The 10 Best Animated Movies of 2020

Technically, very few animated movies premiered in 2020. It just wasn’t the year for a big family outing to the theater, so it feels like much was held back from traditional heavy-hitters—even if it’s only the third time Pixar has ever released two films in the same year and the first time they’ve done so since Cars 3 and Coco in 2017. Adding in films that had expanded releases, like the wide American release of Weathering with You (Makoto Shinkai’s witchy, magical love story follow-up to smash hit Your Name), bolsters the offerings a bit, but the pickings were slim throughout…even if the internet threw us a few bones like Don Hertzfeldt’s newest short, World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime. Barring technicalities, short films and other rule-fudgers, 2020 was a year that offered up a few peaks—Soul’s Christmas streaming release is truly a holiday gift—and plenty of promise for the future.
Both anime and western animation were able to continue their post-production (and even production, in some cases) under distanced COVID-19 protocols, often with a unique intensity compared to their live-action peers. That and some promising originals from Netflix might mean the near future of animated features may have much more quality on offer, though there are still some stunning anime, stop-motion and other animated films that managed to come out this year.
Here are our picks for the best animated movies of 2020:
10. My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising
Since it first aired back in 2016, My Hero Academia has secured its place as one of the best, if not arguably the best, shounen action anime of its generation. Set in a world populated by humans born with unique abilities known as “quirks,” the series follows Izuku “Deku” Midoriya, a young boy who dreams of one day becoming a hero despite being born without any powers. Taken under the wing of All Might, the world’s number one hero, as his secret apprentice and gifted with the elder’s awesome generation-spanning ability One for All, Midoriya is accepted to the U.A. Hero Academy, and soon embarks on his personal journey to one day succeed All Might as the world’s greatest hero. The second standalone spin-off feature since 2018’s Two Heroes, My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising takes place some weeks following the conclusion of the first arc of the series’ fourth season. With All Might now retired, Midoriya and his classmates are charged with a work study assignment protecting the residents of the small island of Nabu. Things quickly turn sour when the island is attacked by a group of villains led by the mysterious Nine; cut off from the mainland and with no way to contact their mentors for help, it’s up to Midoriya and his friends to uncover Nine’s plot and rescue the island from disaster. Sure, the action is thrilling and the visual effects are stellar, but Heroes Rising feels like an hour-long filler episode capped by an exhilarating 20-minute spectacle that’s as impressive as it is ultimately inconsequential. Maybe that’s enough.—Toussaint Egan
9. Onward
For its interminable, meandering first half, Onward somehow compiles the worst parts of even the best Pixar movies. It’s aggressively high-concept, albeit strained this time, positing what would happen if magical creatures were dulled by generations of capitalism into losing everything magical about them. (Turns out: It makes them dull!) It features yet another protagonist who feels displaced from their home and yearns for a past they feel deprived of. (Usually a lost family member: here, a father.) Worst, it is yet another Let’s Go On A Quest! plot, a Pixar trope so exhausted and hoary that you always appreciate that a character at last just blurts out, “Let’s Go On A Quest!” It is dispiriting, during an era when the very meaning of the Pixar brand is being diluted by sequels and overarching corporate strategies, to see a movie that seems cobbled together from various other Pixar films, a reliance on a formula from a company that once rewrote all the rules themselves. It’s a relief, then, that Onward does ultimately right itself and, against all odds, still provide a signature Pixar moment or two, even improbably jerking a few tears here or there. That speaks to an almost pathological ability to find the beating heart of any story, even if, as is the case here, it’s surrounded by a lot of “irreverent” bells and whistles that feel less organic than “desperately clung to” as if to remind us, “Look, look, still Pixar!” But it also is a result of what appears to be a deeply personal project for director and co-writer Dan Scanlon. Scanlon is a Pixar lifer, and thus a project of this magnitude feels like the result of a lifetime of hard work and dedication.—Will Leitch
8. The Croods: A New Age
The Croods: A New Age is the follow-up to DreamWorks Animation’s 2013 film The Croods—and if you’ve seen that, you mostly know what you’re getting into with this one. Although it’s clearly tailored for kids to enjoy as its first priority, A New Age leans into the physical comedy and, for lack of a better phrase, crude humor of its predecessor with success, creating a lighthearted, low-ambition romp that kids will love and adults will enjoy. Not much time has passed since the original film, where the Crood family—led by patriarch Grug (Nicolas Cage)—joins the orphaned Guy (Ryan Reynolds) in search of the ambiguous “Tomorrow” that his late parents urged him toward. Early on, they appear to find it in the garden of Phil (Peter Dinklage) and Hope Betterman (Leslie Mann). They lead a family of seemingly sophisticated humans who have embraced imitations of modern technology and a sheltered life, building a wall surrounding their home to block out the outside world. Lacking emotional weight, its world isn’t as deep as other DreamWorks Animation properties (such as Kung Fu Panda or How to Train Your Dragon), but it clears space for there to be as much comedy as possible. Thankfully, this humor doesn’t have one set of fart jokes for the kids and innuendo-filled humor for the adults, but instead uses universal physical comedy through expressive animation and exaggerated acting to make jokes that’ll get the kids but have the adults smiling (if not laughing) along. In fact, I think I laughed a bit more with A New Age than I did with the original, thanks in most part to its enhanced cartoonishness and the Bettermans’ added foil to the Croods’ antics.—Joseph Stanichar