This article is regularly updated as more titles join or leave Netflix. Newly added titles are accompanied with an asterisk.*
There are a few anime movies that American cinephiles will regularly hold up as masterworks of the craft: Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Spirited Away, and the works of Satoshi Kon are among them. As of this writing, Netflix, the largest paid streaming service in the world, licenses none of those titles for streaming in the United States, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have visually arresting features of its own. The best anime films on Netflix are often (a bit) lesser known and in some cases more interesting than the megapopular hits licensed by other services. They’re often just buried under rows upon rows of decision paralysis and the latest infusion of One Piece episodes.
But skipping them would only be doing yourself dirty. “Giving up halfway is worse than never trying,†as the spunky Misato Katsuragi says in The End of Evangelion — one of the visionary anime movies you can watch on Netflix. To that end, we’ve done some legwork to help you out. Below is a curated list of the 15 best anime titles on the service, running across the gamut of genres, running times, and animators worth watching. Included are popular selections like Evangelion as well as hidden gems like a collection of shorts that feature an “animated†invisible man. Prepare to pick your jaw up off the floor.
*Black Clover: Sword of the Wizard King
Year: 2023
Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes
Director: Ayataka Tanemura
This anime film is a stand-alone chapter of the long-running Black Clover franchise about a boy who aspires to be the Wizard King of a realm called the Clover Kingdom. It’s been two years since the TV show’s fourth season ended in the middle of an ongoing arc, which the original manga has since continued. In the new film, Black Clover’s hero, Asta, faces down four Wizard Kings of the past in an original story set in the same world. The film doesn’t touch any of the manga material (so fans shouldn’t expect it to pick up any of the existing story), but the film is canonical, according to the manga’s creator Yūki Tabata, who supervised it.
Watch it if you love: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves; Game of Thrones
Blame!
Year: 2017
Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes
Director: Hiroyuki Seshita
Blame! is the dark, literally. The atmosphere of director Hiroyuki Seshita’s film is oppressively grim, set in the largely lifeless, incredibly massive metal-worked City populated by humans and cyborgs all trying to get through their days without being erased from existence by the City’s so-called Safeguard, a defensive system that can no longer be shut off. It’s as if we only followed the real-world resistance of the heroes of The Matrix films as they traversed the cavernous deserts of long-abandoned machinery, negotiating killer robots along the way.
Watch it if you love: Autómata, Natural City
Bubble
Year: 2022
Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes
Director: TetsurÅ Araki
Sometimes the kids just want to race across rooftops without falling into the water of post-ecological-disaster Tokyo. After his childhood was permanently shaken by the loss of his parents and the reality-altering flooding of Tokyo with bubbles, a teen named Hibiki throws himself into the sport. Hibiki is a talent, but his trauma and ultrasensitivity to sounds isolate him from his teammates and society at large. Bubble’s action begins when he meets a supernatural mermaidlike creature who helps change all that for the better.
Watch it if you love: Brink!, gravity-defying parkour videos
Children of the Sea
Year: 2019
Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes
Director: Ayumu Watanabe
If surreal, swirling water animation and marine biology are your thing, you could do far worse than this new classic from Studio 4°C. After a young girl gets too aggressive on the handball court, she’s benched and winds up hanging out with a pair of sea-faring kids raised by dugongs. The three find themselves connected to the sea and to water itself: feeling it, manipulating it, and maybe even … becoming it? We’re not totally sure. This movie is slippery when wet but nonetheless stunning to look at.
Watch it if you love: Finding Nemo, The Shape of Water
The End of Evangelion
Year: 1997
Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Director: Hideaki Anno
Trippy doesn’t cut it when describing the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise. Is it about giant robot fights or identity-crushing mental-health crises? The answer is “Both!†— emphasized across 26 episodes, multiple films, and a remake series of even more films. The End of Evangelion was released in the wake of the TV ending and is an attempt to deliver a more final, externalized version of the events of the last episode, which take place in the recesses of the protagonist’s mind. By contrast, End is fully an action film: Real physical characters do battle, die, and eventually grow to literally moon-size proportions to reshape the world and the human souls upon it. It’s a visual manifestation of the protagonist’s mental journey and director Hideaki Anno’s own feelings toward his franchise, accompanied by live-action real-world footage. The result is annihilating and, ultimately, a masterstroke of meta-surrealist filmmaking.
Watch it if you love: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Twin Peaks
Flavors of Youth
Year: 2018
Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Director: Li Haoling, Jiaoshou Yi Xiaoxing, Yoshitaka Takeuchi
This gorgeous collaboration between CoMix Wave Films, the Japanese studio behind anime megahit Your Name, and the donghua (Chinese animation) artists at Haoliners Animation League is an anthology set in different regions of China. Flavors of Youth tackles the complexities of young love, fashion, and delicious noodles, rendering each subject in clean, attractive linework. The three short films vary in length, style, and presentation, but they share a wistful, hopeful sense of beauty and their protagonists’ self-actualizations.
Watch it if you love: Matteo Garrone’s Tale of Tales, Night on Earth
The Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters films
Year: 2017–18
Running time: Varies
Director: KÅbun Shizuno, Hiroyuki Seshita
Those cringing at the idea of a CGI-anime Godzilla movie should rest easy as this trilogy of films was made by pros. Directors KÅbun Shizuno and Hiroyuki Seshita collaborated with celebrated writer Gen Urobuchi on Planet of Monsters, City on the Edge of Battle, and The Planet Eater, which are movies in which Godzilla faces off against the future, aliens, Mechagodzilla, and — eventually — King Ghidorah. Admittedly, this isn’t the best spot to start your Godzilla bingeing, which will always be 1954’s Godzilla, but it’s a great futuristic adaptation of the kaiju themes and action of the series.
Watch it if you love: Godzilla (1954), Prometheus
The Mobile Suit Gundam films
Year: 1981–82
Running time: Varies
Director: Yoshiyuki Tomino
This is a bit of a cheat: These weren’t all movies originally. The Mobile Suit Gundam film trilogy is a compilation and truncation of the original 1979 Mobile Suit Gundam series. They still absolutely rule if you appreciate giant robots, meditations on the nature of war and peace, and obvious textual comparisons to the rise of Nazism. The series by Yoshiyuki Tomino, with designs by the talented Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, spawned a sprawling franchise that was comparable in Japan to the hype around Star Wars in the States. To dip your toe in: Start with the first film to get a taste, and if you like what you see, finish the trilogy (or watch the full TV series on Crunchyroll), then track down the excellent sequel Zeta Gundam (on Blu-Ray), then watch Char’s Counterattack on Netflix, which is easily the best film of the franchise and functions as a kind of finale to the original series’ characters.
Watch it if you love: Battlestar Galactica, The Forever War
Sturgill Simpson Presents Sound and Fury
Year: 2019
Running time: 41 minutes
Director: Junpei Mizusaki (lead)
Muscle cars, burly sword masters, guts, and cyberpunk ultraviolence define practically every moment of this 40-minute extended music video from Sturgill Simpson. Like Daft Punk and Linkin Park before him, the outlaw country musician partnered with respected anime creators on his way to branching out. Junpei Mizusaki of Batman Ninja led a directing team that included Kôji Morimoto (Akira), Michael Arias (Tekkonkinkreet), Arthell Isom (the Weeknd’s “Snowchild†video), and others to create a multipart action spectacle that doesn’t waste a single second. What it all means feels almost intentionally opaque — it’s an album-length music video — but its cuts are deep.
Watch it if you love: Animated music videos, Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem
Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop
Year: 2021
Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes
Director: KyÅhei Ishiguro
A darling teen rom-com, Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop jumps off the screen in bright, saturated colors. Every moment of this movie, fittingly, looks as if it were spray-painted in neon hues, a tone that complements both its energy and the creativity and vulnerability of its heroes, Cherry, a haiku poet, and Smile, a braces-wearing influencer. They fall to their insecurities and fall for each other as they pick themselves back up. If you’ve seen the KyÅhei Ishiguro’s series Your Lie in April, you may enjoy this latest serving of teen puppy love and music, but take heed: Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop has a happier ending than that series.
Watch it if you love: Eighth Grade, Ingrid Goes West