Best Years For Animated Movies In History, Ranked

Highlights

• 1989 marked the year animation saved Disney with The Little Mermaid. Traditional hand-painted cel animation ruled the screen.
• 1995 saw the Pixar revolution with Toy Story, kicking off a new anime era with Ghost In The Shell and Dragon Ball Z movies.
• 1998 was peak animation with Mulan, A Bug’s Life, Antz, and Pokemon hitting the big screen, shaping the future of the industry.

Animated Movies have come a long way ever since celluloid films and stop motion gave birth to a whole new industry, and the world saw the birth of many iconic animated characters.

This list looks at the best years for animated movies in history, taking in numerous considerations, such as how revolutionary the techniques applied were, how much revenue they netted, and overall title success.

10 1989

The Year When Animation Saved Disney

• Best Rated Film Of The Year, According To IMDb: The Little Mermaid (7.6)
• Main Animation Technique: Traditional hand-painted cel animation

The last year of the 80’s was certainly one of the biggest ever, with movies like Babar, and the all-time famous Kikki’s Delivery Service by Studio Ghibli. But the most surprising thing about this year is the epic of the Disney animation branch, and how they almost disappeared from history. It was also the year when the saddest and most wholesome animated movie All Dogs Go to Heaven made millions of children worldwide cry their eyes out. And of course, the legendary Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland an American/Japanese co-production that broke the charts.

Disney Corp was seriously considering closing up shop in their animation branch since competitors have been flooding the market since 1982 and numbers didn’t look good for the Mouse company. And then, The Little Mermaid debuted and was a tremendous success. The film based on Hans Christian Andersen’s folk tale saved Disney’s animation department from shutting down and inaugurated a new golden age for Disney.

9 1995

Pixar Inaugurates A New Golden Age, Japanese Animation Steps Hard

• Best Rated Film Of The Year, According To IMDb: Toy Story (8.3)
• Main Animation Technique: CAPS, Full Drawn/Digitalized

1995 was a tremendous year for animation, following up half a decade of mildly successful films, this year was the point of no return for traditional layout animation and the new age of anime movies kicked off, with Ghost In The Shell, the Cyberpunk blockbuster, and 2 Dragon Ball Z movies hitting the cinemas in the same fiscal year.

And then, of course, we got the mildly successful A Goofy Movie and the Pocahontas hit on Disney’s side, the Gargoyles film, and the start of Pixar’s rule over the animation film industry with Toy Story. Many experts say that 1995 was a point of inflection between traditional and modern animation, and we can do nothing but agree on that.

8 1998

Mid-Golden Age of Animation, Best Year For Cultural Blockbusters

• Best Rated Film Of The Year, According To IMDb: Mulan
• Main Animation Technique: Rotoscope/CGI

With Disney’s animation department working hard on several upcoming projects, it was the time for Dreamworks/Universal Studios to shine, and they went big with Prince of Egypt, a bet on Cultural animation narrating the tale of Moses and Ramses as no one had ever seen before. Then Disney released Mulan, proving that musical animated films were kicking hard that year.

We also had 3D animation progressing even further with A Bug’s Life and Antz hitting the cinemas and revolutionizing the new animation industry. And while everyone was distracted, Pokemon debuted on the big screen with Metwtwo Strikes Back hitting the cinemas and The Pokemon Company collected some wild revenues with its flagship franchise. It was a good year for animation.

7 1997

Studio Ghibli Rises To Power, Disney In Its Prime

• Best Rated Film Of The Year, According To IMDb: Princess Mononoke (8.3)
• Main Animation Technique: Rotoscope

1997 was a tremendous year for animation, with Hercules in the headlines as one of the best-animated films made to that point, followed by Princess Mononoke, with Studio Ghibli showing who’s boss, and 20th Century Fox joining the race with Anastasia, an underrated but visually impressive film that is legendary among connoisseurs of the animated industry.

Warner Bros animation started to gain some ground with The Batman Superman Movie: World’s Finest, a tendency in the super-hero animated films that would last over a decade, with DC Comics leading the boards with the best films in the genre. Other great titles included the sequels to Beauty and The Beast, and The Swan Princess movies, which didn’t collect too much praise, but also had great animation technicians working really hard to improve the industry, which led to the success of several titles in the years to come.

6 1999

Later Stages Of The Golden Age, Sequels And A New Fan Favorite

• Best Rated Film Of The Year, According To IMDb: The Iron Giant (8.1)
• Main Animation Technique: CGI

1999 was a curious year, with the second Pokemon movie (The Power of One) collecting a beastly revenue, and the remake of the original Fantasia (1940) movie barely earning enough to cover the budget. Then Pixar released Toy Story 2 which was, by far, one of the most successful animated films ever, with a budget of 90 million and a total revenue of over 511 million gross. The tremendously well-produced and critically acclaimed Tarzan, with Phil Collins singing songs in several languages to give life to some of the greatest hits made for animation films ever.

On the other hand, The Iron Giant made by Warner Bros Pictures’ animation division was a flop, with a budget of over 50 and a total revenue of a little bit more than 33 million, which led to some structural changes in how WB managed their animated IPs. On that note: In 1998, The Quest For Camelot, a great and underrated movie as well, also flopped. It was a weird couple of years, with a lot of great and transcendent films released, though harsh for some producers who drew the short straw in an overly competitive market in the bloom. The South Park movie (South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut) hit the Teaters with the lowest budget that year but nearly quadrupled its initial investment worldwide, proving that sometimes, animation is bound to what the audiences want, and that is also part of the business.

5 2001

Animated Films Become A Gathering Point For People All Ages

• Best Rated Film Of The Year, According To IMDb: Spirited Away (8.6)
• Main Animation Technique: CGI

After the 2000s began, and prior to the new age of animation in 2001, there was a middle point or some sort of transition stage. Animated film producers began to understand a new marketing strategy would be the best, so, “animation for all” was the new premise, with films that could attract the attention of both the younger and eldest audiences at the same time. With movies like Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, and Monsters, Inc., a costly production that took some years to recover its initial budget. And of course, the incredible Spirited Away, where Miyazaki outruled most of the conventions of traditional animation and made an all-time critically acclaimed masterpiece. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, was the first attempt to recreate photo-realistic humans in animation and they nailed the technique but flopped the screenplay.

Disney also led the charge with Atlantis: The Lost Empire with one of the highest budgets ever (nearly 100 million invested) and collected a total worldwide revenue of over 189 million. This movie was wonderful, polished, and featured some of the top-notch CGI that combined traditional animation with modern techniques; in other words: A Masterpiece. But then, a new franchise emerged, one that would revolutionize the animated film industry forever: Shrek. Produced at almost half the cost of Atlantis, Shrek earned a whooping amount of 491 million worldwide and sparked one of the most successful and critically acclaimed franchises after Toy Story.

4 2002

The Later Age Of Lost Animated Film Jewels

• Best Rated Film Of The Year, According To IMDb: Ice Age (7.5)
• Main Animation Technique: CGI

Perhaps, one of the best years for animation in the past two decades was 2002, but most of the critics are not ready for that discussion. With movies like Treasure Planet (remake), Lilo & Stitch, Ice Age, My Beautiful Girl, Mari, The Cat Returns, and the greatly underrated but revolutionary Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron: one of the most epic films starring animals since The Land Before Time (1988), with an immortal soundtrack, beautiful design, and a heartbreaking storytelling. It was a masterpiece and still is.

Treasure Planet was visually impactful, incredibly well-designed, and overall, a great representation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s original work. Then Lilo & Stitch stole the spotlight with its endearing and wholesome representation of the premise that “there’s no ideal family but my own family.” But perhaps, what broke all records, is the rise to power of Blue Sky with the blockbuster Ice Age flick. It was the start of a new blockbuster franchise and a new age for modern animation.

3 2000

Underrated But Visually Impressing Films Change The Audience’s Expectations

• Best Rated Film Of The Year, According To IMDb: Chicken Run (7.5)
• Main Animation Technique: CGI

The year 2000 was not only the inaugural year of a new millennium but also the new age of animation films. With some of the best animated films hitting the theaters, and some cool new techniques applied to animation becoming the new standard. CGI was getting stronger, better, and faster, and that gave birth to masterpieces like Titan A.E. and Dinosaur, which are tremendously underrated films, but masterpieces nonetheless. And out of the blue, Chicken Run was a total box office success, with its low budget-stop-motion animation techniques, and conquering the revenue chart that year.

Disney bet hard on cultural representation with The Emperor’s New Groove, which was a tremendous film (and an unending source of memes), honestly speaking, colorful, funny, and with a prime sense of humor. Sadly, it was also a box office “scratch that off,” with lower revenues than expected, which led Disney to believe that this was not the way forward. However, this film collected later success in the years to come, when it was released for home media, and nearly tripled its original budget. And of course, if we are talking about 2000 animated movies, The Road to El Dorado stands at the top of the foodchain, with some of the best character developments, visual effects, and animation ever made by human hands.

2 2010

3D Animation Becomes The Norm, New Franchises Appear

• Best Rated Film Of The Year, According To IMDb: Toy Story 3 (8.3)
• Main Animation Technique: CGI

Perhaps one of the last great years for animation over the past two decades, and one that yielded great hits like Batman: Under the Red Hood, How to Train Your Dragon, Shrek Forever After, Toy Story 3, Despicable Me, Arrietty, Megamind, and Tangled. It was one of the best years for DC animation, with the release of 3 movies in a row, including the previously mentioned Superman/Batman: Apocalypse and the awesome Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths.

How to Train Your Dragon was an incredibly well-received film, becoming one of the highest box office successes of that year. But Toy Story 3 overshadowed everything, becoming the highest-earning animated film of all time (until it was dethroned in 2014 by Frozen), and Shrek Forever After following up close, ensuring that the Shrek franchise became one of the most successful of all times.

1 1982

The Golden Age of Animation Begins, The Best Year Ever

• Best Rated Film Of The Year, According To IMDb: The Flight Of Dragons
• Main Animation Technique: Traditional Hand-Painted Cel animation

At the beginning of the earlier 80’s the animated film industry was about to change forever. With new techniques overthrowing the classic stop motion and paper frame-by-frame animation was left behind, and exchanged for a series of techniques (Cel animation) that would revolutionize the industry forever: It was the beginning of the Golden Age of Animation and the Best Year for animated films, ever.

1982 saw a mass release of critically acclaimed films, like The Last Unicorn, The Flight Of Dragons, Aladdin And The Wonderful Lamp (original), Arcadia of My Youth (Captain Harlock), Time Masters, Flash Gordon: the Greatest Adventure of All, Techno Police 21C, Stanley, the Ugly Duckling, Gauche the Cellist (also known as Goshu), and the original Treasure Planet. But perhaps, the two most iconic films of that year were The Last Unicorn, and The Secret of NIMH, the latter being the most successful that year, and the earlier, one of the lost jewels of animation that most aspirants to animators study closely due to its wonderful art and cel animation. Turns out, The Last Unicorn was a collaboration between US producers and a Japanese animation company named Topcraft, which would later become Hayao Miyazaki’s choice to animate the legendary Nauusica of the Valley of The Wind (Kaze no Tani no Naushika).