HBO Max Adding Impressive Lineup Of Anime Films, Including Your Name, Angel’s Egg, Perfect Blue, and More

By Elijah Gonzalez | August 14, 2025 | 11:00am

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HBO Max Adding Impressive Lineup Of Anime Films, Including Your Name, Angel’s Egg, Perfect Blue, and More

Yesterday, HBO Max announced that they struck a licensing deal with GKIDS, resulting in a sizable influx of anime and Japanese live-action films to the service. Many of these titles aren’t currently available for streaming in North America.

The additions will come through this year and the next, with the first batch coming on September 1. 4K versions of some titles will be available for premium subscribers (HBO Max has three tiers: basic with ads, standard, and premium).

As for the first group of films, it’s as follows:

* Children Who Chase Lost Voices (dir. Makoto Shinkai)
* Fireworks (dir. Akiyuki Shinbo, Noboyuki Takeuchi)
* Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko (dir. Ayumu Watanabe) (North American Streaming Debut)
* Ghost Cat Anzu (dir. Yôko Kuno, Nobuhiro Yamashita) (North American Streaming Debut)
* Lonely Castle in the Mirror (dir. Keiichi Hara) (North American Streaming Debut)
* Love & Pop (dir. Hideaki Anno) (North American Streaming Debut)
* The Place Promised in Our Early Days (dir. Makoto Shinkai)
* Your Name. (dir. Makoto Shinkai) (4K Streaming Debut)

This first batch has several films released in the last few years that hadn’t been available for streaming in the US as of yet, like Ghost Cat Anzu, alongside multiple Makoto Shinkai films, including his finest work, Your Name. This lineup also includes Love & Pop, the first live-action feature film from famed director Hideaki Anno (Evangelion, Gunbuster, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water).

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The rest of the films coming later in 2025 and in 2026 are the following:

* Angel’s Egg (dir. Mamoru Oshii) (North American Streaming Debut, 4K Streaming Debut)
* Liz and the Blue Bird (dir. Naoko Yamada)
* Lu Over the Wall (dir. Masaaki Yuasa)
* Millennium Actress (dir. Satoshi Kon)
* Mind Game (dir. Masaaki Yuasa)
* Perfect Blue (dir. Satoshi Kon) (4K Streaming Debut)
* Shin Godzilla (dir. Hideaki Anno, co-director Shinji Higuchi) (4K Streaming Debut)
* Summer Wars (dir. Mamoru Hosoda) (4K Streaming Debut)
* The Boy and the Beast (dir. Mamoru Hosoda) (4K Streaming Debut)
* The Colors Within (dir. Naoko Yamada) (North American Streaming Debut)
* The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (dir. Mamoru Hosoda) (4K Streaming Debut)
* Wolf Children (dir. Mamoru Hosoda) (4K Streaming Debut)

This is an excellent lineup that includes many of the best anime directors of past and present. One of the most exciting inclusions is Angel’s Egg, Mamoru Oshii’s experimental dark fantasy film that hasn’t received an official North American release in any form. Beyond this, we have two excellent pictures from the late, great Satoshi Kon, who had an outsized influence on not only anime but film writ large, several Mamoru Hosoda features, including his best work, Wolf Children, Naoko Yamada’s masterful Liz and the Blue Bird alongside her latest, The Colors Within, which is getting its streaming debut, and a pair of flicks from acclaimed director Masaaki Yuasa. Rounding it all out is Anno’s live-action Shin Godzilla, the first in his unofficial Shin trilogy that cleverly reimagines old-school tokusatsu series.

HBO Max already has most of Studio Ghibli’s catalog on the streaming service, and this deal makes it a fairly excellent starting point for those interested in getting into anime films.