Birthday Boy

Do you want to watch anime so artsy that will either relate to the deepest part of your soul or completely confuse you?
Well here you go, and since they are so short you don't have to feel like you wasted your time.

This list includes arthouse anime that are around 15 minutes or less, so movie length (Angel's Egg) or OVA/episode length (Cat Soup) are not in here.

Some of this may be a bit challenging to find, some are up on youtube and for some you'll have to get creative, buying or streaming them is probably out of the question.

Japan has waged countless wars within its territories and beyond her shores for thousands of years now, and in anime we can see some of the perspectives, interpretations and depictions the Japanese people have developed with regards to this topic.

In this stack list I have gathered what I consider to be the essential anime with the theme of war, whether they show it from the perspective of the soldiers who fight them or from the experience of the bystander civilians who have to endure its effects on society and the environment. War is a theme that comes up, even tangentially, in most of everything, so I can't really make a list of every good anime that has some reference to war in it, so here I tried to put shows that either have a direct focus on war as a core theme, or shows whose main focus isn't war and only have war related elements in certain limited sections, but still do provide an interesting and valuable perspective on it when the theme of war eventually comes up.

I don't necessarily agree with all of these shows' views on war (I actively disagree with some), nor do I believe every show here is good. I just think that all of these could offer interesting insight on the different perspectives about war that come up in Japanese animation. You decide which view of war you agree with the most or find most emotionally genuine and politically nuanced.

Obviously they got no source material, so the list contains anime which aired and got no upcoming sequels or prequels.