RETRO Recommends: The Top 100 Animated Films of All Time

In this series, one man—a professor of digital culture and a professional cultural critic—assesses TV shows, films, novels, comics, video games, installation art, and more.

Dec 18, 2021

Introduction

There are so many different ways to assess the quality of an animated film—as there are with any film. Do we consider all the ways in which a film is historic, complex in its construction, aesthetically superlative, well-written, amusing, immersive, counter-cultural, and (simply put) entertaining? Of course we do. But the real question is how we weight each consideration; if the historic nature of a film is heavily weighted, our list of the best animated films of all time will be heavily tilted toward films from the 1920s or 1930s, or films that introduced or popularized a new technology. If we focus on the entertainment value of a film, we’re in very subjective territory indeed, as I may find The Emperor’s New Groove endlessly diverting (I do) while it bores you to tears.

Any “Top 100” list is necessarily subjective, even those lists curated from hundreds of expert sources, like many of the lists here at RETRO are—if each expert is speaking in subjective terms, so too does any curation of their opinions—to the point that it hardly needs to be pointed out. The real value of a Top 100 list is that, if you trust its author (or, if the list is a curation, if you trust the curatorial skills of its author), you may use the list as a guide. My hope in publishing this list is that readers who trust my chops as a longtime professional cultural critic and professor of digital culture will use the assessments below to help guide them through the long COVID-19 winter to come.

I hope, too, that if you’re a full subscriber to RETRO you’ll use the comment section below to speak back to this list and offer any criticisms, amendments, or agreements you have with it. I’ll say in advance that while some films aren’t on this list because I don’t think they should be (for instance, Pocahontas; The Black Cauldron; Frozen 2; A Bug’s Life; The Croods; Boss Baby; and some films in the Shrek, Ice Age, Kung Fu Panda, and Madagascar franchises) in other cases it’s possible that either I overlooked a film or need to add it to the list—which you’ll find at the conclusion of this ranking—of animated films I haven’t yet seen and whose qualities I therefore can’t assess.

I’ll say, too, that the universe of foreign (i.e. non-U.S.) animated films is so vast that I can’t claim to be any sort of expert in it—and so many remarkable animated projects from other countries besides America could doubtless be included here and have not been, underscoring that the title of this article focuses on films American audiences are likely to have been exposed to over the last century.

And of course some fine films just missed the cut here, which is saying something: in a universe of hundreds or even thousands of eligible films, being in the top two hundred films—as I’d say films like Shaun the Sheep Movie and The Secret of Kells and Lord of the Rings and Corpse Bride and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West are—is a big deal. I recommend this list if you’re looking to discover some other fine (perhaps a bit more obscure) animated films.

So, without further ado, RETRO presents “The Top 100 Animated Films of All Time.”

The Top 100 Animated Films of All Time

Note: Among the animated films that might well deserve to be on this list but that I haven’t seen yet—there are thousands of films in this category, and no one has seen them all—are The Adventures of Prince Achmed, Anastasia, Bambi, The Castle of Cagliostro, Castle in the Sky, The Fox and the Hound, Frankenweenie, Ghost in the Shell, Grave of the Fireflies, Heavy Metal, Hotel Transylvania, The Illusionist, Kiki’s Delivery Service, The Land Before Time, Mary and Max, Perfect Blue, Porco Rosso, Rio, The Secret Life of Pets, Sita Sings the Blues, The Sword in the Stone, Treasure Planet, Waltz with Bashir, Wizards, and Your Name.

Libby Black

As a 1950s child, Saturday morning sitting in front of the latest black and white tv watching cartoons got us hooked on animation. (It also got us hooked on constantly asking our parents to buy whatever the commercials were trying to push on us kids.) Then the '60s gave us after school cartoons. Seeing the older Disney animated films on tv primed us for longer animation beyond cartoons.

But there is one animated short I saw on tv in 1959 as a 7 yr old that would chart my Life. Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land gave me a passion for mathematics. I didn't care how my classmates (or teachers!) felt about math, but I loved it. Actually, in high school, I did have one teacher who loved math.

Fast forward to the time to select a college major. Math actually became my fallback major (for reasons both funny and pragmatic), and I ended up w a BS in Mathematics. Then, my life took a sudden turn away from an aerospace job I was looking forward to, putting me into a job I at first believed I would hate, teaching math in high school.

I had some excellent fellow math teachers but soon learned that these top teachers hated to teach any class below Algebra. I had to take a leave for a year, but when I returned I was determined to teach only those older students who were in the "undesirable student" group. I had a good friend angrily ask me why, w a math deg I wasn't teaching calculus! I told her that, to my students, fractions were abstract and difficult. They needed and wanted someone to explain the basics to them, which is what I ended up doing for 30 years; it went from being the furthest thing in my mind after college to being the closest thing to my heart.

Although my students were content w being able to pass my classes and graduate w/o needing to replicate my passion for the subject, once in a while I would find a student who had an interest beyond the syllabus. One day, a young lady entered my class, returned the next two days, and at the end of the third day raised her hand to ask a question. Being prepared for the usual questions, I was stunned when she said seriously, "Mrs. B, what's the biggest number?" Wow! The dismissal bell was about to ring, so I said we could talk about that tomorrow. Well, as it turned out, she never returned but had gone on to the continuation school. I always hoped she would find someone who helped her answer her question.

So I just wanted to say that animation can be not just entertaining but also serve a powerful role. That animation short 6 decades ago impacted my Life, taking me to where I never thought I would end up but grateful that I did.

Oh, one more thing, because 1959 was at the beginning of America's space program, the nation had a need to develop a scientific and technical workforce. Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land became a way to generate student interest in math.

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Jonc

Jan 6, 2022

What, no Box Trolls??

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RETRO Recommends: The Top 100 Animated Films of All Time

In this series, one man—a professor of digital culture and a professional cultural critic—assesses TV shows, films, novels, comics, video games, installation art, and more.

Introduction

The Top 100 Animated Films of All Time

Discussion about this post