Hundreds of new anime series come out each year on television, many of which become the next big anime phenomenon. Still, there are also influential anime stories that are reserved for movie theaters. There’s a slightly more evergreen quality to anime feature films, and these grandiose projects go on to break box office records or make waves during award circuits.
Anime movies spend years in production, and there’s tremendous pressure regarding whether this time and money have been worth the investment. A successful anime movie is magical, but it’s devastating when a film with a strong idea fumbles the execution and becomes a forgettable misfire.
10 Dragon Ball Z: Wrath Of The Dragon
Release Date: July 15, 1995
It’s quite common for popular anime series to receive bigger cinematic adventures. Wrath of the Dragon is the 13th film in the Dragon Ball Z franchise and the final entry until nearly two decades later with Battle of Gods. Wrath of the Dragon deals with a kaiju-sized threat as Hirudegarn wreaks havoc throughout a crowded city.
The concept of Goku and company taking on a Godzilla-level monster has a lot of appeal, but Wrath of the Dragon becomes a fairly forgettable endeavor. New supporting characters like Tapion feel like missed opportunities, and Goku’s climactic Dragon Fist maneuver could be better justified.
9 Blood: The Vampire
Release Date: July 27, 2000
Vampires are omnipresent in anime, and Blood: The Last Vampire from Production I.G. follows a female demon slayer who works for the government. It’s a premise that’s been endlessly replicated and fueled a number of spinoffs and alternate adaptations, but the original anime lacks impact.
Blood: The Last Vampire is visually stunning, but its brief 45-minute runtime also seriously pushes the limits of what qualifies as a “feature film.” If nothing else, there’s a better version of this movie that doesn’t have to do anything more than double the length.
8 Trigun: Badlands Rumble
Release Date: April 24, 2010
Trigun is a stylized sci-fi/Western hybrid that features grandiose gun fights and chaotic action sequences. The 26-episode series ran its course in 1998, and it’s surprising that its feature film follow-up, Trigun: Badlands Rumble, arrived more than a decade later in 2010 when Trigun and Vash the Stampede were relatively out of the spotlight.
Badlands Rumble presents a standalone story where Vash, Wolfwood, and other prolific bounty hunters compete against each other to claim a criminal’s hefty bounty. Badlands Rumble gets a lot of mileage out of how fun it is to return to these characters, but it turns into an insignificant extension of the series.
7 Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
Release Date: February 21, 2020
Digimon has built a strong legacy over the course of two decades. Digimon continues to create new universes and spinoffs to expand upon its general concept, but the most reverence is held toward the original Digimon Adventure.
There have been several modern legacy sequels to Digimon Adventure through Digimon Adventure tri. and Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna, the latter of which was designed as a big farewell to these beloved characters. The whole idea of one last adventure with the adult version of the original DigiDestined holds up. Still, the film’s execution is muddled and polarizing and doesn’t provide audiences with the cathartic closure that they expected to receive.
6 Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence
Release Date: March 6, 2004
Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell is a masterpiece and one of the most influential pieces of cyberpunk anime storytelling. Ghost in the Shell has received a rich life through anime spinoffs and continuations, as well as a regrettable live-action feature film, most of which amount to diminishing returns.
The same assumptions are often made about the cinematic sequelGhost in the Shell 2: Innocence, which is also helmed by Oshii. Innocence returns to its comfort zone with a mystery where compliant pleasure robots malfunction and turn on their owners. Innocence looks incredible and is thematically rich, but to some, it amounts to a retread of its predecessor.
5 Fireworks
Release Date: August 18, 2017
Fireworks is an aesthetically gorgeous anime feature film from Shaft’s Akiyuki Shinbō and Nobuyuki Takeuchi, two visionary directors who are known for pushing the boundaries of animation through avant-garde storytelling. Fireworks explores a specific form of time travel and wish fulfillment as a trio of classmates obsesses over the road less traveled and the freedom found in reliving pivotal life events.
Fireworks feels comparable to other anime movies that combine romance with a supernatural twist. That being said, Fireworks fails to properly connect its dots; it’s a movie that many audiences view as a case of style over substance.
4 Bubble
Release Date: April 18, 2022
Bubble is a recent cinematic outing from Wit Studio that was one of Netflix’s biggest releases of 2022. Set in an unconventionally chipper post-apocalyptic world, the unexplainable supernatural events that destabilize Tokyo have become a cutthroat sport for the nation’s youth. Bubble ambitiously balances a tender romance with a fish-out-of-water narrative that also takes into consideration its ticking-clock apocalypse.
Wit leans into its strengths through kinetic parkour-like motions as its characters engage in the titular gravity-defying bubbles. Bubble is consistently visually arresting, but its engaging story crumbles under its own weight for some who want a more focused narrative.
3 Macross: Do You Remember Love?
Release Date: July 7, 1984
Macross is an iconic mecha robot anime franchise, and 1984’s Macross: Do You Remember Love? is an expanded feature film adaptation of the first Macross series. Do You Remember Love? builds an engaging universe that turns into an emotional love triangle and a fateful invasion of robots that strangely hinges upon an ancient piece of music.
Macross: Do You Remember Love? has amounted to more of an incidental chapter in the growing mecha franchise. It’s not mandatory Macross, even though it introduces some thoughtful elements to its lore and celebrates the power of music and performance in a nihilistic world.
2 Lily C.A.T.
Release Date: September 1, 1987
Lily C.A.T. is pure ’80s anime excess that’s long overdue for a proper reboot or extended sequel. The sci-fi/horror hybrid is ostensibly a combination of Alien and The Thing but filtered through a visceral anime context. A spaceship’s crew learns that a shapeshifting extraterrestrial has invaded and is now among them.
Lily C.A.T. quickly draws in its audience through the tense, claustrophobic premise. That being said, the film is only a little over an hour long, and it plays more like an animation showcase than a well-paced story with fully-realized characters.
1 Demon City Shinjuku
Release Date: October 25, 1988
While technically an OVA, Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s Demon City Shinjuku is a feature-length animated installment that revels in a future dystopia where deadly demons freely roam the Earth. The heroes and villains in Demon City Shinjuku aren’t anything special; it’s the terrifying environment that the story crafts that gives Demon City Shinjuku its intensity.
There are many standalone anime from the 1980s that sensationalize exaggerated violence, sex, and mature animation. These indulgences don’t hold the same weight several decades later, and it leaves promising projects like Demon City Shinjuku feeling like products of their time.
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