Let's be honest: some of the best movies ever made happen to be animated. Not "best animated movies" — best movies, full stop. The ones that make you cry on a Tuesday afternoon rewatching them "for the kids." The ones that tackle grief, identity, war, love, and the passage of time in ways live-action films rarely manage. The ones you think about for days after the credits roll.
Animation has never been a genre — it's a medium, and a spectacularly versatile one. From hand-drawn Japanese masterpieces to hyper-stylized graphic novel adaptations to quiet European fables, animated films have explored the full range of human experience with a depth and sincerity that frequently surpasses their live-action counterparts. We reviewed dozens of animated films through the lens of adult viewers — weighing thematic complexity, emotional resonance, storytelling craft, visual artistry, and that elusive quality of staying with you long after you've watched — to bring you ten that every grown-up should see, regardless of whether there's a child in the house.
Spirited Away (2001) – Best for viewers who want a visually boundless, emotionally layered masterpiece
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) – Best for a visually revolutionary, emotionally resonant superhero story
The Lion King (1994) – Best for timeless Shakespearean storytelling and iconic musical craft
Persepolis (2007) – Best for adults seeking a powerful, autobiographical story of war and identity
WALL-E (2008) – Best for quiet, visual storytelling with surprisingly deep environmental and human themes
Princess Mononoke (1997) – Best for morally complex, mythological epic storytelling
Coco (2017) – Best for a deeply moving exploration of family, memory, and cultural legacy
Grave of the Fireflies (1988) – Best for a devastating, essential anti-war film experience
The Triplets of Belleville (2003) – Best for fans of eccentric, nearly wordless European cinema
Anomalisa (2015) – Best for adults who want stop-motion animation used to explore loneliness and connection
What It Is & Who It's Best For
Hayao Miyazaki's Academy Award-winning masterpiece follows 10-year-old Chihiro, who becomes trapped in a mysterious spirit world after her parents are transformed into pigs, and must work in a fantastical bathhouse to find a way home. On the surface it's a child's adventure; underneath it's a story about identity, labor, greed, environmentalism, and the terrifying process of growing up and finding your place in a world that doesn't seem designed for you. It's for any adult who believes cinema can be genuinely transcendent.
Key Features & Differentiators
What makes Spirited Away extraordinary isn't any single element — it's the totality. Every frame contains more imaginative detail than most films put into their entire runtime. The spirit world Miyazaki creates feels genuinely ancient and alive, populated by creatures that seem to have existed long before the film began and will continue long after it ends. The emotional arc — Chihiro moving from a frightened, passive child to a capable, compassionate young person — lands with cumulative force that sneaks up on you. It remains the only non-English-language animated film to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
Streaming/Availability: HBO Max; physical media widely available.
Runtime: 125 minutes
Rating: PG
Pros:
Considered by many critics the greatest animated film ever made — and it's hard to argue
Visual imagination that rewards repeated viewings — new details surface every time
Thematic depth operates equally for children and adults, but differently
Hand-drawn animation of extraordinary beauty and fluidity
Emotionally resonant without being manipulative — earns every feeling
Cons:
Deliberately non-linear, dream-logic narrative may frustrate viewers expecting conventional story structure
Pacing is slower than Western animation — requires patience and immersion
Some imagery (the spirit creatures, the transformation scenes) may disturb sensitive younger viewers
What It Is & Who It's Best For
Into the Spider-Verse follows Miles Morales — a Brooklyn teenager who becomes Spider-Man after the death of Peter Parker — as multiple Spider-People from parallel universes converge in his world. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and is widely credited with changing what audiences and filmmakers believe animation can visually achieve. It's best for adults who think they've seen everything the superhero genre has to offer and need to be reminded that genuine creative ambition still exists within it.
Key Features & Differentiators
The animation style is the film's most immediately striking feature — it deliberately mimics the texture and printing errors of comic book pages (Ben-Day dots, misregistered colors, hand-lettered sound effects integrated into the frame) in a way that feels simultaneously nostalgic and completely fresh. But beneath the visual fireworks is a genuinely moving story about legacy, expectation, grief, and what it means to step into a role you feel completely unqualified for — themes that resonate far more with adults than with children. Miles Morales is one of the most fully realized protagonists in superhero cinema.
Streaming/Availability: Netflix, digital rental/purchase.
Runtime: 117 minutes
Rating: PG
Pros:
Legitimately changed the visual language of animation — nothing looked like this before it
Miles Morales is a character with rare depth and genuine emotional specificity
Laugh-out-loud funny in ways that don't undercut the emotional weight
Rewards multiple viewings — background details, Easter eggs, and visual gags are layered throughout
The multiverse concept handled with creativity and purpose, not franchise obligation
Cons:
Sequel (Across the Spider-Verse) raises the bar even higher — you'll want to watch it immediately after
Fast-paced visual style can feel overwhelming on first viewing — a second watch is recommended
Some Spider-People supporting characters are underserved by the runtime
What It Is & Who It's Best For
The Lion King is Disney's most structurally ambitious animated film — a loose adaptation of Hamlet set on the African savanna, following young Simba from the trauma of his father's murder through exile, self-discovery, and the eventual reckoning with his destiny. It's best for adults who want to revisit a childhood favorite and discover how much was operating above their heads the first time — the Shakespearean tragedy at its core, the Hans Zimmer score, and the surprisingly dark emotional territory it covers without flinching.
Key Features & Differentiators
The opening sequence — "Circle of Life" building from a single sunrise to the full assembly of the animal kingdom at Pride Rock — remains one of the most technically and emotionally impactful openings in cinema history, animated or otherwise. The villain Scar is one of the great animated antagonists: theatrical, intelligent, and genuinely menacing in a way that goes well beyond cartoon villainy. The middle section of the film — Simba's exile, his friendship with Timon and Pumbaa, and the haunting "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" — balances grief with genuine tenderness that only becomes more resonant with adult eyes.
Streaming/Availability: Disney+.
Runtime: 88 minutes
Rating: G
Pros:
Hans Zimmer's score combined with Elton John's songs is one of cinema's great soundtracks
Scar remains one of the most compelling animated villains ever conceived
Deceptively sophisticated Shakespearean structure holds up to adult analysis
Mufasa's death sequence hits harder, not lighter, with every rewatch
88-minute runtime — perfectly paced with zero padding
Cons:
The 2019 CGI remake may have diluted the original's emotional impact for some viewers — watch the original
Timon and Pumbaa's comic relief sections occasionally undercut the film's tonal weight
Some cultural specificity concerns have been raised about the African setting and representation
What It Is & Who It's Best For
Persepolis is the animated adaptation of Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel about growing up in Iran during and after the Islamic Revolution, her years in exile in Vienna, and her eventual return to Tehran. Rendered in stark, striking black-and-white animation that mirrors the graphic novel's visual language, it's one of the most honest, funny, heartbreaking, and politically significant animated films ever made. It's best for adults who read serious literary fiction and want a film that operates at the same level.
Key Features & Differentiators
What distinguishes Persepolis from every other film on this list is its specificity. This is not a generalized story about displacement or war — it's one woman's particular experience, told with the unflinching honesty and dark humor of someone who survived it. The animation style — minimal, high-contrast, expressionistic — isn't a limitation but a choice that gives the film a visual identity as distinctive as its voice. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and won the Jury Prize at Cannes. It is, quietly, one of the great coming-of-age stories in any medium.
Streaming/Availability: Available for digital rental/purchase; physical media widely available.
Runtime: 96 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Pros:
One of the most politically and historically significant animated films ever made
Dark humor and emotional honesty operate simultaneously without tension
Satrapi's voice — witty, furious, grief-stricken, resilient — is utterly distinctive
Black-and-white animation is visually stunning and thematically purposeful
Expands understanding of Iranian history and culture through deeply personal storytelling
Cons:
Heavier thematic content — war, political oppression, loss — than most animated films
Black-and-white, minimalist visual style may not engage viewers expecting colorful animation
Less accessible to younger viewers — firmly an adult film despite its animated format
What It Is & Who It's Best For
WALL-E is Pixar's most formally daring film — its first 40 minutes contain virtually no dialogue, relying entirely on visual storytelling, sound design, and the expressive mechanical performance of its robot protagonist to establish character, world, and stakes. It follows WALL-E, a small trash-compacting robot left alone on an abandoned Earth, who falls in love with EVE, a sleek robot sent to probe for signs of life. It's best for adults who appreciate restraint, visual craft, and a film willing to trust its audience's patience.
Key Features & Differentiators
The near-silent opening act is a masterclass in visual storytelling — communicating seven centuries of human abandonment through environmental detail alone. When the film shifts to the Axiom spaceship and satirizes consumer culture, sedentary living, and corporate dependency, it does so with a lightness that makes the critique land as warmth rather than lecture. The love story between WALL-E and EVE — told entirely through gesture and sound — is more genuinely romantic than most live-action romance films. Roger Ebert called it "a great film" without qualification, and he was right.
Streaming/Availability: Disney+.
Runtime: 98 minutes
Rating: G
Pros:
The near-dialogue-free opening sequence is among the greatest in Pixar's catalog
Environmental and consumerism themes handled with wit rather than didacticism
WALL-E and EVE's romance is genuinely, surprisingly moving
Sound design (by Ben Burtt, who created R2-D2's voice) is extraordinary and character-defining
Rewards repeated viewing — visual gags and background details accumulate on rewatch
Cons:
Satirical second half is noticeably less subtle than the near-perfect opening act
Human characters in the Axiom section are thinly drawn compared to the robots
Some viewers find the environmental messaging heavy-handed in retrospect
What It Is & Who It's Best For
Princess Mononoke is the film that established Miyazaki's reputation outside Japan — a sweeping, morally complex epic set in feudal Japan, where a young warrior named Ashitaka becomes caught between an industrial mining settlement and the ancient forest gods it's destroying. It's best for adults who want animation that refuses to simplify — a film with no true villains, no easy resolutions, and an emotional seriousness that places it in the company of the great historical epics of live-action cinema.
Key Features & Differentiators
What sets Princess Mononoke apart from virtually every other animated film — and most live-action films — is its moral refusal. The human characters destroying the forest are not evil; they're desperate, pragmatic people trying to survive in a brutal world. The forest gods are not simply good; they are ancient and indifferent and terrifying. Ashitaka, positioned between both worlds, finds no clean answer — and the film doesn't manufacture one. This is genuinely rare in any genre. The battle sequences are visceral and consequence-laden in a way that earned the film a PG-13 rating and permanently expanded what animation could depict.
Streaming/Availability: Max; physical media widely available.
Runtime: 134 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Pros:
Moral complexity that surpasses most live-action epic films
Visually spectacular hand-drawn animation at the peak of Studio Ghibli's craft
Female characters (San, Lady Eboshi) are among the strongest in animated film history
Environmental themes feel more urgent today than when the film was made
No easy answers — respects adult intelligence in a way Hollywood animation rarely does
Cons:
PG-13 content (violence, disturbing imagery) — not appropriate for young children
Lengthy runtime (134 minutes) and dense plot require full attention
Western viewers unfamiliar with Shinto mythology may miss layers of cultural context
What It Is & Who It's Best For
Coco follows Miguel, a 12-year-old Mexican boy passionate about music in a family that has banned it for generations, who accidentally crosses into the Land of the Dead on Día de los Muertos and must find his way home with the help of his ancestors. It's best for adults who want a film that treats its cultural source material with genuine reverence — and who want a story about family, memory, and what we owe the people who came before us that doesn't resolve those questions cheaply.
Key Features & Differentiators
The film's central insight — that the dead are truly gone only when the last living person who remembers them forgets them — is handled not as a cute animated concept but as a genuine meditation on grief, legacy, and the fragility of memory. The Día de los Muertos aesthetic is rendered with spectacular color and detail (Pixar conducted extensive research with Mexican cultural consultants), creating a Land of the Dead that feels like a real place rooted in real tradition rather than a generic fantasy world. The film's emotional climax, built around the song "Remember Me," is one of the most carefully constructed tearjerker sequences in Pixar's history — and it earns every tear.
Streaming/Availability: Disney+.
Runtime: 105 minutes
Rating: PG
Pros:
The most emotionally sophisticated treatment of death and memory in mainstream animation
Visually one of Pixar's most spectacular achievements — the Land of the Dead is extraordinary
Cultural specificity and research depth give it an authenticity that elevates every scene
"Remember Me" sequence is devastating in the best possible way
Handles dementia with unusual sensitivity and emotional accuracy for a family film
Cons:
The villain reveal in the third act is somewhat predictable by Pixar-mystery-film standards
Middle section moves slowly compared to the emotionally charged opening and finale
Requires some tissue preparation — adults cry at this film, reliably
What It Is & Who It's Best For
Grave of the Fireflies is a Studio Ghibli film released the same year as My Neighbor Totoro — and the two films could not be more different. Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Akiyuki Nosaka, it follows teenage Seita and his young sister Setsuko trying to survive in Japan in the final months of World War II, after their mother is killed in an American firebombing. It is one of the saddest films ever made — in any medium, in any genre. It's best for adults prepared for an emotionally devastating experience that has something important to say about the true cost of war on civilians.
Key Features & Differentiators
Roger Ebert included it in his "Great Movies" series and wrote that it is "an emotional experience so powerful that it forces a rethinking of animation." The film makes no heroes and no villains — only people trapped in the machinery of a catastrophe they did not choose. Seita's increasingly desperate attempts to protect Setsuko, and the film's unflinching depiction of malnutrition, displacement, and the indifference of wartime society to individual suffering, land with a cumulative weight that is genuinely difficult to carry. It is not a film you "enjoy" in the conventional sense — it's a film you experience, and it stays with you permanently.
Streaming/Availability: Max; physical media widely available.
Runtime: 89 minutes
Rating: Not Rated (equivalent to PG-13/R for thematic content)
Pros:
Widely considered one of the greatest anti-war films ever made — in any medium
Setsuko is one of the most heartbreaking characters in cinema history
Hand-drawn animation of quiet, tender beauty that makes the tragedy more acute
Absolutely essential viewing for understanding war's impact on civilians
Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" inclusion — a rare honor for an animated film
Cons:
Emotionally devastating — not appropriate for all moods or all viewers
The outcome is revealed in the opening minutes, creating unrelenting dread throughout
Not a film for casual viewing — requires emotional preparation and the right context
What It Is & Who It's Best For
The Triplets of Belleville is a French-Canadian animated film that follows an elderly woman, Madame Souza, who pursues the criminal gang that has kidnapped her grandson — a Tour de France cyclist — to a bizarre city that resembles a grotesquely exaggerated New York. It contains almost no dialogue, communicating entirely through extraordinarily expressive character animation, sound design, and one of the most inventive musical scores in cinema. It's best for adults who love offbeat, visually distinct art cinema and aren't looking for a conventional narrative.
Key Features & Differentiators
Sylvain Chomet's animation style is unlike anything else in this list — exaggerated, grotesque, and deeply French in its satirical sensibility. Characters have enormous feet, impossibly wide hips, and faces rendered with the expressionistic distortion of caricature pushed to its logical extreme. The film's vision of America (represented as "Belleville") as a city of morbidly obese consumers is wickedly funny and pointed without being sanctimonious. The Triplets themselves — three elderly jazz-age entertainers who now perform with kitchen implements — are among the most memorable supporting characters in animated film history. It was nominated for two Academy Awards including Best Animated Feature.
Streaming/Availability: Available for digital rental/purchase; physical media available.
Runtime: 80 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Pros:
Completely unique visual style — nothing else in animation looks or feels like this
Near-wordless storytelling is a masterclass in pure cinematic communication
Wickedly funny cultural satire without a single line of explanatory dialogue
Madame Souza is one of animation's great unsung heroes — determined, resourceful, indomitable
An 80-minute runtime that earns every one of its minutes
Cons:
Deeply eccentric — will not appeal to viewers expecting conventional narrative or warmth
Grotesque character design is intentional but genuinely off-putting for some viewers
Cult classic status means it lacks the cultural recognition of other films on this list
What It Is & Who It's Best For
Anomalisa is Charlie Kaufman's stop-motion film about Michael Stone — a customer service expert and author — who checks into a Cincinnati hotel for a conference and encounters a woman whose voice and face are somehow different from every other person he meets. It is the most formally and thematically unusual film on this list: an R-rated, deliberately paced, deeply uncomfortable exploration of depression, loneliness, and the way mental illness distorts perception of other people. It's best for adults who loved Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and want animation used as a vehicle for genuinely mature, literary themes.
Key Features & Differentiators
The film's central conceit — that every character except Michael and Lisa is voiced and animated with the same face and voice (Tom Noonan) — is not a quirk but the film's entire thesis about the depersonalization that accompanies severe depression and social disconnection. The stop-motion puppetry (by Starburns Industries) is stunning in its craft and deliberately uncanny — the characters' faces have visible seams, reminding you constantly that you're watching a constructed reality, which mirrors Michael's own constructed perception. The film contains the most intimate, realistically awkward romantic scene in animated film history. It is not for everyone — but for the right viewer, it is unforgettable.
Streaming/Availability: Available for digital rental/purchase; physical media available.
Runtime: 90 minutes
Rating: R
Pros:
The most formally daring use of animation as an adult literary medium on this list
Tom Noonan's performance (voicing every "other" character) is extraordinary in its monotony
Charlie Kaufman's writing treats emotional complexity with rare honesty and specificity
Stop-motion craft is meticulous and intentionally, powerfully uncanny
A film that genuinely couldn't be made in live-action — animation is the point, not the medium
Cons:
R-rated for nudity and sexual content — not appropriate for family viewing in any context
Deliberately slow and uncomfortable — not an enjoyable watch in a conventional sense
Kaufman's worldview is relentlessly solipsistic — some viewers find it too bleak to connect with
An adult animated film isn't simply one with mature content — it's one where the themes, emotional complexity, narrative sophistication, and visual artistry are primarily aimed at or fully accessible to grown-up viewers. The films on this list aren't adult because they contain violence or language — they're adult because they grapple with grief, war, identity, depression, memory, mortality, and moral ambiguity in ways that require lived experience to fully absorb. They use the freedom of animation — its ability to create worlds unconstrained by physical reality — to explore interior emotional states and speculative environments that live-action cinema struggles to render.
Emotional access: Animation creates a degree of emotional safety that live-action sometimes can't. A scene of grief or loss rendered in animation is often more affecting, not less — because the stylization allows you to feel without flinching.
Visual freedom: The best animated films create visual worlds of genuine imaginative richness — Miyazaki's spirit realm, the Land of the Dead in Coco, the comic-book dimension-hopping of Spider-Verse — that are simply impossible in live-action.
Global storytelling: Animation has been used as a serious adult art form in Japan, France, and elsewhere for decades — offering windows into cultures and experiences that Hollywood rarely provides.
Rewatchability: Great animated films contain more visual detail than a single viewing can absorb. Adult viewers who rewatch them regularly surface new layers of meaning and craft.
Tone and genre: The films on this list span from warm and joyful (Coco, Lion King) to devastating (Grave of the Fireflies) to eccentric (Triplets of Belleville) to genuinely uncomfortable (Anomalisa). Match the film to your mood and emotional bandwidth on the night.
Studio and director: Studio Ghibli (Miyazaki), Pixar at its peak, and independent auteurs like Kaufman and Chomet consistently produce the most adult-accessible animated films. These names are reliable quality signals.
Visual style: Hand-drawn animation (Ghibli, Lion King, Triplets), CGI (Spider-Verse, Pixar), and stop-motion (Anomalisa) offer genuinely different visual and emotional textures — explore across formats rather than defaulting to one.
Age ratings: PG and G ratings don't indicate shallow content — WALL-E (G) and Spirited Away (PG) are among the most thematically rich films on the list. Conversely, Anomalisa (R) is adult in the truest sense. Use ratings as a guide for content type, not quality.
Q: Are any of these films appropriate for children? A: Several are excellent for family viewing with the right age range. The Lion King, Spirited Away, WALL-E, Coco, and Spider-Verse all work brilliantly for older children (8+) alongside adults. Princess Mononoke and Grave of the Fireflies are rated PG-13 for good reason — the former has significant violence, the latter is deeply harrowing in ways that may disturb younger viewers. Persepolis covers war and political oppression best suited to teenagers. Anomalisa is strictly for adults.
Q: Where should a first-time adult animation viewer start? A: Start with either Spirited Away or Coco — both are visually stunning, emotionally generous, and accessible without requiring any prior context or genre familiarity. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is another excellent entry point for anyone who thinks animation is "just for kids." Any of these three films will likely recalibrate your sense of what animation can do within two hours.
Q: What makes Studio Ghibli films so consistently acclaimed? A: Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's co-founder Isao Takahata share a commitment to hand-drawn animation at the highest level of craft, an absolute refusal to simplify moral or emotional complexity for younger audiences, and a deep respect for the natural world that informs virtually every film they've made. Ghibli films also tend to center female protagonists with unusual agency and complexity, and to treat children as genuinely capable of processing difficult emotional experiences. The result is a body of work with no equivalent anywhere in world cinema.
Q: Is there a difference between watching animated films dubbed vs. with subtitles? A: For serious viewers, subtitles with the original language track are almost always preferable — particularly for Ghibli and Persepolis, where performance nuances and cultural specificity in the original language contribute meaningfully to the experience. That said, several films on this list have exceptional English dubs — the Disney/Pixar productions obviously, and the Studio Ghibli library has strong English voice casts (supervised by Disney). Persepolis was originally produced in both French and English simultaneously, making either version equally "authentic." Try the original language first when possible.
