Every Studio Ghibli Animated Film, Ranked Worst to Best
Updated February 1, 2021 to add Earwig and the Witch.
There has never been a better time to revisit the Studio Ghibli catalog. Founded in the mid-1980s by a group of animators led by Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, the Japanese studio is almost without peer in the world of animation, releasing 20 critically acclaimed features (and just one dud) over three decades. Recently, the entire Ghibli catalog was added to a variety of digital services (like Amazon, YouTube, and iTunes) for the first time ever (in both their subtitled Japanese original versions and Disney-produced English-language dubs), and all of the films will be available to stream for free to subscribers on day one when HBO Max launches at the end of May.
Wondering where to start? In the gallery above, we rank every Studio Ghibli release from worst to absolute best, according to their Metascores (which measure the opinions of top professional film critics).
Photo credits: Studio Ghibli, Toei (slide 18)
Director Hayao Miyazaki's final film prior to his retirement (he has since unretired and is working on a new film, though it is still years away from completion), this 2013 drama is his least fantastical work. It retraces the real life (albeit in fictionalized form) of aircraft designer Jiro Horikoshi, whose planes were used by Japan during WWII.
“The film is visually sumptuous, morally ambiguous, dramatic and dreamlike, with a narrative as engrossing as any live-action movie of 2013. It’s easy to follow yet hard to shake.” —Lawrence Toppman, The Charlotte Observer
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