Animated movies have an important place in cinematic history, and some of the best ones have come out within the past decade. Animation is not a genre, meaning all types of stories can be told in this format. Additionally, there are several different animation styles from traditional hand-drawn pictures to stop-motion sequences made out of objects or puppets to modern digital models, but they all belong to the same medium that has been incredibly popular ever since its invention.

Every year gives audiences some great animated titles, several of which have shaped pop culture. The same is true for the past decade, which includes movies with a grand variety of techniques and stories. From Japanese films to Hollywood productions, the best animated films of the last 10 years are among the most important animated titles of the century, with some having changed the way we think about animation for theatrical features.

10 Your Name (2016)

Directed By Makoto Shinkai

Your Name is one of the most popular movies to come out of Japan in recent years. The story follows two high school students, Taki Tachibana and Mitsuha Miyamizu, who begin to swap bodies even though they have never met. While this is a very classic trope, Your Name turns into an engaging, emotional love story that also includes a lot of twists.

Everything in Your Name contributed to it climbing the ranks of the highest-grossing Japanese movies of all time before establishing itself in the second-highest position. Its gorgeous animation style in particular is what makes it immediately recognizable, as does its beautiful story. Your Name’s ending leads audiences to an incredibly emotional climax after a couple of major twists. While the movie has flaws and is not that different from other Makoto Shinkai films, it is one of this decade's best.

9 Coco (2017)

Directed By Lee Unkrich

Animation is incorrectly believed to be a medium aimed only at younger audiences. That said, some animated movies aimed at children can speak to all ages and touch the heartstrings of adults as well. Coco is definitely a textbook example of this, with its fantastical story about family, dreams, life, and death that is emotional and heartwarming at the same time. It’s not a particularly original story as far as Pixar movies go, which is why Coco isn’t ranking higher, but it’s still a beautiful one to experience.

[Coco's animation style] both takes inspiration from and pays homage to Mexican traditional art and Día de los Muertos iconography, making the plot feel that much more grounded in a magical realism-style reality.

The plot follows a young Mexican boy named Miguel, who dreams of becoming a musician even though his family has essentially banned music from their household. Through a series of mishaps, Miguel is transported to the Land of the Dead, where he will discover the truth about his family’s past and change its future forever. Even though Coco’s story largely revolves around music, what sets the movie apart is its colorful, rich, and warm style.

Coco both takes inspiration from and pays homage to Mexican traditional art and Día de los Muertos iconography, making the plot feel that much more grounded in a magical realism-style reality. The scenes set on the glowing orange bridge that connects the world of the living to the Land of Dead alone, where characters step through dozens and dozens of marigold petals, are enough to deserve a watch.

8 The Red Turtle (2016)

Directed By Michaël Dudok de Wit

The Red Turtle is undoubtedly a peculiar movie that still has that haunting quality that only certain animated movies can hope to achieve since their chosen medium already predisposes audiences to suspend their disbelief more easily than a live-action film does. The Red Turtle also has one element that immediately sets it apart from the vast majority of animated movies—it has absolutely no dialogue, relying exclusively on its animation to convey its story.

Said story follows a man who is stranded on a deserted island, and who finds all his attempts at escaping thwarted by the titular giant red turtle—which will, of course, soon prove to be more than what it had initially seemed. The Red Turtle is a somewhat calming watch, one that allows audiences to experience its story without ever feeling overwhelmed by it. Its unique style is what sets it apart from other titles and makes it one of the best, most fascinating animated movies of recent years.

7 Klaus (2019)

Directed By Sergio Pablos

Klaus is a heartwarming Christmas story that re-imagines the origins of Santa Claus. Instead of having the world’s favorite present-giver stemming from the real-life figure of Saint Nicholas of Myra, Klaus sets its story in 19th-century Norway and focuses on the unlikely friendship between a young postmaster and a reclusive toy maker. Said toy maker, the titular Klaus, gradually comes out of his self-imposed isolation to become the man who delivers toys to the entire world every year.

Klaus’s traditional, hand-drawn animation is carefully curated in every detail, from the clothes the characters wear to the settings in which the events take place, making it a truly beautiful movie to watch. Like every Christmas story, it has an almost guaranteed chance of making all kinds of emotions bubble up to the surface, especially when it comes to the unlikely friendship that postmaster Jesper with Márgu, a Sámi child, that grows even though the two don’t share a common language.

At the same time, its Christmas-themed plot somewhat confines it to that specific holiday as well, making Klaus a little less of a standout than the movies that are ranked higher.

6 Soul (2020)

Directed By Pete Docter

Soul’s title could be considered a double entendre since its plot revolves around souls intended as the immaterial self but also around soul meant as a music genre. That’s because the movie’s main character Joe Gardner—played by Jamie Foxx and Pixar’s first Black lead—is an aspiring jazz pianist, who spends the entire plot desperately trying to reconnect his soul to his comatose body before what is meant to be his big break as a musician.

Soul won two Academy Awards, one for Best Animated Feature and the other for Best Original Score.

Soul’s release window wasn’t the most fortunate one, since its original date was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and was eventually released direct-to-streaming on Disney+. It might be why it’s not among the most popular of Pixar’s productions, even though its plot and score are more than on par with the standards the studio set over the past decades. While Soul doesn’t stand out as much as other movies and ranks firmly in the middle, it still is a beautiful and heartwarming watch.

5 Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (2022)

Directed By Joel Crawford

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is the direct sequel to Puss in Boots, coming more than ten years after its original release. Just like the first Puss in Boots, The Last Wish falls within the larger Shrek film series but it’s its own separate story. In this case, a markedly Western-inspired one that is reminiscent of great classics of the genre like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish has in its arsenal a new animation style that turns its frames almost into paintings. It’s an artistic choice that makes the whole movie feel dreamy and fairytale-like, a perfect visual storytelling tool for a story that is supposed to be about fairytale characters. What really makes The Last Wish stand out, though, is its chilling villain Wolf, who is soon revealed to be the incarnation of Death himself. While not enough to carry The Last Wish higher on the ranking, Wolf is undoubtedly a key element of the movie’s success.

4 The Wild Robot (2024)

Directed By Chris Sanders

The most recent release on the list, The Wild Robot has nonetheless already risen to the very deserved status of immediate classic and received nominations at most major awards including the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes, and the BAFTAs. The story follows Roz, a service robot who crash lands on a deserted island where her programming isn’t of much use. She soon becomes the adoptive mother of an orphaned gosling, raising him with the help of the sly but ultimately good-hearted fox Fink.

The Wild Robot also has an animation style that is more reminiscent of painting than of drawings, filled with watercolor-like frames that make it slot perfectly within the traditions left behind by both Disney and Studio Ghibli. What sets it apart is its use of color, overwhelming and vibrant, rightfully landing it just shy of the top three ranking spots. The main character, Roz, is also a winning element, with her callbacks to other famous robots, particularly The Iron Giant of the 1999 Warner Bros classic of the same name.

3 The Boy And The Heron (2023)

Directed By Hayao Miyazaki

The Boy and the Heron is the latest work by living legend Hayao Miyazaki, who has established himself—and his Studio Ghibli—as a household name in the animation world over a decades-long career. Miyazaki had actually announced his retirement in September 2013 after the release of The Wind Rises but decided to return to direct what is arguably his best and most personal movie to date.

Robert Pattinson famously voiced the character of the Heron in the English dub of the movie, a performance that made the rounds across pop culture online spaces.

The Boy and the Heron follows a young boy named Mahito who loses his mother at the time of World War II. When he moves to the countryside with his father, Mahito encounters a grey heron that leads him to a fantastical world. From there, the plot becomes drenched in the symbolism Studio Ghibli has become so well-known for and delivers an incredibly emotional ending that truly makes The Boy and the Heron stand out among its peers. Its animation is also incredibly refined, pushing the boundaries of what one would expect from a 2D-animated film.

2 Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)

Directed By Guillermo del Toro And Mark Gustafson

Guillermo del Toro’s take on the classic Italian story of Pinocchio, which started out an 1883 book written by Carlo Collodi and has since then been adapted into animated or live-action movies time and time again, is as unique as it is dreamy. While the movie does follow most of the major beats from the original story, it does so by setting Pinocchio during World War II and the fascist regime, something that had never been done before.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is both stunning and unsettling. The stop-motion technique used to animate this version of Pinocchio makes the story somewhat more believable, by helping suspend audiences’ disbelief, and vision-like, thanks also to the characters that aren’t included in the original story but that make their appearances here to help guide Pinocchio on his journey. The movie is filled with gorgeous and uncanny oneiric sequences, a hallmark of Guillermo del Toro’s work and what makes his Pinocchio rank this high.

1 Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (2018)

Directed By Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, And Rodney Rothman

Before there was Spider-Man: No Way Home and its multiverse, there were the Spider-people of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which revolves around teenager Miles Morales going through the classic Spider-Man origin story. The twist is that he does so thanks to the aid of other versions of Spider-Man from realities different than his own.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is undoubtedly one of the most influential animated movies of recent years and the best to be released in the last decade. It’s an incredible feat of animation, one that required Sony’s largest team of animators for a single movie to date. The result is a movie where every single frame is a joy to watch, always entertaining both in of composition and colors. Some of the sequences in Into the Spider-Verse are bound to leave everyone speechless no matter how many times they’re watched, starting from the iconic “leap of faith” scene.