Top 10 Anime movies that surpass Disney by lightyears

Lightyears is a unit of distance, not time.

Those are all quality films (except Akira, which is trash), but to say they surpass Disney’s by “lightyears” is ignorant. Disney is practically the gold standard in animation and has been since Snow White/Sleeping Beauty (up till present times with the Princess and the Frog). If you’re talking about quality, I’d argue Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, the Lion King, the Little Mermaid, Hercules, Mulan and others could stand toe to toe with the best japanese animation has to offer (without having to resort to gross amounts of violence, although many of the movies you list don’t). Plus, one thing I do think Disney films do better than anime is minimize down-time/boring stretches (some of the films you mention suffer from this – you may see this as a greater degree of inherent sophistication but I’d rather the film be more focused).

Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, the Lion King, the Little Mermaid, Hercules, Mulan are passable for light child’s fair and not the worst thing that you might have to suffer through as an adult. Films that have been dumbed down to the level Disney assumes children and undiscerning parents are at. However, the quality of animation in the aforementioned movies approaches beauty occasionally, technical virtuosity rarely, and is overshadowed by much of the animation Disney was doing almost half a century earlier. If you were just to critique then as musicals, they are wanting as well. Despite not having the physical limitations of live-action musicals from the bygone ’50’s, Disney’s newer canon fails to approach the choreography or music of even some of the more middle-ground of MGM’s catalogue. And as far as having scripts that engage ones intellect, challenge ones morals, or even simply have something of value to say about the human condition, Disney is continuing to fall short. So please, just because junk food is popular do not mistake it for being either genius or nourishing. Especially if you are to compare them to films which are, like most of Pixar’s work and many of the films on this list, doing things that Disney hasn’t done for decades.

Are you serious? Clearly you know nothing about true animation if you think a cheap pen drawing can come even close to the true artists that have worked at Disney Studios since the 1920’s. Consider yourself schooled.

@ruk

Nice try. You know the saying ‘missed it by a mile’? That goes hand in hand with saying ‘I beat you by a mile’. Replace that with ‘lightyear’ – good job on the distance, it’s pretty common knowledge by now – and you should understand what they’re saying.

Learn to be right before you get nitpicky.

These are all great Anime, but I think saying that they are better than Disney is silly. Your number one pick, Spirited Away, is wonderful and it is produced by the Japanese branch of Disney. Same thing with Princess Mononoke. If you watch the DVD, there is an intro from Disney talking about the Japanese branch and the new innovations Disney is making in the Anime genre. Check it out.

whoa

Great list! If you had 11-20, I would have added “Whispers of the Heart,” “Blood: The Last Vampire,” and “Voices of a Distant Star.” =D

To be honest, disney has done a great job leaving memories of our childhood with us… but the anime movies mentioned above provides animation in a complete different angle, so i really do not know why there are disney fans who are looking down on these anime movies. The examples people gave such as lion king etc… doesn’t convey the deep theories of society, war, perception and love seen in princess mononoke and spirited away. Why would you even say spirited away is a cheap hand drawn moving pictures compared to “true” masters in Disney. I mean, by saying that its clear to me that you’re just very self-centered and look down on Asian culture like you Westerners did when you invaded our countries with drugs. And Karl Marl, thank you for pointing that out, studio Ghiblio and Miyazaki would never be a branch of Disney since the films Disney produce will never convey such deep concepts and stay at the childhood audience stage.

Forget everything… take Final Fantasy Series Animation in one hand and all the rest of the world’s cartoons in the other… Still, the Japanese Animation technology in Final Fantasy or similar anime outweighs them all by 10 billion folds… ‘coz it’s Japanese…

It’s as simple as that… I would buy a Honda or Toyota than Fix Or Repair Daily (FORD) car… I would buy a PS3 than a XBOX that never turned anyone’s head 360…

So what is the point in arguing??? Japanese are always the best!!! No wonder people buy anything that’s made in Japan… lol!

to:
ruk

September 8th, 2009 at 11:44

“Lightyears is a unit of distance, not time.”

and what does “surpass” mean? … -_-

It is kind of hard to compare Disney with the entire anime industry. In fact, the only thing I can think of is that they use the same medium which is animation of course. If I was to try and do a comparison between anime and something else, that something else would be Holywood :). You could compare Disney with Studio Ghibly however. And in this case I agree with the majority here that anime is better. I am not sure what it is exactly that makes anime better but I think it’s got to do something with the way the story is presented in animes.

I have seen a few other top 10 anime movies list from some hard core anime fans and they were quite different from yours. But yours is actually really good too.

I wonder how this 5CM movie has manged to evade so many of us including me :). It’s the next movie on my list to watch.

gasp! omg! omg! omg! ahhhhh! i love spirited away! x3 i have been watching that show for a long time a lot!eeep! imma watch it noe on youtube! ^-^

somho, disney films aren’t made for children in the first place, exept the new trash ones, toltally different story for the classics like snow white pinoccio and others, that’s only what you realize when ur watching everything like a stupid without the singlest reflection about what ur watching, by that i mean how can u put yourself in defense of anime when u haven’t the singlest idea of how to argument what ur saying and u finish with disney are made for children. Cause thats only true for the new disney movies.

Second, for disney defenders, disney classics are really great, but guess what, none of them are disney creations, most of them are masterpieces in litterature remade movies by walt disney company, before complaining first read the book or find the historical reference of your ”disney” story and analise it well, find the links with history and mythology, you’ll see that it isn’t for children at all, they can see them but they will never find the true meaning of those movies, wich can only be found by someone who has studied animation and it’s classics and know how to speak about, which obviously aren’t this disney defenders that think, ”the gave us the best memories of our chilhood”, maybe it’s true but at that age u never known what they were supposed to mean. The movies can’t compare to the originals masterpieces.

And that’s were japanese anime is much better than disney, because for most of them they’re not a remake of some masterpieces, they’re original work from the authors that are someway based on something in society, war, the unknown or what makes humanity think about it’s existence or other psicological stuff that isn’t at all in disney exept alice in wonderland a bit, that’s what is my favourite disney, or even basedon myths as well but still the original work, not some remake of a true classic story, orthey are authors imagination but great analysed work not like that child stuff of pixar. So disney is great but anime is even greater, and no ghibli movies are not disney in japan, disney is just the company that comecializes them out of japan but it has nothing to do with disney creation, so why is disney so much more famous than anime: cause we live in a world of neocolonialism where america rules and the rest is colony, it’s obvious exept for the americans cos maybe they don’t learn that at school, but true for the rest, specially for a poor south american country like mine, although it’s changing with the economical crisis, If the states an japan were at the same level in world culture expansion, anime would obliterate disney. I agree with the list but princess mononoke, akira and spirited away should be on the first 3 places, also, eher is nausicaa, i know it ia a lot of miyazaki but the guy is atrue genius, you need also memories on that list, one the best actually, really worked on. 5 centimeters per second shouldn’t be there although it’s really good, where is ninja scroll, really good movie based on japan history and mythology, metropolis although really good shouldn’t be there
cause the real credit is for fritz lang who made the original remade by osamu tezuka, and personally i think the true metropolis is the best of the german expresionism cinema.

Well that’s all the expression ”that surpass Disney by lightyears” is right, lightyears is distance but that’s supposed to mean, anime is far beyond disney, there’s an uncatchable distance between anime and disney, and anime is the good one here.

For the ones that may thing, what is that old jerk posting a comentary, i’m eighteen years old but i love cinema and specially anime more than all of you together, that’s why i investigate about everything i see of course after enjoying it like a stupid when i first watch it, cause that’s also fun. Here ends my long long comment. Hope it clarifies ur mind.

One difference between Disney and many of the great anime out there is that they do not reduce the human condition to mere ‘good’ vs ‘evil’.

In anime the ‘bad guys’ can have redeeming characteristics or reasons for their actions that evoke empathy – Princess Mononoke is a great example of this. Good and evil in all of us is a common theme – the Monster anime series is another fantastic example.

Many anime avoid the good and evil idea altogether, Totoro is a great example of this.

Traditionally Disney has followed the good triumphing over evil path by personifying evil in a person or group. Brother Bear was Disney’s first departure from this line of story telling (that I am aware of), where the main character was the one who committed the terrible act.

Disney has also been also always involved fairy tale romance ideals in many of their anime, which is a NOT how I want my daughter thinking of love and relationships.

As far as animation the craft is concerned, Studio Ghibili (for cell animation) and Pixar (for 3D animation) are the 2 power houses as far as I am concerned. There are some other Japanese studios producing great animation, but not as consistently. These two strive to create art and evolve the craft. Dreamworks can also craft some great animation, but I wouldn’t rank them with Pixar.

On a side note The Triplets of Belleville (sp?) is excellent and different again.