The best animated movies for adults: 12 films that prove animation is not just for kids

Pioneers (1973 to 1997)

These films established that feature animation could be as serious and strange as any live-action art film.

• Fantastic Planet (1973): René Laloux's surreal allegory shows humans kept as animals by giant aliens. It won a special jury prize at Cannes and was animated in Prague.
• Akira (1988): Katsuhiro Otomo adapted his own manga into a cyberpunk story of a biker whose friend gains devastating psychic powers in Neo-Tokyo. Its score draws on Indonesian gamelan and Japanese noh.
• Grave of the Fireflies (1988): Isao Takahata's Studio Ghibli film follows two orphaned siblings struggling to survive after the firebombing of Kobe. It is based on Akiyuki Nosaka's semi-autobiographical story.
• Perfect Blue (1997): Satoshi Kon's psychological thriller follows a pop idol turned actress who is stalked as her grip on reality slips. It is a key influence on later films about identity and fame.
• Princess Mononoke (1997): Hayao Miyazaki's historical fantasy sets a cursed prince between a mining town and the gods of the forest, refusing to make either side simply evil.

Personal stories (2001 to 2009)

These films turned animation toward memoir and philosophy.

• Waking Life (2001): Richard Linklater shot on digital video and rotoscoped the footage into a drifting dream full of philosophical conversations about reality, free will and consciousness.
• Persepolis (2007): Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud adapted her graphic memoir about growing up during the Iranian Revolution. It shared the Cannes Jury Prize, and Satrapi became the first woman nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar.
• Waltz with Bashir (2008): Ari Folman's animated documentary recovers his lost memories of the 1982 Lebanon War and the Sabra and Shatila massacre. It competed for the Palme d'Or.
• Mary and Max (2009): Adam Elliot's clay animation follows pen pals, a lonely Australian girl and a middle-aged New Yorker with Asperger syndrome, voiced by Toni Collette and Philip Seymour Hoffman. It was inspired by Elliot's own long friendship by letter.

Modern highlights (2015 to 2021)

Recent adult animation has pushed into stop-motion intimacy and documentary.

• Anomalisa (2015): Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson's stop-motion film follows a man who hears everyone with the same voice, until he meets Lisa. It explores the Fregoli delusion.
• I Lost My Body (2019): Jérémy Clapin's French film follows a severed hand searching for its owner. It was the first animated film to win the Critics' Week grand prize at Cannes and was nominated for the Oscar.
• Flee (2021): Jonas Poher Rasmussen animates his friend's account of fleeing Afghanistan for Denmark, protecting his identity under an alias. It won the World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.

How we chose the best animated movies for adults

Every film here was made with adult audiences in mind, either through mature subject matter or through form, such as documentary or philosophical essay. We included a mix of countries and techniques, from hand-drawn Japanese animation to rotoscoping and stop-motion, and favoured films recognised at major festivals or by critics. They are listed chronologically, not ranked.

Where to start

For a first step, Persepolis and Princess Mononoke are approachable and rewarding. If you want something that will stay with you for days, Grave of the Fireflies and Waltz with Bashir are among the most powerful films about war in any medium.

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