By David Young · March 13, 2024
With the expressiveness of animation comes the question: What kind of stories can’t it tell? Well, we haven’t seen a good answer to that. When people started thinking that animated films are just for kids, we have to point out the list of the best-animated films that prove they are for everyone.
From anime to stop-motion to the fully experimental, there are subject matters and stories that filmmakers make with adults in mind. After all, the first animations weren’t made for children, and neither are these works of art!
This anime movie from the late 1980s shows a neo-futuristic view of Japan still reeling from World War III. With clandestine military experiments in the works, the intense darkness and stark grotesqueness of the story in Akira are highlighted by hand-drawn frames on every cel.
Done in rotoscope animation, A Scanner Darkly paints the picture of another dystopia. This one is in America as a hallucinogenic drug has swept up and thoroughly addicted Americans who are under high-tech government surveillance.
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Wes Anderson gives his visual meticulousness a well-deserved test in stop motion while capturing Roald Dahl’s characters on the big screen in a deft way. Anderson only uses CGI in one scene, making this flick an excellent case study of how older animation techniques can breathe life into a movie set.
Download the script!Read More: 24 Short Films Wes Anderson Wants You to See
As a prime inspiration for other grand futuristic ventures like The Matrix (1999) and James Cameron’s Avatar (2009), the original Ghost in the Shell movie begs a lot of humanistic questions and uses the brooding 1990s anime art style as one powerful way to explore themes with more depth through a single investigation from the original manga.
Using animation as a means to reconstruct memories, Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman brings veteran experiences to the big screen. This autobiographical animated film puts a powerful, personal lens on the events of an invasion of Lebanon that’s heartbreakingly vivid.
This Christmas story, inspired by the John Ford film 3 Godfathers (1948), is one of Satoshi Kon’s steps into a more realist narrative that uses the gravity of homelessness, urban decay, and other dark themes to highlight the beauty of the goal the main characters have to find a lost baby’s parents.
These kids are just about the most non-kid-friendly thing on TV, and they only got more creative and more heinous in their first feature. For decades, their escapades have also escalated from what started as construction paper in stop motion to a consistent computer animation technique that mirrors the old style.
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Shot with doll-sized puppets, Anomalisa uses stop motion to portray another Charlie Kaufman tale at a more intentional pace, giving that usual Kaufman introspection with impressive detail that leaves you almost picturing live action happening onscreen.
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In Richard Linklater’s rotoscope feature, the protagonist faces various situations and discussions in degrees of mundanity, strangeness, and philosophy that all raise questions as you watch. If an animated movie makes you question reality, it would most certainly be this one.
Out of an incredible graphic novel comes the story of Marjane Satrapi’s life during the 1970s and 1980s in Iran and the change of scenery that follows the Iranian Revolution. In black and white, memorable moments from the book are next brought to a poignant visual rendition.
Another stop-motion Anderson piece using the classic boy and his dog archetype, Isle of Dogs is great at creating an entire world of its own in Megasaki and on the aptly-named Trash Island, a dump where all dogs have been deported to.
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Mixed media animation is a fun one when done right, and one of the most memorable stories to do so is that classic whodunit, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, using Toontown as the base of a crime story makes the characters fit right in while still allowing the creative thinking brought on by “cartoon rules.”
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Based on the show that won adult hearts everywhere for too many seasons to count, The Simpsons Movie was a natural culmination of the series’ usual antics into one grand, episodic problem that only America’s favorite nuclear family could fix.
During the War on Terror, many lives are thrown into chaos or completely cut short. The Breadwinner is an animated look at the Taliban exercising control over Afghanistan and at what one girl does to save her family from starvation under this cruel regime.
Initially pitched as a film, the series Love, Death + Robots now anthologizes various stories that explore one or more of the themes in the title. With its varying stories, it exercises various styles of animation to explore said themes as well.
This story about rabbits in a warren—on an adventure, no less—sounds like something you’d watch with your children. But be warned: Life is cruel out there for these little guys, and the story is much more grounded—with tear-jerking that’s meant for you, not your kiddo.
Another anthology, Heavy Metal, brings to life a bunch of early 1980s tropes in speculative fiction and does so in an unapologetically adult way.
A scientist moonlighting as a dream detective develops a powerful device that gets stolen. This strange but fun movie explores minds and dreams in ways only animated films can achieve.
This love story, animated to portray late 1940s backdrops like Havana, Paris, and the Big Apple, brings to life a complex romantic journey for two musicians filled with melancholy and passion.
Another animated documentary, this portrayal of a man’s past and present life uses archival footage to drive home the impact of his hidden life on his entry as a refugee and on his upcoming nuptials.
Originally written by a French mime in the 1950s, the story of L’Illusionniste presents a soulful look at France and Scotland through the eyes of a disillusioned ex-magician who meets someone who believes he uses actual magic.
Anyone who’s seen the show knows that Bob’s Burgers is an absolute playground of hilarity and musical prowess. It’s no wonder a musical comedy featuring the same charming voice cast is as captivating as every episode.
Even with young characters, not every Hayao Miyazaki film focuses on younger audiences. Instead, with Princess Mononoke, his storytelling depicts a medieval era of change where the gods and animals suffer from avid human activity and the unstable world that it creates.
What if Superman had landed in Soviet Russia? How would he be different? Is he still the hero we know and love? All these questions are addressed in Red Son, a 2020 animated film based on the Mark Miller comic miniseries where the Cold War panic has a whole new meaning.
In this feature film version of Don Hertzfeldt’s original shorts, Bill experiences neurological and mental symptoms given depth using impressive animation techniques, camera techniques, and a mixed media approach that’s as experimental as it is profound.
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Every film has a story to tell. Some do that better by using hand-drawn characters, stop-motion movement, or even a mix of media to create something wholly unusual for audiences. Whatever point a filmmaker wants to get across, animation is a way of developing something for any and every audience—including some of the best adult-oriented stories you can find!
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