- Akira (1988)
IMBD rating: 8
Genre: Animation/Sci-fi
Duration: 2h 6m
Director: Katsuhiro Otomo
Akira is fun, intriguing, violent and original. The story is complex and condensed for the sake of the movie and as such hard to understand. It certainly takes some background reading and investigation and multiple viewing before it begins to make sense. It still holds up, One has to watch it more than once to get it.
- Summer wars (2009)
IMBD rating: 7.5
Genre: Animation/Sci-fi
Duration: 1h 54m
Director: Mamoru Hosoda
It has good animation, a really cute story and features a cyber battle between a Japanese family and a malicious A.I. inside something that can be seen as the future of Facebook. The latter involves a facebook-meets-second-life-meets-everything-else-on- the-internet entity that gets hacked. The two sections are beautifully integrated into a single, fantastic movie. The film shows traditional family values which are mixed with modern views of the world, a beautiful countryside scenery is mixed with the virtual cyber world of OZ. There are both moral values to be learned from the story as well as the excitement of a crisis and how giving your best can get one past it.
- When Marnie Was There (2014)
IMBD rating: 7.7
Genre: Animation/ Family
Duration: 1h 43m
Director: Hiromasa Yonebayashi
It was a great movie, and an amazing story about a lonely foster kid whose angry at the world, but befriends a mysterious girl that changes her life forever. From the beginning to the ending, the movie is breathtaking and beautiful to the fullest. The animation, the soundtrack, the voice acting everything.
- The Girl who Leapt Through Time (2006)
IMBD rating: 7.7
Genre: Animation/Sci-fi
Duration: 1h 44m
Director: Mamoru Hosoda
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time tells a wonderful story centered on 3 friends, the tomboyish and clumsy Makoto Konono, and two hunks Chiaki Mamiya and Kousuke Tsuda. Their is a friendship formed after school at the baseball court where they spend quality time talking about typical teenage stuff. Things start to change however, when Makoto by accident gets the power to time travel, and in her own ditzy way, uses her new found abilities for "good" - directly for herself to influence the outcome of relationships for her friends and play matchmaker.
- Wolf Children (2012)
IMBD rating: 8.1
Genre: Animation/Fantasy
Duration: 1h 57m
Director: Mamoru Hosoda
After her werewolf lover unexpectedly dies in an accident while hunting for food for their children, a young woman find ways to raise the werewolf son and daughter that she had with him while keeping their trait hidden from society. The movie is constantly moving, but in a quiet way. It touches your heart, not with big moments, but with small ones. It is a movie about love of all kinds, and while it is admittedly an idealized version of love, a story of the sort of unselfish, uncomplicated love that only exists consistently in movies, it is truly lovely.
- Perfect Blue (1997)
IMBD rating: 8
Genre: Animation/Thriller
Duration: 1h 30m
Director: Satoshi Kon
The movie starts like any teen/young adult anime, but the twists and turns make it incredibly unsettling as time goes on. It's gory, creepy, paranoid, and explicit. Perfect Blue doesn't sugarcoat stalkers and the hardships that come with being a celebrity, especially when going through a career change. I'd say the first half of the film focuses more on the way Mima deals with leaving her pop idol days behind, fact that damages her mental health and makes the main action of the movie start.
- The Garden of Words (2013)
IMBD rating: 7.5
Genre: Animation/Drama
Duration: 46m
Director: Makoto Shinkai
The animation is beautiful and the way the story is executed is superb. The artwork and animation is just breathtaking. The landscapes and city scenes are almost photo realistic, attention being given to the tiniest of details. The refined use of environment and ambient effects (sound, music, weather etc) contribute greatly to the film's story. There isn't much to say about how Makoto does it and if you're going to like the style but give it a watch and you'll know.
- Your name (2016)
IMBD rating: 8.4
Genre: Animation/Romace
Duration: 1h 52m
Director: Makoto Shinkai
It's a journey in a world breathing with atmosphere, mystery, and visual wonder. A journey about growth and resilience in the face of overwhelming odds. A journey about human emotion that transcends space and time, as we watch our two protagonists struggle relentlessly against fate and the animation is gorgeous.
- Grave of the fireflies (1988)
IMBD rating: 8.5
Genre: Animation/War
Duration: 1h 33m
Director: Isao Takahata
"Grave of the Fireflies" is one of the most ambitious, depressing, and quite frankly, best films that I've ever seen. I was nearly moved to tears by this film's brave treatment of such critical subject matter. It's an animated film set in Japan during the closing days of World War II. Two children; a boy named Seita and his much younger sister Setsuko. The film starts with the children and their mother preparing for the attack, then follows the children as they attempt to survive the death of their mother, and the possible death of their father.
1. Spirited way (2001)
IMBD rating: 8.6
Genre: Animation/Fantasy
Duration: 2h 5m
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
In Hayao Miyazaki's Oscar-winning animated feature, `Spirited Away,' a young girl by the name of Chihiro and her parents stumble across an abandoned `amusement park' that turns out to be a mysterious bathhouse for the spirit world. After her parents are turned into pigs, the young girl must infiltrate the bathhouse to find a way to make them human again. Chihiro encounters an amazing array of strange and exotic creatures abiding there, some of whom help her in her quest and some of whom don't.
