Five Anime Films That Deserve To Be In The Criterion Collection

Cat Soup

The second surrealist picture on this list that also hasn’t received a Blu-ray release yet is Cat Soup, a dark comedy that feels like an unholy union of Dali, Bosche, and Hello Kitty. We follow two anthropomorphic cat siblings, Nyata and Nyaako, as Nyata goes on a quest through the afterlife to save his older sister Nyaako’s soul. What follows is a just barely parsable journey that takes us through biblical floods, dream imagery, and a bit of slapstick gore rendered via uncomfortable camera angles and warped perspectives—Masaaki Yuasa contributed to the film, and you can feel it in stretching proportions that mimic a fish-eye lens and other cinematic tricks.

The visuals stand alone, whether it’s a desert backdrop that may as well be from “The Persistence of Memory” or a circus with unfathomable nightmare beings, but what makes it truly uncomfortable is the profound bleakness at the heart of the film as it builds to an upsetting climax. While at a brief 33 minutes long, Criterion would probably need to package the movie with another short (maybe with other animated adaptations of author Nekojiru’s work, like Nekojiru Gekijō), but Cat Soup is the type of singular, strange movie that more cinephiles should seek out.

Look Back

Although it may be a little early for Look Back to take a spot next to several long-in-the-tooth cinematic classics, considering that a few 2024 films have already received a Criterion release, why not the best one from last year? Capturing the complexities and pains of bringing art to life in both its form and content, this adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s brilliant one-shot is the kind of human-crafted piece of animation we desperately need right now. Studio DURIAN employs a loose, imaginative style to dance through two girls’ coming-of-age as this unlikely pair unite over their shared obsession with making manga, even if it costs them almost everything else. It takes skilled animators and storytellers to shatter our souls into such impressively tiny pieces within a brisk 57 minutes, and Fujimoto and director Kiyotaka Oshiyama are certainly up for the task.

Akira

Okay, so remember how I said that most of the films on this list are featured because, beyond just being great and notable movies, they also don’t have Blu-ray releases in North America yet? Akira is the exception to that rule. As a film with an incalculable impact on the global spread of anime, this is an important, artistically interesting feature that feels like an obvious inclusion in the Collection, even if it’s readily available and was technically already included by Criterion (three decades ago). Part of its influence comes from how Katsuhiro Otomo’s cyberpunk staple single-handedly jostled many Western viewers out of their complacency towards animation, a shock that started with its setting, Neo-Tokyo. Whether it was how this post-apocalyptic Japan was overrun by motorcycle gangs and fascist generals, or the way the film bursts at the seams while trying to stuff a six-volume manga into two hours, much of its staying power comes from how it places us in a world that is as horrible as it is vast and complicated. These back alleys pull us in, forcing us to fully internalize how this crooked city is the direct result of a weapon of mass destruction.

Although there have been plenty of imitators, there’s a particular raw angst here that’s difficult to replace, as rotten a coming-of-age mixed with recent memories of nuclear annihilation. Would I prioritize the other entries on this list to receive a re-release because Akira is doing fine in that department? Sure. But if there’s an anime that should have a spot in the Collection based on its cultural impact alone, it’s certainly this one.

Barefoot Gen

While Grave of the Fireflies has deservedly earned a reputation among film-watchers as a go-to picture about the civilian impacts of the Pacific War, Barefoot Gen is the more raw and gruesome of the two, an account of atomic horrors as could only be told by someone who witnessed them first-hand. Based on Keiji Nakazawa’s semi-autobiographical manga series that loosely adapts his experiences growing up in Hiroshima during the war, it contains the kind of specific, nightmarish details that are far more terrifying due to their partial basis in reality: eventually, we see Hiroshima reduced to a living hell, all burned flesh and charred remains.

However, despite the film’s upsetting imagery, there’s an interesting contrast here where it will also tonally switch on a dime, abruptly transitioning into a scene where children scrap in a cartoon dust cloud of whirling fists. These moments are head-scratching at first, but these sudden pivots successfully capture events from the perspective of a child, getting across the jarring reality of what it’s like for mass death to become a part of your everyday routine. Most may remember the film for an eyeball-searing sequence that depicts the bombing of Hiroshima in graphic detail, but by following Gen’s family beforehand, the story also delves into themes of anti-nationalism and the bravery of standing up against the crowd for what’s right. Many films out there are somewhat flippantly labeled as “important,” but Barefoot Gen more than earns that distinction by refusing to look away from one of the most horrific events in human history.

Elijah Gonzalez is an associate editor for Endless Mode. In addition to playing the latest, he also loves anime, movies, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.