animation rankings always start arguments, and honestly, that’s half the fun. Letterboxd’s updated list brings together the kind of movies people rewatch for comfort, obsess over for craft, and quote years after the credits roll.

What makes this one interesting is the mix: all-time classics, modern masterpieces, and a few picks that remind you how global animation really is. If you’re looking for the best animated movies ever – whether you’re catching up or revisiting favorites – this ranking is a great place to start.