Top Anime movies everyone should own?

[blurayfriend]

I was recommended a top 5 anime films list that everyone should own. It was:

Akira
Ghost in the Shell
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
Paprika
Perfect Blue

What does everyone else think? I'd be interested to know what everyone thinks are the top essential films, 5 or not. I like everything on the list, although Perfect Blue is not on BD. I think a qualification for the list was no Studio Ghibli, because it would overtake a top 5. But nobody else has to be beholden to that rule though.

[NoSurprises]

Akira and Ghost in the Shell never sat right with me. While I can understand they're as influential as hell, I didn't really enjoy them as films (I adored the GitS series though!).

So while it's impossible to make a list of stuff that everyone should own, if I was going to make recommendations...

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
Millennium Actress
5cm Per Second
The Gunbuster Movie (I think this is cheating, but what the hell!)
The Cowboy Bebop Movie

Limited to one film per director, else the list would be plastered in Mamoru Hosoda and Satoshi Kon. I left Ghibli off too, as SO MANY GOOD FILMS. Also, 5cm Per Second might be a little slow to recommend properly, but it's my list damnit!

(Redline gets an honourable mention too for being so silly. Sorely tempted to put Patlabor up there, but I think that's more of a personal preference).

[Jim Purcell]

Personally?

Akira
Ghost in the Shell
Royal Space Force: Wings of Honnêamise
The Venus Wars
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

My tastes do tend skew a bit to the action/sci-fi spectrum.

[insomniac013]

(Apart from what has been mentioned)
Sword of the Stranger!
5cm per second!
Tokyo Godfathers!

[Scarface32]

Wolf Children
Princess Mononoke
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
Grave of the Fireflies
Akira

[Girls With Guns]

Most favorite anime movies I own that are NOT Studio Ghibli, as the OP requested, which haven't yet been mentioned - Sorry, I couldn't stop at 5, that's just too hard to do!:

Time of Eve
Jin-roh The Wolf Brigade
Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below
Origin: Spirits of the Past
Puella Magi Modoka Magica Movies
Garden of Words
Summer Wars

Flag OVA (Import DVD)
Le Portrait de Petite Cossette (DVD)
Toward the Terra (DVD)
King of Thorn
Vexille

[Tiberius]

Besides Akira and Grave of the Fireflies, I think Only Yesterday should be up there.

[neoz]

What? No High School DxD, Haganai, and of course GWG favorite Strike Witches?

This thread is dead to me.

It would be hard to pin down 5 ones everyone should own. But from reading this list that everyone here as posted. I would say most of us all have the same taste.

Maybe add Evangelion?

[Girls With Guns]

Originally Posted by neoz

What? No High School DxD, Haganai, and of course GWG favorite Strike Witches?

This thread is dead to me.

It would be hard to pin down 5 ones everyone should own. But from reading this list that everyone here as posted. I would say most of us all have the same taste.

Maybe add Evangelion?

Movies, neoz - not series...

I wasn't going to list the Evengelion movies because I don't care for that genre - but they would probably be high on a lot of other people's anime movie lists... I also don't get what people see in Akira - I thought it was a very uninteresting movie, really.

[neoz]

Originally Posted by Girls With Guns

Movies, neoz - not series...

I wasn't going to list the Evengelion movies because I don't care for that genre - but they would probably be high on a lot of other people's anime movie lists...

Oh I didn't even notice that. haha
I'm Asian, I can't read. You should all know that by now.

Hmm movies? From Up On Poppy Hill. There my input is now been output.

[Sinthetic]

Snuck a few more than 5 in cause I'm greedy.

Millennium Actress
Spirited Away
Angel's Egg
Metropolis
Redline
Wolf Children
Tekkonkinkreet

Nice to own them all and mostly from Japan.

[Girls With Guns]

Originally Posted by neoz

Oh I didn't even notice that. haha
I'm Asian, I can't read. You should all know that by now.

Hmm movies? From Up On Poppy Hill. There my input is now been output.

I really think Ghibli movies should be excluded from this list thread, as they are all pretty much a given. That said, Poppy Hill and Only Yesterday are two very near the top of my Ghibli list - as is Ocean Waves...

[Tiberius]

Originally Posted by Girls With Guns

I also don't get what people see in Akira - I thought it was a very uninteresting movie, really.

This is basically the anime equivalent of not liking The Godfather.

[Girls With Guns]

Originally Posted by Tiberius

This is basically the anime equivalent of not liking The Godfather.

Yeah, I'm not into the godfather movies either... I don't like gangster/mafia type movies. so, you hit it right on the head!

[Naiera]

Some that haven't been mentioned:

Eva 1.11
Eva 2.22
Eva 3.33

Some Ghibli movies have been mentioned, but I think it's worth owning every single one of them.

[Vracer111]

1. Redline
2. Sword of the Stranger
3. Jin-Roh
4. Millennium Actress
5. Summer Wars

[msantaka]

My five is:
Ghost in the Shell (wait for the 25th anniversary edition)
Akira 25th anniversary edition
Evangelion 1.11 and 2.22

Dang, what else yah?

If you want to put in series, these are some contemporary ones I think is worth it:
kill la Kill
Shingeki no Kyojin (Dunno when that one will come out)
Gurren Lagaan (Whenever it comes out)
Cowboy Bebop is definitley worth it whenever it comes out
For Ghibli, my pick is Spirited Away, Ponyo, Howl's Moving Castle and Nausica.

[tehMTL]

Is Metropolis considered great? I remember when I was like 10, I went with my older brother to go watch this at a downtown movie theatre, and it was in japanese with subtitles.

[bugula]

Originally Posted by tehMTL

Is Metropolis considered great? I remember when I was like 10, I went with my older brother to go watch this at a downtown movie theatre, and it was in japanese with subtitles.

i thought metropolis was fun and technically it's done very well but for me it was really hard to take it for its own merit as the original is superb. if there was no source material, it'd be near the top of my list.

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by NoSurprises

Akira and Ghost in the Shell never sat right with me. While I can understand they're as influential as hell, I didn't really enjoy them as films (I adored the GitS series though!).

Here we go again with the "Bill Clinton's a hundred years old, get out of the 90's!" anime-fan-recommendation therapy threads.
("I recommend Paprika and Metropolis, since those were the only ones I saw on Blu-ray, Summer Wars because everybody has heard of it, and Ninja Scroll, because that was the only one Blockbuster had when I was a kid!" )

Originally Posted by tehMTL

Is Metropolis considered great? I remember when I was like 10, I went with my older brother to go watch this at a downtown movie theatre, and it was in japanese with subtitles.

Not really. It's name-only (hoo-boy, is it ever), and mixes the naively weird comic storytelling of Osamu Tezuka with the painfully weird artsiness of director Rintaro.
So why does everyone talk about it? Because it played art house theaters around time the time everyone was first noticing anime (ie. when you were like 10), and was therefore The Only Anime Movie Ever Made, just like Ghost in the Shell and Paprika.

Watching anime through arthouse features is like someone overseas saying "I want to watch more American movies like The Avengers, should I start with Grand Budapest Hotel?"

Originally Posted by Girls With Guns

I really think Ghibli movies should be excluded from this list thread, as they are all pretty much a given. That said, Poppy Hill and Only Yesterday are two very near the top of my Ghibli list - as is Ocean Waves...

The Ghiblis are also (with the possible exception of Howl's Moving Castle) the only GOOD Essential movies available on Blu-ray at the moment, until Discotek finally follows through with that Castle of Cagliostro disk.
Although most of the core Top Ten syllabus of anime history is available on DVD, if you not too proud to go low-tech for your cineaste completism--Heck, you could probably even find Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer, Project A-Ko 1, and both Galaxy Express 999 movies on Amazon with a little hard work.
(And with Viz getting back into the game, I wouldn't rule out "Sailor Moon R: Promise of the Rose" or "Ranma 1/2: Big Trouble in Nekonron China" coming to Blu in our lifetime. )
As for Macross: Do You Remember Love?, however, that remains in the world of YouTube and bootleg, thanks to Harmony Gold and their, quote-fingers, "Robotech kickstarter campaigns".

Now, getting out of the Roger Ebert mindset of looking at imported isolated non-television arthouse theatrical features, and asking which anime TV series are worth owning on Blu...there are a few, but it's just as short a list if you're going to ignore DVD.