All Recommendations
The Boy and the Beast
Kyuta, a boy living in Shibuya, and Kumatetsu, a lonesome beast from Jutengai, an imaginary world. One day, Kyuta forays into the imaginary world and, as he's looking for his way back, meets Kumatetsu who becomes his spirit guide. That encounter leads them to many adventures.
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
When 17-year-old Makoto Konno gains the ability to, quite literally, "leap" backwards through time, she immediately sets about improving her grades and preventing personal mishaps. However, she soon realises that changing the past isn't as simple as it seems, and eventually, will have to rely on her new powers to shape the future of herself and her friends.
Summer Wars
A student tries to fix a problem he accidentally caused in OZ, a digital world, while pretending to be the fiancé of his friend at her grandmother's 90th birthday.
Children Who Chase Lost Voices
The film centers on Asuna, a young girl who spends her solitary days listening to the mysterious music emanating from the crystal radio she received from her late father as a memento. One day while walking home she is attacked by a fearsome monster and saved mysterious boy named Shun. However, Shun disappears and Asuna embarks on a journey of adventure to the land of Agartha with her teacher Mr. Morisaki to meet a Shun again. Through her journey she comes to know the cruelty and beauty of the world, as well as loss.
When Marnie Was There
Upon being sent to live with relatives in the countryside due to an illness, an emotionally distant adolescent girl becomes obsessed with an abandoned mansion and infatuated with a girl who lives there - a girl who may or may not be real.
A Letter to Momo
A shy 11-year-old's life takes a strange turn when she discovers three hungry goblins living in the attic of her new house. She misses her old life. She misses her father so very much. Until she makes some new ghoulish friends.
The Anthem of the Heart
A young girl had her voice magically taken away so that she would never hurt people with it, but her outlook changes when she encounters music and friendship. Will Naruse be able to convey the anthem of her heart?
The Garden of Words
Takao, who is training to become a shoemaker, skipped school and is sketching shoes in a Japanese-style garden. He meets a mysterious woman, Yukino, who is older than him. Then, without arranging the times, the two start to see each other again and again, but only on rainy days. They deepen their relationship and open up to each other. But the end of the rainy season soon approaches.
My Neighbor Totoro
Two sisters move to the country with their father in order to be closer to their hospitalized mother, and discover the surrounding trees are inhabited by Totoros, magical spirits of the forest. When the youngest runs away from home, the older sister seeks help from the spirits to find her.
Death Billiards
Death Billiards is one of the four anime works that each received 38 million yen (about US$480,000) from the "2012 Young Animator Training Project." Just like in 2010 and 2011, the animation labor group received 214.5 million yen (US$2.65 million) from the Japanese government's Agency for Cultural Affairs, and it distributed most of those funds to studios who train young animators on-the-job. An old and a young man find themselves in a mysterious bar where they have to play a game of billiard. The bet: their lives.
Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms
Maquia is a member of a special race called the Iorph who can live for hundreds of years. However, Maquia has always felt lonely despite being surrounded by her people, as she was orphaned from a young age. She daydreams about the outside world, but dares not travel from her home due to the warnings of the clan's chief. One day the kingdom of Mezarte invades her homeland. They already have what is left of the giant dragons, the Renato, under their control, and now their king wishes to add the immortality to his bloodline. They ravage the Iorph homeland and kill most of its inhabitants. Caught in the midst of the attack, Maquia is carried off by one of the Renato. It soon dies, and she is left deserted in a forest, now truly alone save for the cries of a single baby off in the distance. Maquia finds the baby in a destroyed village and decides to raise him as her own, naming him Ariel. Although she knows nothing of the human world, how to raise a child that ages much faster than her.
From Up on Poppy Hill
Yokohama, 1963. Japan is picking itself up from the devastation of World War II and preparing to host the 1964 Olympics—and the mood is one of both optimism and conflict as the young generation struggles to throw off the shackles of a troubled past. Against this backdrop of hope and change, a friendship begins to blossom between high school students Umi and Shun—but a buried secret from their past emerges to cast a shadow on the future and pull them apart.
5 Centimeters per Second
Three moments in Takaki's life: his relationship with Akari and their forced separation; his friendship with Kanae, who is secretly in love with him; the demands and disappointments of adulthood, an unhappy life in a cold city.
Sword of the Stranger
Pursued by formidable Chinese assassins, young Kotaro and his dog run into No Name, a mysterious stranger who gets pulled into the chase. The unlikely companions form a bond over saving the dog from a poison attack, but chaos erupts when the assassins find Kotaro, and No Name must face his past before a horrible fate is met again.
Mirai
Unhappy after his new baby sister displaces him, four-year-old Kun begins meeting people and pets from his family's history in their unique house in order to help him become the big brother he was meant to be.
Paprika
When a machine that allows therapists to enter their patient's dreams is stolen, all hell breaks loose. Only a young female therapist can stop it and recover it before damage is done: Paprika.
Princess Mononoke
Ashitaka, a prince of the disappearing Emishi people, is cursed by a demonized boar god and must journey to the west to find a cure. Along the way, he encounters San, a young human woman fighting to protect the forest, and Lady Eboshi, who is trying to destroy it. Ashitaka must find a way to bring balance to this conflict.
Wolfwalkers
In a time of superstition and magic, when wolves are seen as demonic and nature an evil to be tamed, a young apprentice hunter comes to Ireland with her father to wipe out the last pack. But when she saves a wild native girl, their friendship leads her to discover the world of the Wolfwalkers and transform her into the very thing her father is tasked to destroy.
Akira
A secret military project endangers Neo-Tokyo when it turns a biker gang member into a rampaging psychic psychopath that only two teenagers and a group of psychics can stop.
A Silent Voice: The Movie
Shouya Ishida starts bullying the new girl in class, Shouko Nishimiya, because she is deaf. But as the teasing continues, the rest of the class starts to turn on Shouya for his lack of compassion. When they leave elementary school, Shouko and Shouya do not speak to each other again... until an older, wiser Shouya, tormented by his past behaviour, decides he must see Shouko once more. He wants to atone for his sins, but is it already too late...?