The 15 Best Anime Films That Aren’t Studio Ghibli

You go into Your Name expecting a simple body-switching teen romance between a high school girl in the country and a high school boy in the city. Makoto Shinkai’s 2016 box office hit goes far beyond that, however, transcending space and time itself.

Your Name, though fantasy, grounds itself with the beautiful and detailed animation Makoto is renowned for, coupled with a cohesive story line that binds everything together like the symbolic musubi, or threads of fate, in the film.

What’s tougher than being a single mom? Apparently, being a single mom of half-human, half-wolf children. In this 2012 film by Mamoru Hosoda, we follow the story of Hana, a woman who moves to the countryside with her two hybrid children, Ame and Yuki, after the death of their werewolf father.

The film enraptures you with the gorgeous greenery of the countryside, as well as Hana’s struggle to raise children with dangerous wild sides. Viewers are also treated to Ame and Yuki’s own pubescent woes, as they try to figure out which side of their bloodline is more in line with their identity.

A lot of embarrassing things can happen in high school, but what if you could go back in time to fix it? 17-year-old Makoto gets this chance in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time after an accident grants her the ability to literally “leap” back in time (with progressively larger jumps sending her further back in time).

Though she initially has a lot of fun, she learns there is a limit to her leaps, and that her warping of the past can affect those around her. The 2006 sci-fi film put Mamoru Hosoda on the map for many anime fans, and this is a great introduction to his films. It’s a fun and energetic study of youth, and there's a surprising twist at the end involving the origins of the time-leaping power.

Before manga creator Midorikawa Yukiko's beloved series Natsume's Book of Friends, she wrote Hotarubi no Mori e, or Into the Forest of Fireflies. The short 2011 film directed by Takahiro Omori depicts a young girl named Hotaru who, one summer, befriends a masked forest spirit named Gin. However, Hotaru learns that her new friend cannot be touched by a human or he will disappear.

They promise to meet every summer after that, and the movie explores their friendship despite their limitations and Hotaru's growing feelings. The ending is touching, heartrending, and still somehow hopeful. It really comes at you as quickly and surprisingly as it does for Hotaru and Gin. Heads up, you might need some tissues for this one. 

You may already know Mamoru Hosoda’s The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Wolf Children, but between those works was the incredible film Summer Wars – a story about youth, young love, the importance of family. Oh, and trying to thwart an AI program from shooting a probe into a nuclear power plant using virtual reality.

Summer Wars (2009) ties in tradition with modernity. It parallels the strength of networking in the past through bloodlines and familial connections with the digital connectivity of the world today.  

This 1995 science fiction film by Mamoru Oshii saw a future in which most of mankind is modified with robotic body parts. Federal agent Major Motoko Kusanagi and her team are hunting down “The Puppermaster,” a black hat charged with hacking into the minds of cyborg-human hybrids. As Motoko delves deeper into this case, her own existence comes into question, as do the questions of what life and identity mean in an age where humanity and technology are one.

Ghost in the Shell feels ahead of its time, with its rich animation, world building, and its vision of technology in 2029. It's easy to forget this movie was made in the '90s. The film’s influence can be seen in numerous film and TV series that followed, and including most notably The Matrix movies.