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Preview data: all rankings, scores, votes, refresh labels, methodology, testing and editorial-process statements in Top 49 are illustrative demo content, not live measurements or documented reviews.
Rank 101Down 1
#10 in Anime Films
of 14 ranked entries
The Boy and the Heron
Hayao Miyazaki · Studio Ghibli · 2023
Miyazaki came out of yet another announced retirement to make his most autobiographical, opaque film yet, a grief-and-legacy fable that trusts the audience to sit with ambiguity rather than resolve it neatly. Recorded specifics: released 2023, director Hayao Miyazaki, studio Studio Ghibli. Panel highlighted won Miyazaki his second competitive Academy Award decades after his first, deeply personal, autobiographical themes rare even in his own filmography and animation craft undiminished despite the director’s advanced age at production. The reservation on record is the deliberately oblique symbolism is less accessible than his more famous films.
FantasyComing-of-age
Score breakdown
How The Boy and the Heron earned 79.1
Each criterion is scored independently, then combined using the weights published on Anime Films.
- Direction & animation craftweight 30%
- 77.2
- Emotional & narrative impactweight 30%
- 78.7
- Cultural influenceweight 20%
- 80.1
- Visual innovationweight 20%
- 81.5
“Miyazaki was eighty-two when it was released — his second competitive Academy Award arrived fifty years into his directing career.”
— Top 49, on Anime Films
On the record
Recorded detail
| Released | 2023 |
|---|---|
| Director | Hayao Miyazaki |
| Studio | Studio Ghibli |
| Runtime | 2h 4m |
| Rating | 8.8 |
Panel verdict
Strengths and reservations
What it gets right
- Won Miyazaki his second competitive Academy Award decades after his first
- Deeply personal, autobiographical themes rare even in his own filmography
- Animation craft undiminished despite the director’s advanced age at production
Where it gives ground
- The deliberately oblique symbolism is less accessible than his more famous films
1 appearance
Where this entry ranks
From the same list
Ranked alongside it
Rank 01Editor’s pickSpirited Away
Hayao Miyazaki · Studio Ghibli · 2001
Miyazaki built a bathhouse for spirits as a coming-of-age crucible for a sullen ten-year-old, and Chihiro’s quiet, unglamorous work ethic — scrubbing a literal river god clean — is the emotional engine, not the magic around it.
96.4/100 Top 49 score4Up 4
Rank 02Editor’s pickGrave of the Fireflies
Isao Takahata · Studio Ghibli · 1988
Takahata opens by telling you both children die, then spends the rest of the film making that outcome unbearable anyway — a war film with almost no interest in battle scenes, only their aftermath on two siblings nobody is coming to save.
93.5/100 Top 49 score1Down 1
Rank 03Editor’s pickAkira
Katsuhiro Otomo · 1988
Hand-drawn on a scale nobody has attempted since, with lip-sync recorded before animation — almost unheard of in the medium at the time.
92.1/100 Top 49 score4Up 4
Rank 04Perfect Blue
Satoshi Kon · Madhouse · 1997
Kon built a psychological thriller about a pop idol losing her grip on reality that deliberately blurs film, fantasy and memory until the audience is as disoriented as its protagonist — Darren Aronofsky has openly credited it as an influence.
90.6/100 Top 49 score—No change
Rank 05Princess Mononoke
Hayao Miyazaki · Studio Ghibli · 1997
Miyazaki refused to write a clean villain into an environmental fable, instead giving the industrial antagonist real, sympathetic reasons for wanting the forest gone, which is exactly what keeps the film’s conflict honest.
88.6/100 Top 49 score1Down 1
Rank 06Your Name
Makoto Shinkai · CoMix Wave Films · 2016
Shinkai built a body-swap romance around painstakingly rendered real Japanese locations, and the film’s late structural swerve into disaster-prevention urgency turned a charming premise into a genuinely moving one.
87.0/100 Top 49 score1Up 1
Rank 07Ghost in the Shell
Mamoru Oshii · 1995
Asks what remains of a person once every part is replaceable, and refuses to land on a comfortable answer. The dialogue-free city sequence is the best four minutes in the genre.
84.5/100 Top 49 score3Up 3
Rank 08My Neighbor Totoro
Hayao Miyazaki · Studio Ghibli · 1988
Miyazaki built a film almost entirely without conflict — two sisters, a sick mother, and a forest spirit who mostly just naps — and the absence of stakes turns out to be exactly the point, and exactly why it has endured as comfort viewing for decades.
82.2/100 Top 49 score2Down 2
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Top 49 rankings are editorial. Scores are produced from the published criteria on each list and are refreshed on the cadence stated there. Figures shown across this section are curated demonstration data.