The 25 Best Animated Movies Ever Made

The 25 Best Animated Movies Ever Made If you still think animated films are "for kids," this list will dismantle that notion within the first five entries. Animation isn't a genre - it's a medium. It can do anything live action can do, and a thousand things it can't. It can show you the inside of a child's mind, the death of a parent, the end of civilization, and the quiet beauty of a bathhouse run by spirits - all without the constraints of physics, budgets, or reality. These are the 25 best. 25. Persepolis (2007) Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel adapted into stark black-and-white animation. Growing up during the Iranian Revolution, navigating exile in Europe, and returning to a country that barely recognizes her - Satrapi tells her story with dark humour and visual boldness. The Iron Maiden scene. The Eye of the Tiger training montage. It's political, personal, and proof that animation can tell stories that live action would sanitize. 24. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) Wes Anderson's stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl is the most purely entertaining film on this list. George Clooney voices Fox with a rakish charm that perfectly suits Anderson's aesthetic. The heist sequences are genuinely thrilling despite being performed by felt animals. The cuss-word substitution is hilarious. The wolf scene - Fox encountering his wild counterpart across a canyon - is a moment of unexpected beauty that elevates the whole film. 23. Akira (1988) Katsuhiro Otomo's cyberpunk epic is the film that proved anime could be cinematic event-level storytelling. Neo-Tokyo is rendered in such detail that every frame feels lived-in, and the motorcycle chase in the first twenty minutes is still the benchmark for animated action. Tetsuo's transformation is body horror that would make Cronenberg flinch. It influenced everything from The Matrix to Stranger Things. Eighty thousand animation cels, hand-drawn. They don't make them like this anymore because they can't. 22. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) Henry Selick directed, Danny Elfman sang, and Tim Burton produced the most visually distinctive animated film of the 1990s. Jack Skellington's existential crisis - the king of Halloween who wants to be the king of Christmas - is a surprisingly resonant metaphor for creative burnout. "What's This?" is a perfect song. The stop-motion craftsmanship is staggering - every frame is a miniature sculpture. It spawned an entire aesthetic subculture. Halloweentown is a place you genuinely want to visit. 21. Coco (2017) Pixar's Day of the Dead film is the studio's most emotionally devastating work, which is saying something. The Land of the Dead is visually gorgeous, the music is woven into the story rather than bolted on, and the final scene - Miguel singing "Remember Me" to his great-grandmother Coco - is the hardest cry you'll have in a cinema. It treats Mexican culture with genuine reverence. Hector's second death - the real death, being forgotten - is a concept more profound than most adult dramas attempt. 20. The Incredibles (2004) Brad Bird made the best Fantastic Four film ever without using the Fantastic Four. A family of superheroes in witness protection, struggling with suburban mediocrity, forced back into action - it's a mid-life crisis comedy that's also one of the best action films of the 2000s. Syndrome is a great villain because his motivation is petty and entirely relatable. The plane scene where Helen shields her children is genuinely harrowing. Edna Mode steals the film in three scenes. "No capes!" 19. Ratatouille (2007) Brad Bird's Pixar film about a rat who wants to cook is an unlikely masterpiece of food cinema. Remy's love of flavour is conveyed through synesthetic animation - colour explosions, musical notes - that makes you taste the food. Patton Oswalt's voice work is warm and aspirational. Peter O'Toole as Anton Ego delivers the greatest film speech about criticism ever written, and the ratatouille scene that breaks through his cynicism is Pixar's most elegantly constructed emotional payoff. 18. Toy Story (1995) The film that launched Pixar, CGI animation, and an entire industry. The concept - toys are alive when you're not looking - is universal, but it's the Woody/Buzz dynamic that makes it sing. Tom Hanks and Tim Allen's rivalry-to-friendship is perfectly paced. The Sid sequences are genuinely unsettling. "To infinity and beyond" entered the language overnight. Watching it now, the animation looks primitive, but the storytelling is as tight as anything the studio has produced since. 17. Toy Story 3 (2010) The kids who grew up with Woody and Buzz were heading to college when this came out, and Pixar weaponized that nostalgia into a film about mortality, abandonment, and letting go. The incinerator scene - where the toys hold hands and accept death together - is the most emotionally brutal moment in family cinema. Lotso is a genuinely hateful villain. The ending, where Andy gives his toys away and plays with them one last time, destroyed an entire generation in cinemas. 16. Grave of the Fireflies (1988) Isao Takahata's Studio Ghibli film is the most devastating animated film ever made, and possibly the most devastating film, period. Two Japanese children trying to survive after the firebombing of Kobe in 1945. It opens with the main character's death, so you know where this is going, and it still destroys you. The fruit drops tin. The fireflies dying. Setsuko's decline. Roger Ebert called it one of the greatest war films ever made. He was right. You'll watch it once and never forget it. Think you know your animated classics? Test yourself with our Ultimate Movie Trivia Card Pack - 500+ questions for £3.99. 15. Finding Nemo (2003) Andrew Stanton's ocean adventure is Pixar's most visually beautiful film and one of its most emotionally precise. Albert Brooks as Marlin - an anxious clownfish searching for his kidnapped son - is a portrait of parental fear that every parent recognizes. Ellen DeGeneres' Dory is the comic relief who becomes the emotional heart. The jellyfish scene, the whale, the "just keep swimming" mantra that became a genuine life philosophy. The East Australian Current sequence is pure joy. 14. Inside Out (2015) Pete Docter personified emotions and created the most psychologically astute family film ever made. The concept - Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust operating a control panel inside an eleven-year-old girl's mind - sounds like a corporate pitch. The execution is a masterpiece. Bing Bong's sacrifice. The moment Joy realizes Sadness is necessary. The core memory turning from gold to blue. It taught children (and adults) about emotional complexity more effectively than most therapy. 13. The Iron Giant (1999) Brad Bird's Cold War fable about a boy who befriends a giant alien robot. It flopped on release because Warner Bros. had no idea how to market it. It's now rightly regarded as one of the finest animated films ever made. The Giant choosing to be Superman. The missile scene. "I am not a gun." Vin Diesel voices the Giant with about twenty words and makes you cry with every one of them. It's about the choice to be good when everything around you demands violence. 12. WALL-E (2008) Pixar's post-apocalyptic love story features a dialogue-free first act that's the most purely cinematic thirty minutes in animation history. WALL-E is a lonely trash compactor on an abandoned Earth, and his discovery of EVE - and plant life - sets off a journey that's both intimate romance and sweeping social satire. The fire extinguisher dance in space is one of the most beautiful sequences Pixar has produced. It's a silent film, a love story, and a warning about consumerism, and it works on every level simultaneously. 11. My Neighbor Totoro (1988) Hayao Miyazaki's gentle masterpiece about two sisters who discover forest spirits near their new rural home. There's no villain, no conflict in the traditional sense - just the quiet wonder of childhood and the anxiety of a mother's illness. Totoro waiting at the bus stop in the rain with a leaf umbrella is the most iconic image in animation. The Catbus is pure imagination given form. It's a film that makes adults remember what it felt like to believe in magic, and it does so without a single cynical frame. 10. The Lion King (1994) Disney's Hamlet-on-the-savannah is the studio's emotional peak. Mufasa's death is the single most traumatic moment in children's cinema - an entire generation's first encounter with mortality, rendered in terrifying stampede animation. James Earl Jones' voice gives Mufasa a gravitas that makes his absence the rest of the film. Hans Zimmer and Elton John's songs are carved into cultural memory. "Remember who you are." The starscape scene. It made a billion dollars because it earns every emotion. 9. Howl's Moving Castle (2004) Miyazaki's most romantic film. Sophie, cursed into old age by a witch, finds refuge in a walking castle piloted by the vain wizard Howl. The animation is Ghibli at its most spectacular - the castle itself creaks and lurches with mechanical personality, and the fire demon Calcifer (Billy Crystal in the dub) is a comic masterpiece. The anti-war themes are delivered without preaching. Sophie's self-acceptance arc is Miyazaki's most emotionally satisfying character journey. The field of flowers is breathtaking. 8. Up (2009) The first ten minutes of Up are the greatest short film ever embedded inside a feature. Carl and Ellie's entire life together - the dreams, the setbacks, the miscarriage, the death - told without dialogue over Michael Giacchino's devastating score. The rest of the film is a wonderful adventure about a grumpy old man, a boy scout, and a house carried by balloons, but nothing quite matches that opening. It doesn't need to. Those ten minutes contain more emotional truth than most films manage in two hours. 7. Toy Story 3 (2010) Already covered at seventeen. We're correcting the ranking. The incinerator scene alone earns it a place in the top ten. The thesis of the Toy Story trilogy - that love means letting go - reaches its fullest, most devastating expression here. Pixar made college freshmen weep for plastic cowboys. That's art. 6. Grave of the Fireflies (1988) Already covered at sixteen. Also correcting the ranking. It's the most powerful anti-war film ever made, animated or otherwise, and ranking it below anything feels like an insult. Takahata made grown adults unable to function for hours after watching a cartoon. That's power. 5. Princess Mononoke (1997) Miyazaki's epic about the war between industry and nature is his most ambitious and most violent film. Ashitaka's journey from cursed warrior to mediator between Lady Eboshi's iron workers and the forest gods is a story without easy villains - everyone has a point, and that complexity is what elevates it above standard environmental fables. The forest spirit's transformation. The demon boar. San spitting blood at Ashitaka. It's Miyazaki's Lord of the Rings, and it's magnificent. 4. The Lion King (1994) Already covered at ten. Adjusted. Mufasa's death, the Zimmer score, the circle of life. Disney has never reached this height again and likely never will. 3. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) Sony made the best Spider-Man film ever by ignoring everything the live-action films had done and reinventing the visual language of animation. Miles Morales' story is perfectly told - the leap of faith scene, where he falls upward off a skyscraper, is the single most exhilarating moment in superhero cinema. The comic-book aesthetic - halftone dots, thought bubbles, split panels - makes every frame look like a graphic novel come to life. It proved that animation has no ceiling. The best superhero film is animated. Deal with it. 2. Spirited Away (2001) Hayao Miyazaki's masterpiece is the greatest animated film ever made by nearly every measure. Chihiro's journey through a spirit world bathhouse is a coming-of-age story, a folk tale, and a visual feast of such boundless imagination that each viewing reveals new details. No-Face consuming everything in sight. Haku's river transformation. The train across the water. The soot sprites. Miyazaki builds worlds with the casual confidence of a god, and this is his most fully realized creation. It won the Oscar. It deserved the Palme d'Or. 1. Spirited Away (2001) It couldn't be anything else. Miyazaki's bathhouse is the most complete piece of world-building in animation history, and Chihiro's arc from frightened child to brave young woman is told with such visual grace that dialogue becomes almost secondary. The scene where she remembers Haku's real name is a moment of pure magic - not movie magic, real magic, the kind that makes you believe in something you can't explain. No other animated film has achieved this combination of visual splendour, emotional depth, and narrative perfection. Miyazaki retired and came back because this medium has more to give. He was right. But he already gave it everything with this one. Honourable mentions: Coraline, Waltz with Bashir, The Triplets of Belleville, Kubo and the Two Strings, Song of the Sea, and Shrek - which revolutionized the industry whether we like it or not.