The Top 100 Animated Films Of All Time (1 Viewer)

[Dan Rudolph]

I know when an animated show is being aimed strictly at kids because watching a kid-centric show becomes an excrutiating experience. That is why I have always hated most of Hanna-Barberas stuff such as "SCOOBY-DOO", because it is aimed squarely at one demographic.

What Scooby Doo have you been watching? Unless that demographic is stoners, I'd say this was aimed at multiple audiences.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

If 90% of Americans watched animated films, I do not believe animated films would have the poor cousin reputation that they have

Everybody I know has seen Toy Story, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Lion King, and even some more recent films like Monsters Inc. and Shrek. In case you forgot, Shrek and Ice Age were animated films AND huge successes.

 

[george kaplan]

Well that would include The Emperor's New Groove, Lilo & Stitch and Monsters, Inc. If you think those all sucked, plain & simple, then...well, you're entitled to your opinion.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Well that would include The Emperor's New Groove, Lilo & Stitch and Monsters, Inc. If you think those all sucked, plain & simple, then...well, you're entitled to your opinion

Monsters, Inc. was NOT Disney. It was Pixar. Disney just pays for and distributes Pixar's films until their agreement runs out. Disnoy did not make that movie.

And I thought Emperor's New Groove felt too short, and like it tried to be above other Disney movies without actually succeeding. It tried to be unique and funny, but it just felt odd. The whole style of the film felt unfinished, like they honestly did their best and knew they wouldn't be able to do it anyway. I didn't like it much.

And Lilo & Stitch was cute, and the backgrounds were unique, and the animation was good (as usual from Disney), but it just wasn't entertaining to me. It switched back and forth between being cute, being funny, being serious, not making sense, and pushing themes in your face. I like the idea of a cute alien and the little girl, and the scene where Lilo punched the girl in the face was cool (the girl who voiced Lilo also voiced the girl in Spirited Away and was Samara in The Ring), but it didn't feel coherent. They could have used better writers.

And those are only 2 legitimate Disney films from the last few years. What about Treasure Planet, Atlantis, and all of those crappy cash-in sequels?

 

[Matthew_Millheiser]

and all of those crappy cash-in sequels?

Crappy. Not a good one in the bunch. Anal spooge, no doubt. Disney should especially be raked over the coals for Hunchback 2.

I also think that The Emperor's New Groove is simply the funniest animated family film anyone has ever done. Much funnier than the topical, smarmy, overrated garbage of Shrek.

I didn't think too much of Lilo & Stitch (although I liked it a lot more on video than I did in theaters), Dinosaur, or Tarzan. The latter two were particular rancid. On the other hand, I love the hell out of both Mulan and Hunchback. Pocahontas and Hercules are decent pieces of entertainment. Overall, I feel Disney has produced much more quality entertainment than junk.

 

[Edwin-S]

And Lilo & Stitch was cute, and the backgrounds were unique, and the animation was good (as usual from Disney)...

.....but it didn't feel coherent.
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And Neon Genesis Evangelion did?! Okaaayyyy! If I owned an animation business, I would have to make sure to never hire you as a writer.

 

[Ted Lee]

morgan -

fwiw, i would say the whole point of lilo and stitch was "ohana" (family).

the two sisters trying to stay together...as a family. and stitch's search for a family he could also belong to.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

fwiw, i would say the whole point of lilo and stitch was "ohana" (family)

I know. You know how I know? Because they jam it down your throat a bunch of times in the movie. The two sisters could have guns pointed at their heads and they would still jam this theme down your throat because they had a section without dialogue. Another problem with the movie.

 

[Edwin-S]

Two completely different things. NGE is deep, long, complex, and including the second movie, about 15 hours long. Lilo & Stitch is only 90 minutes. NGE also has a LOT more to tell in that time period and the things that aren't completely explained can be logically deduced.
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First of all what does length have to do with coherency? Secondly if length is a factor in creating a coherent story....then the failure is the one you keep saying is complex. The writers of "Lilo and Stitch" had only 90 minutes to put together a coherent story that involved several themes. A job they did quite competently. OTOH, the writers of NGE had, as you say, 15 HOURS to tell their story and they still couldn't maintain coherency. NGE isn't involved....its convoluted and those self same convolutions give it the illusion of being complex.
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Lilo & Stitch, OTOH, would go from a scene where Stitch is doing something cute, then for absolutely no reason, he'd go crazy and be mean.
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It makes perfect sense to me. His primary programming was to be destructive on a large scale. He lands in an area where he is not able to follow his programming. He was also built to be adaptive, which requires the ability to learn. He hooks up with Lilo purely to avoid his recapture. But he ends up with more than he bargained for. He ends up in a situation where his destructive programming conflicts with something that he has never experienced: someone actually cares for him.

It creates an internal mental conflict, first he's mean, then he's "sweet". What facet of his personality is going to win, the programming or his own emerging sense that he is capable of being more. He wants to belong but the unfamiliar emotions it brings out causes him to draw back and he reverts to form....lashing out in petty, destructive actions.

The whole situation comes to a head when he leaves Lilo and ends up in the forest where he makes his "I'm lost" statement. At that point he is "lost". He doesn't know who he is or where he is going. His programming for the most part is broken, but he believes he has nothing left because he thinks the "family" that he might have belonged to is lost to him. Going into the forest is just an act of desperation, a forlorn hope that, like the "Ugly Duckling", things will work out and a "family" will somehow "materialize". Anyway, that is how I see it.

 

[Seth Paxton]

Well, unless there has only been 100 animated films, then I just don't understand how James and the Giant Peach, Final Fantasy, Spirit: SotC, Titan AE, Jimmy Neutron or Bebe's Kids even make the list. I mean I can compare those films to others of similar style and they aren't even in the same ballpark. For example, Giant Peach is dwarfed by Nightmare, whatever quality you see in Nightmare I would have to think would be only 1/3rd of that in Giant Peach, even if you like that style of animation.


I have no problems with anime vs Disney, modern vs classic, or CGI vs traditional. But shouldn't the films have a vibrance that actually captured and kept an audience's imagination?

You can hate anime or hate Disney, but Ghost in the Shell and Sleeping Beauty did amaze a large group and stayed with a large group for more than 6 months.

Ice Age probably doesn't belong on the list either, and Lilo and Stitch, while a nice turn for Disney, might not be top 100 either. Shrek is noteworthy especially for its BO run and slight Oscar push, but that is only enough for the bottom 25 IMO.

And while I love Iron Giant and South Park, I'm not sure either of those should be in the top 20 films, at least not yet. Give us a few years to mull it over and consider their placement.

Waking Life is pretty freaking amazing, so I'm fine with it's placement (method doesn't detract from results IMO), and while I haven't seen Spirited Away it certainly appears to have blown many people away, so I'm cool with it's spot.

Chicken Run is also too highly placed. I would have preferred they had just placed the Wallace/Grommit shorts on the list, possibly combined into one film for the ranking.


Also consider that Metropolis is behind both Ice Age and Lilo/Stitch, all from this past year. Also consider that apparently almost all the great animation happened in the last 5 years. Somehow I'm not quite convinced.

This list has a lot of problems, though it does contain about 70 great films (rough guess).

 

[Jeffrey Gray]

This list is a total crock...and, as I might have guessed, some films that deserve to be in the top 20, aren't even on the list (Cats Don't Dance, anyone? Sure, it is unknown, but it's still better than most of the crap on the list...)

 

[Edwin-S]

Chicken Run is also too highly placed. I would have preferred they had just placed the Wallace/Grommit shorts on the list, possibly combined into one film for the ranking.
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While I agree with you that Chicken Run may be placed a little too high and also that the Wallace/Gromit shorts are some of Aardman animations better work, I cannot see them on this list since they are not features. That is also the problem with having The Bugs Bunny/RoadRunner Movie on the list. The "film" is a compilation of shorts strung together with some kind of framing device. It doesn't belong on the list either.

If they had a top 100 for TV animation, then I would expect to see the Wallace/Gromit shorts near the top.
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Also consider that Metropolis is behind both Ice Age and Lilo/Stitch, all from this past year. Also consider that apparently almost all the great animation happened in the last 5 years. Somehow I'm not quite convinced.
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That is the whole problem with this list. Movies like Bambi, Dumbo, Sleeping Beauty, Secret of NIMH, Watership Down, and The Plague Dogs ranking below South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut. It just blows me away. These guys even ranked The Plague Dogs below Spirit:SotC and the "The Brave Little Toaster". Give me a break. I am not convinced that Spirit should even be on the list and I know for sure that "The Black Cauldron" shouldn't be there at all. "The Black Cauldron" was one of Disney's worst animated features...ever.

I think some of the anime was ranked too low as well and some good anime isn't even on the list. "Wings of Honneamise" is just a blatant omission and I think "Kiki's Delivery Service" should have ranked higher than 46.

"Nausicaa of The Valley of The Wind" is completely missing, as is "Porco Rosso". I think these were two of Miyazaki's better films and they certainly deserve to be there ahead of Transformers:The Movie.

"My Neighbor Totoro" is misranked below "Ice Age". MNT is 10 times better than "Ice Age".

This list just seems more and more bizarre to me, when I see stuff like "The PowerPuff Girls Movie" on a top 100 list while Studio Ghibli's "Only Yesterday" gets completely ingnored. The movie was directed by the same man who directed "Grave of The Fireflies": Isao Takahata.

One of my faves that I think should have been on this list is "Night on The Galactic Railroad" directed by Gizaburo Sugii. I think this is a great animated film. I was so intrigued by this film I actually ended up ordering in the book it was based on. I would like to have a decent version of it on DVD but from what I have read the current version has not been cleaned up. What is even worse is that my VHS tape of NotGR is letterboxed, while the DVD is 1.33:1.

 

[Mark Evans]

Well, I'm not sure what the problem is with Metropolis. I realize the movie is new and all, but I think it's an absolutely brilliant piece of visual work. The story is not overly complex, but it's good. And it's one of the best uses of a Ray Charles song since a soda commerical .

As I said earlier, I really feel Atlantis was not a terrible movie by any stretch. They really broke from a number of their stereotypes with that movie and it's a shame the movie tanked in the end.

The real problem, to my mind, is that they didn't break from the formula enough and it was caught in a middle ground between 'same old Disney' and 'new Disney' that didn't please anybody.

Disney basically screwed themselves over because they became so formulaic doing their musicals that nobody cared about them anymore.

The problem was not with the music and songs, I don't believe, but the fact that characters were becoming so obviously included for the toy grab (i.e. the gargoyles in Hunchback) and the ridiculous changes to the stories (again, Hunchback or the alterations to Pocahontas come to mind) began turning off parts of the audience who disagreed with this dumbing-down of what had previously been a quality series of films.

I guess the reason I like anime so much is that they misuse the medium as a means of story telling far less than most North American companies who can't tell a story in animated format without completely making it for juveniles (Waking Life is one notable exception, but it's status as an animated film is iffy, in my opinion). Not to say anime is perfect, of course, take Sailor Moon for example . But on the whole I think the Japanese are far more willing to use animation to tell a story instead of a marketing campaign for soundtracks and stuffed animals.

Edwin, as far as the anime goes, I will completely agree with you on Evangelion, and completely disagree with Lain. I think Eva is hugely over-rated and becomes almost idiotically symbolic later on. Lain, however, I feel was deliberately plotted such that you really have to think to figure it all out in the end. And I also think you can watch it from beginning to end and still walk away satisfied if you don't get it. Your comment that the fact that these shows contain teenagers and therefore target that audience doesn't quite click with me though. I mean, that's like saying Beauty & The Beast targets anthropomorphic cursed humans isn't it?

I will say that this list certainly has provoked some interesting discussion.

 

[Edwin-S]

And it's one of the best uses of a Ray Charles song since a soda commerical.
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You got that right.
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Not to say anime is perfect, of course, take Sailor Moon for example
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Don't say that in front of a pack of adult "Sailor Moon" fans. They'll tear you limb from limb. Although, I cannot figure out the appeal of "SM" to adults. To each their own.
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Lain, however, I feel was deliberately plotted such that you really have to think to figure it all out in the end. And I also think you can watch it from beginning to end and still walk away satisfied if you don't get it.
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Well, I was acting more in the role of a "devil's advocate" with this series. I actually like this show quite a bit; however, I still feel that at times the show became too convoluted for its own good. A lot of times simplicity (not simple-mindedness) is a good thing to practice.
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Your comment that the fact that these shows contain teenagers and therefore target that audience doesn't quite click with me though. I mean, that's like saying Beauty & The Beast targets anthropomorphic cursed humans isn't it?
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It is not just the fact that teenagers are the main characters. Many of the themes explored in anime will be more resonant with teenagers than with older adults.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Many of the themes explored in anime will be more resonant with teenagers than with older adults

I disagree VERY strongly. In 8 Mile, the main theme is growing up and accepting responsibility for yourself in order to change your life for the better. That doesn't mean the movie is made only for people in their early 20s. The same can be said for many animated films. In MANY Disney movies, the themes of friendship, doing the right thing, love, etc. are dealt with, yet adults continue to watch each new Disney film, regardless of whether it deals with the exact same themes or not.

If you're going to say something is aimed at a specific audience, you need to back that up with evidence in the form of an interview, statement from a producer, or statistical information.

 

[Ray Chuang]

Looks like I have to throw in another €0.02 of comments!

(going slightly off-topic)

In regards to Sailor Moon--I think your view of the show changes quite drastically if you have a chance to see the UNCUT original versions shown in Japan. Watch the first season (Episodes 1 to 46) and the third (Super) season (Episodes 90 to 124)--you'll be surprised by the surprisingly well-done storytelling, often WAY superior to what you get from American TV animation. It should be noted the third season is available now on DVD from Pioneer LDCA, and the first season in uncut form will likely be coming from ADV Films later this year.

(going back on-topic)

Personally, I LOVED Lilo & Stitch. Besides the absolutely gorgeous animation, Lilo & Stitch had quite good storytelling and really nice use of music. It's definitely Disney's best animated feature since The Lion King some 11 years ago.

But seriously, Beauty and the Beast is definitely one of the truly great animated features I've ever seen--I consider it one of the Ten Best ever made. It's got beautiful animation, great character designs (especially for Belle--she looks stunningly beautiful without having to expose a lot of skin (e.g., Ariel, Jasmine, Pocahontas, and Kida cough, cough )), and several really great musical numbers. Beauty and the Beast is an amazing feat considering the time in production was around two years--half the normal time Disney normally spends on an animated feature.

 

[Edwin-S]

I disagree VERY strongly. In 8 Mile, the main theme is growing up and accepting responsibility for yourself in order to change your life for the better. That doesn't mean the movie is made only for people in their early 20s.
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I said that most anime targets the teenage to young adult market. I never meant it is only for teenagers.Movies may be seen by many people but there is always a main demographic group that the filmmakers are angling for.

That is why Disney's animated films are general audience films....not children's films. The main demographic for Disney's animated films is the family. Disney is catering to a group who want to be able to enjoy a movie as a family. In order to pull in the kid, Disney has to pull in the parents, therefore, any animated movie they release for that market has to have enough in it that an adult can watch it, and not want to slit their wrists.

Getting back to anime, the targeted demographic is the teen to young adult group, ranging from 13-26; however, just because the main demographic is that age group, does not mean that an older person cannot, or will not, watch it.
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Another minor thing that bugged me. I HATE when a character gets so emotional about something that they put themselves in a situation through an act of temporary stupidity.
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Yeah, I guess that just doesn't reflect real life. After all, nobody in real life is so "cliched". I mean, nobody goes off the emotional "deep end" and blows away their spouse, when the spouse files for divorce. Nobody commits, or trys to commit, suicide because of deep emotional distress. Nobody acts stupid and runs away from home because of emotional issues.

Human beings don't perform irrational acts because of their emotions. Uh-huh.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Human beings don't perform irrational acts because of their emotions. Uh-huh

They do, and I know that, but that doesn't mean somebody could be upset about something extremely stupid and blow it up, just so they can be lead to a situation that will artificially advance the storyline. I'd prefer total realism, like somebody bottling up their emotions until they just totally flow out. I've seen this happen more times in real life than I have ever seen it in a movie, and would be (to me) much more realistic than a character having a tantrum.

 

[Seth Paxton]

Well, I'm not sure what the problem is with Metropolis. I realize the movie is new and all, but I think it's an absolutely brilliant piece of visual work.

That's exactly why I compared its ranking to the other 2002 films. It's not just getting dissed for newness (heck, that's a helpful thing for this list it seems). I can't imagine what someone sees when ranking it lower than anything besides Metropolis.

Lilo was a nice film, but Metropolis was more beautiful and a fascinating interpretation of the story. Spirit was manipulative pop crap, and computer work doesn't make a film beautiful by itself. The Bryan Adams songs didn't help.

Spirit is immediately forgettable, just like Jimmy Neutron was last year. I mean, while Final Fantasy was flawed as a film, as animation is was incredible to look at, so its placement makes sense. But some of these others are just carbon copies of other films, yet done with less imagination (no Lion King cracks please ).

I don't need everything to be edgy (anime) or cute (Disney). And I can appreciate rotoscoping as a method because it does create fascinating looking art.

Seriously, it almost seems like they could barely scrape together 100 films considering some of the stuff on the list.

 

[Edwin-S]

I'm sorry to sound rude when I say this, but prove it.
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If I felt like taking the time to do it....I would. However, I see no reason to have to prove the obvious. It would be a fool's errand anyway. Nothing I could produce would convince you, when there is plenty of evidence right in front of you and it still fails to convince you.
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Disney usually does typically skew their films towards kids, you can't deny it.
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I cannot deny your statement about Disney flicks, but somehow I have to "prove" that anime is aimed at a certain demographic. That is too funny for words. I do not deny that Disney animated movies are aimed at kids as part of their targeted audience. I do deny that they are aimed "solely" at kids which has been the basis of a lot of your arguments; because, if they were skewed primarily to pre-teen kids.....an adult couldn't handle watching them.....period.

I will modify my statement. The makers of anime are slanting mostly for an audience of 13-26 year olds but the films/TV series are not solely aimed at that demographic. Anime can, and is, watched by many different age groups.