Sennen Joyuu

The Japan Media Arts Festival is an annual festival held since 1997 by Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs. The festival begins with an open competition and culminates with the awarding of several prizes and an exhibition.

Based on judging by a jury of artistic peers, awards are given in four categories: Art (formerly called Non-Interactive Digital Art), Entertainment (formerly called Interactive Art; including video games and websites), animation, and manga. Within each category, one Grand Prize, four Excellence Prizes, and (since 2002) one Encouragement Prize are awarded.

(Source: Wikipedia)

The Oofuji Noburou Award (大藤信郎賞) is an animation award given at the Mainichi Film Awards. It is named after Japanese animator Noburou Oofuji.

Following the death of Noburou Oofuji in 1961, Mainichi established a new award in his honor to recognize animation excellence. A specialist in silhouette animation, Oofuji was one of the earliest Japanese animators to gain international recognition.

With the growth of the animation industry in Japan, the award in the 1980s came to be dominated by big budget studio productions, over the work of the independent animators for whose efforts it was originally established. To address this concern, the Animation Grand Award was established to reward large scale cinematic animation, enabling the Oofuji award to focus on shorter pieces again.

(Source: Wikipedia)

The Animation Kobe (アニメーション神戸) was an event established by Kobe in 1996 to promote anime and other visual media. The Animation Kobe Awards (アニメーション神戸賞) were given annually until 2015 by Kobe and the Organizing Committee to creators and creations.

Animation films released in Japan from September of the previous year to August of the event year become candidates. The candidates are selected not only from Japan, but also from other countries. However, the committee sees more importance in a point of view promoting young creators of Japan.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Critics & Connoisseurs was a club that was founded in 2008 and ended club activities on the 31st of 2022.

The goal of the club was to come up with a list of highly recommended quality shows that are exemplary either within its genre or universally. An anime needed a 70% approval rate in our voting to get on the relation list. The following anime are all part of said list.

You can see the club page here:
https://myanimelist.net/clubs.php?cid=2913

Anime Relation List Part 1: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/324
Manga Relation List: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/334

(The list only contains anime which I've been watching or completed. It would be updated constantly. Also, the commentaries would focus on the female characters. Plus my English vocab is lacking, sorry for that if you see "strong" or "unique" so many times...)

Over years, anime and manga have been introducing more and more strong and unique female characters, either as main protagonists/antagonists or as important supporting characters. I hope that with this list, everyone could know, appreciate and love these powerful female characters, regardless of what gender they are.

a.k.a. Anime with hot dominant women (if you insist)

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R E T R O = at least 20 years old, but not yet 40 years old!
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░{ 𝐀𝐧𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐅𝐢𝐥𝐦 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝟏𝟗𝟖𝟐-𝟐𝟎𝟎𝟐 }
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This list contains all movies that aren't related with any anime series. (Pre 2014)

Part 2: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/1267
Part 3: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/7998

I watched 35 movies from this list and these are my most favorites:

- Wolf Children
- The Tale of Princess Kaguya
- Tokyo Godfathers
- The Wind Rises
- The Girl who Leapt Through Time
- Kiki's Delivery Service
- 5cm Per Second
- Perfect Blue

This is the kind of stuff you'll want to show to your older relatives or a friend / significant other who isn't into anime in particular but is open to new experiences. Not necessarily to hook them on anime but simply to share a good time together.

What helps an anime end up on this list:
* either subdued or distinctly avant-garde appearance that transcends common anime design sensibilities;
* mature, adult-life-related themes;
* well-crafted, compelling story and character interactions;
* fresh and daring ideas or their execution;
* being otherwise remarkable as an art piece;
* moderate length.

What DOESN'T help an anime end up on the list:
* referencing or pandering to otaku culture, incessant fan service, and all that crap;
* slow-burn slice-of-life narrative;
* overly random, absurdist, reference-heavy humor;
* being too long or narratively incomplete;
* being too tropey;
* not being very good in general (regrettably, this includes bad and mediocre adaptations of good manga/LNs, so no Berserk, My Home Hero, or Golden Kamuy on the list).

These aren't absolute rules but they're hard enough that I would only consider minor exceptions. There is most certainly not enough room for every single piece that fits the bill, so take this as my personal, heavily curated top-50. If there is a sequel or a side-story that also deserves attention (or, conversely, one you should skip), I will mention it in the annotations, so please watch them.

List is subject to revisions and reordering.

A list of anime I believe share a similar style of storytelling to the works of highly revered author, Haruki Murakami.

I drew upon the subject matter and allegories frequently covered by Murakami in his stories. Those of escapism, eroticism, surrealism, loss, depression, loneliness, identity, and redemption.

More titles will be inducted over time, suggestions are welcome.

A stack of animes with main characters battling depression, deep trauma, or other mental health conditions. These animes are often about outcasted MCs and may make you feel an alienation kinda vibe.

Everyone knows Studio Ghibli's amazing work, but what about the other studios?

Most of the Top Movies are related to an anime series, so it is not too easy to find something which can be watched without any previous knowledge.

I will list those standalone movies which I enjoyed besides the Ghibli shows.

Anime with unique art-style/premise and or surreal/dreamlike sequences

List of anime for "elitist". These anime have been considered as "deep" animations by various critics and analysts.

In this compilation there are animes with quite complicated stories that are not recommended for all audiences. As they are: cult, artistic, experimental, avant-garde, underrated, psychological, philosophical, unique or mind-blowing anime.

This list has a part 2: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/4197

Collection of films and OVAs (and one TV series) that "feel" like Ghibli films, but aren't related to the studio and aren't connected to its canon lineup. Factors considered include story beats and character designs that are often seen in Ghibli works as well as works by Ghibli staff completed for other studios.

If you want Ghibli Movies, go to my another stack https://myanimelist.net/stacks/5992

A list of Satoshi Kon as fully director.

Collection of historical semi-realistic (minimal fantasy) or realistic (no superpowers or fantasy) works that detail the historical events of Japan or daily life of people in Japanese historical context.

Reference:

794 – 1185 - Heian period
1185 – 1336 - Kamakura period
1336 – 1573 - Muromachi period
1336 – 1392 - Nanbokucho period
1467 – 1590 - Sengoku period
1568 – 1603 - Azuchi-Momoyama period
1603 – 1868 - Edo period
1853 – 1868 - Bakumatsu (final years of the Edo period)
1868 – 1912 - Meiji period
1912 – 1926 - Taisho period
1926 – 1989 - Showa period
1989 – 2019 - Heisei period

List of stand-alone movies

Movies that bang
Some of them are short movies