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12 Best Anime Movies On Netflix Must Watch (2024)

Netflix anime movies
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There are thousands and thousands of anime running across the world, but we are here with some of the best anime movies on Netflix you can watch immediately on Netflix.

So for all the anime fans, we are here with some of the best movies available on Netflix right now.

Without wasting any more of your time, let’s directly see the list of 12 best anime movies on Netflix which any anime fan should watch.

Also Read: Best Netflix Series List You Must Watch

12. Flavors of Youth

Watch on Netflix

Year: 2018
Director: Li Haoling/Jiaoshou Yi Xiaoxing/Yoshitaka Takeuchi
Stars: Taito Ban, Ikumi Hasegawa, Mariya Ise, Minako Kotobuki
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG
Runtime:  75 minutes

The Chinese animation company Haoliners Animation League and the Japanese anime studio CoMix Wave Films collaborated on Flavors of Youth, which was released in 2018.

The Rice Noodles, A Little Fashion Show, and Love in Shanghai are the three short stories that make up the drama anime film.

CoMix Wave Films is known for producing world-renowned anime director Makoto Shinkai, and Flavors of Youth is influenced by his work.

11. In This Corner of the World

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Year: 2016
Director:  Sunao Katabuchi
Stars: Ava Pickard, Kenna Pickard, Karen Strassman, Melodee Spevack

Genre: Drama, History
Rating: PG
Runtime: 168 minutes

In This Corner of the World should be included as one of the best anime films of the decade.

The historical drama film centers on the main character Suzu and takes place in Hiroshima during World War II.

The anime film depicts how the residents of Hiroshima dealt with hunger and worry at the time. One of the Best Anime Movies On Netflix.

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10. Mary and the Witch’s Flower

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Year: 2018
Director: Hiromasa Yonebayashi
Stars: Hana Sugisaki, Ryunosuke Kamiki, Yuki Amami, Fumiyo Kohinata
Genre: Action, Adventure
Rating: PG
Runtime: 102 minutes

The concept of a youngster who is eager to assist around the house but ends up creating more of a mess than they clean is upsetting.

Mary is the protagonist of Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s latest film Mary and the Witch’s Flower.

She wants to help her great-aunt Charlotte (Lynda Baron) and Charlotte’s housekeeper, Miss Banks (Morwenna Banks), but she can’t remove an empty teacup from Charlotte’s hands without spilling it on the floor.

The kid is a disaster waiting to happen. It’s really sad. She’s a kind kid, but she’s bored until she encounters a couple of outside cats that bring her to a clump of dazzling blue flowers that pique her interest right away.

Mary brings the flowers back to Charlotte’s, not understanding what they are (hint: they’re witch’s flowers), and immediately realizes that anyone touching them has temporary magical skills.

9. A Whisker Away

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Year: 2020
Director: Junichi Sato, Tomotaka Shibayama
Stars: Mirai Shida, Natsuki Hanae, Hiroaki Ogi, Koichi Yamadera,Minako Kotobuki
Genre: Romance, Fantasy
Rating: TV-PG
Runtime: 104 minutes

Even this bizarre idea delivers beauty and heartbreaking romance in Junichi Sato and Tomotaka Shibayama’s A Whisker Away.

Mari Okada’s writing masterfully navigates the anime through emotive loops, bristly toy tunnels, and humility, eventually landing its ridiculous premise—complete with a troupe of angry, miserable middle schoolers—in forthrightness.

A sprinkle of Miyazaki’s otherworldly magic (a corpulent face-dealing cat and a whole invisible cat-world) blends beautifully with some honest digs into its protagonists’ mental health difficulties (not quite as deeply and darkly as Neon Genesis Evangelion, but with a similarly stylish flair).

While the characters are initially irritating—they are, after all, middle schoolers—the reality underlying the narrative manages to show through, all the while dazzling us with its authentic animal graphics and breathtaking images of fairly small Tokoname life.

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8. Modest Heroes

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Year: 2019
Director: Hiromasa Yonebayashi, Yoshiyuki Momose, Akihiko Yamashita, Takuya Okada
Stars: Fumino Kimura, Rio Suzuki, Masaki Terasoma, Machiko Ono
Genre: Fantasy, Drama
Rating: PG
Runtime: 53 minutes

The second short film in the anthology, directed by Yoshiyuki Momose, is the volume’s most moving piece and, in many ways, the actual namesake of Modest Heroes. “Life Ain’t Gonna Lose” is about a young woman and her son Shun, a cheerful and usually unassuming little boy who was born with a life-threatening egg allergy.

“Life Ain’t Gonna Lose” sets a high standard for the rest of the film, but “Invisible,” the anthology’s closing piece, meets and even exceeds those expectations.

“Invisible” is directed by Akihiko Yamashita, who is most known for his work on Howl’s Moving Castle and as a character designer for Yasuhiro Imagawa’s Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still. One of the Best Anime Movies On Netflix.

7. Lu Over the Wall

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Year: 2018
Director: Masaaki Yuasa
Stars: Kanon Tani, Shota Shimoda, Christine Marie Cabanos, Michael Sinterniklaas, Stephanie Sheh
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy
Rating: PG
Runtime: 107 minutes

Even its most human rhythms, those rare clues of relatable features that urge our sympathies, are extended, warped, and rendered almost unrecognizable by exaggeration.

Lu Over the Wall isn’t a film that takes itself too seriously, which is a quality that the ordinary moviegoer should appreciate. The narrative is both straightforward and complex: Kai (voiced by Michael Sinterniklaas in the English dub) is an adolescent who has recently migrated from Tokyo to the tranquil fishing hamlet of Hinashi.

He spends his days doing what most teenage males do: hunkering down in his room and shutting out the world. Kai encounters Lu (Christine Marie Cabanos), a manic pixie dream mermaid created in tiny, as he battles with his self-imposed seclusion.

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6. Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro

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Year: 1979
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Stars: Yasuo Yamada, Eiko Masuyama, Kiyoshi Kobayashi, Makio Inoue, Goro Naya, Sumi Shimamoto, Taro Ishida
Genre: Adventure, Comedy
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 102 minutes

Miyazaki’s adaptation of Kazuhiko Kato’s infamous master criminal is both a thrilling heist thriller with heart and one of Miyazaki’s poorer works.

Castle of Cagliostro has a tedious middle half and a disappointingly basic adversary, but it still manages to shine with Miyazaki’s characteristic charm peering through the weight of a preceding work, so chalk it up to Miyazaki’s initial attempts as a filmmaker.

Fans of the series were outraged that the film stripped Lupin of his anarchic tendencies, instead portraying him as a real gentleman thief who steals only when his hazy sense of honour allows it.

In any event, Miyazaki’s proto-Ghibli masterpiece, The Castle of Cagliostro, remains a vital and necessary relic. Despite its flaws, a Miyazaki picture is a triumph. One of the Best Anime Movies On Netflix.

5. Blame!

Watch on Netflix

Year: 2017
Director: Hiroyuki Seshita
Stars: Sora Amamiya, Kana Hanazawa, Takahiro Sakurai
Genre: Sci-Fi, Action
Rating: TV-14
Runtime: 105 minutes

Hiroyuki Seshita of Polygon Pictures has completed the long-awaited Blame! film with the help of Netflix. Blame! is set on a far-future Earth that has been consumed by a massive, self-replicating superstructure known as The City.

It pursues Killy, a quiet loner, as he wanders the sections of the planet in quest of a living thing with the “net terminal gene,” a mysterious trait considered to be the only way to stop the city’s endless hostile advancement.

Seshita’s film, which features a screenplay by Sadayuki Murai, who is known for his work on series like Cowboy Bebop and Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue, and is directed by Nihei himself, shortens much of the manga’s early chapters and streamlines the storey into a more narrative and action-oriented affair.

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4. The End of Evangelion

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Year: 1997
Director: Hideaki Anno, Kazuya Tsurumaki
Stars: Megumi Ogata, Megumi Hayashibara, Yuko Miyamura, Kotono Mitsuishi, Fumihiko Tachiki, Yuriko Yamaguchi
Genre: Sci-Fi, Action
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 87 minutes

End of Evangelion is not the film for you if you’re looking for a lighthearted, campy, and joyful ending.

Instead, viewers were rewarded to one of the most nihilistic, artistic, and, strangely enough, experience anime series endings ever created.

In summary, it combines the finest and worst aspects of Evangelion to produce a film unlike any other that has come before it.

Despite its continuous horror, End of Evangelion stays faithful to its subtitle’s ethos, which is that the pleasure of death is found in the process of regeneration. One of the Best Anime Movies On Netflix.

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3. Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack

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Year: 1988
Director: Yoshiyuki Tomino
Stars: Toru Furuya, Shuichi Ikeda, Hirotaka Suzuoki, Maria Kawamura, Nozomu Sasaki, Koichi Yamadera
Genre: Sci-Fi, Action
Rating: TV-14
Runtime: 119 minutes

Char’s Counterattack is the first Gundam theatrical film and the concluding chapter in the original epic, which began in 1979 with the Mobile Suit Gundam TV series’ “Universal Century Timeline.” It has the weight of three seasons of TV behind it.

The film was directed and written by Yoshiyuki Tomino, the creator of the Gundam series, and was based on his novel Hi-Streamer.

Char’s Counterattack is widely regarded as the greatest film in the Gundam franchise, and it is most effective in resolving the 14-year conflict between Amuro Ray, the “hero” of the Earth Federation, and Char Aznable, the commander of Neo-Zeon.

The plot revolves around Char’s Neo-Zeon army attempting to dump an asteroid laden with nuclear bombs onto Earth, freeing the colonies from the yoke of servitude imposed by their competitors, the Earth Federation, but also killing everyone on the planet.

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2. Mirai

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Year: 2018
Director: Mamoru Hosoda
Stars: Moka Kamishiraishi, Haru Kuroki, Gen Hoshino, Kumiko Aso, Mitsuo Yoshihara, Yoshiko Miyazaki, Koji Yakusho, Masaharu Fukuyama
Genre: Fantasy, Drama
Rating: PG
Runtime: 98 minutes

Mirai, the director’s seventh film, is based on the experiences of Hosoda’s first-born son meeting his baby sibling for the first time.

Mirai is a beautiful adventure fantasy drama told from the perspective of Kun, a toddler who feels displaced and insecure in the aftermath of his sister Mirai’s birth.

It takes the viewer on a dazzling odyssey across Kun’s entire family tree, culminating in a poignant conclusion that emphasises the beauty of what it means to love and be loved.

Mirai is Hosoda’s most accomplished picture, the first Academy Award nominee for an anime film not created by Studio Ghibli, and an educational as well as entertaining experience. One of the Best Anime Movies On Netflix.

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1. A Silent Voice

Watch on Netflix

Year: 2016
Director: Naoko Yamada
Stars: Miyu Irino, Saori Hayami, Aoi Yuki, Kensho Ono, Yuki Kaneko, Yui Ishikawa, Megumi Han, Toshiyuki Toyonaga, Mayu Matsuoka
Genre: Drama
Rating: TV-14
Runtime: 129 minutes

All of these attitudes are on display in A Silent Voice, adapted from Yoshitoki Oima’s manga of the same name. Shoya Ishida teases Shoko Nishimiya, a deaf transfer student, mercilessly in elementary school, much to the delight of his friends.

When Shoya goes too far one day, prompting Shoko to move again for her own safety, he is labelled a renegade by his classmates and falls into a self-imposed state of seclusion and self-hatred.

Years later, Shoya runs across Shoko again, this time as a teenager, and tries to make apologies for the pain he caused her, all while battling with his own reasons.

A Silent Voice is a moving depiction of teenage abuse, healing, and forgiveness for pain done by others and self.