Best Anime Films for People Who Don't Watch Anime

Start with Spirited Away. It is two hours, it needs no glossary, and if it does nothing for you then anime as a whole is probably not your thing and you can stop reading here with a clear conscience. If it does something, the other seven films below are sorted by what you already like at the cinema: a big romance, a film that hurts, something strange, an epic.

None of these is a spin-off or a season recap. Each is a complete film that was made to be watched cold.

If you only watch one

The one to start with Spirited Away

• One film
• 125 minutes

A ten-year-old takes a job at a bathhouse for gods to get her parents back. Discovery over explanation.

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Chihiro’s parents turn into pigs in the first ten minutes and the film never pauses to justify it. What follows is a workplace story: a girl scrubs floors, learns the rules of a bathhouse for spirits, and slowly becomes competent. The set piece with the stink spirit in the big tub is one of the great sequences in animation, and the train ride across flooded fields is the moment people remember twenty years later.

It is a fairy tale, and fairy tales frighten children. No-Face is unsettling, and a boy bleeds. Expect wonder, not sweetness.

If you like a big romantic swing

For a romance with a twist Your Name.

• One film
• about 106 minutes

A boy in Tokyo and a girl in a mountain town keep waking up in each other's bodies. Then the plot arrives.

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Mitsuha wants to be a Tokyo boy in her next life. Taki is a Tokyo boy. Your Name. spends its first act on body-swap comedy, with each of them leaving phone notes and scolding the other for spending money, and then turns into something with a much longer reach. Makoto Shinkai’s skies and cityscapes are photographed rather than drawn, and the pop soundtrack by Radwimps is doing a lot of the emotional lifting. Let it.

This was one of the highest-grossing films ever made in Japan and it earned that by being a crowd-pleaser. If you want a smaller, sadder Shinkai, The Garden of Words is 46 minutes.

For a family story Wolf Children

• One film
• 117 minutes

A student falls for a man who is also a wolf, then raises their two children alone in the countryside.

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Hana is a university student when she meets him. Thirteen years later she is repairing a farmhouse with two children who sprout ears when they sulk. Wolf Children is about parenting, and specifically about letting children become people you did not plan for. The snow-day sequence, when Ame and Yuki tear through a forest as wolves for the first time, is pure joy; the ending is quieter and earns it.

Mamoru Hosoda’s films are the safest recommendation for a family evening, and this one has a proper English dub as well as the Japanese track.

If you like films that hurt a little

For discomfort with a purpose A Silent Voice

• One film
• 130 minutes

A former bully tries to make amends to the deaf classmate he tormented. Nobody in it is easy to like at first.

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Shoya was the loudest bully in his primary-school class when Shoko arrived with a notebook to write her side of conversations. Years later he cannot look people in the face, and the film draws literal crosses over the faces he avoids. A Silent Voice is about the mechanics of apology: what you owe, what you cannot undo, and whether being forgiven is even the point. Kyoto Animation’s character work is so precise you can read a lie in a shoulder.

Content note: suicidal thoughts and a suicide attempt are central to the story. It is a film about surviving them, handled with care, but go in knowing.

For a Christmas film with teeth Tokyo Godfathers

• One film
• 92 minutes

Three homeless people find a baby on Christmas Eve and set out to return her. A comedy, mostly.

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Gin is a drunk with a lie about a past life as a cyclist. Hana is a trans woman and former club singer who wants the baby to be hers. Miyuki is a teenage runaway. Satoshi Kon’s most approachable film follows the three of them across a snowbound Tokyo on a chain of coincidences the film openly calls miracles. It is funny, it is angry about how the city treats them, and it ends with a gust of wind that makes people cheer.

Ninety-two minutes. If you have ever found animated films too tidy, this is the one that argues back.

If you like something strange

For a thriller that gets under the skin Perfect Blue

• One film
• 81 minutes

A pop idol quits to act, a stalker builds a website in her voice, and reality stops holding still.

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Mima leaves her idol group to take a part in a crime drama, and someone online is writing a diary in her name that knows what she ate for breakfast. Perfect Blue was made in 1997 and predicted internet parasocial culture with a precision that is hard to watch. Kon cuts between the television show Mima is filming and her life until you lose the seam, which is the point.

Content note: a rape scene staged for the in-film drama, stalking, and graphic violence. Eighty-one minutes, and you will want to talk to someone afterwards.

For the film lover Millennium Actress

• One film
• 87 minutes

A documentary crew interviews a retired star, and her memories start playing out around them.

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Chiyoko chased a man she met once through decades of Japanese film history, and every role she took was a version of the chase. Kon’s second film has the interviewer and his cameraman running through samurai epics, wartime melodrama, and science fiction alongside her, occasionally taking a hit for the heroine. It is a love letter to cinema that never asks you to know the references. If Perfect Blue is Kon at his coldest, this is him at his warmest, and both are under 90 minutes.

If you want an epic

For scale Princess Mononoke

• One film
• 134 minutes

A cursed prince walks into a war between a forest's gods and an ironworks run by a woman who takes in lepers. Nobody is the villain.

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Ashitaka kills a boar god to save his village and takes its curse in his arm. He rides west to find a cure and finds Irontown, where Lady Eboshi has built a town that makes guns and gives outcasts work, and San, a girl raised by wolves who wants Eboshi dead. Miyazaki refuses to pick a side, and the film is about what that refusal costs. The battle scenes are brutal by Ghibli standards: arrows take arms off.

At 134 minutes it is the longest film here, and it earns the length. Watch it after Spirited Away rather than before; it is the harder film.

Which film for which evening

Sub, dub, and what to watch next

All eight have English dubs, and for Ghibli films the dubs were cast with unusual care. Our sub or dub guide explains how to test both on the same scene rather than committing blind. When one of these lands, where to start with anime turns the film you liked into a first series, and the weekend guide lists short series that finish inside five hours.