A Guide to Anime Films

I'm into Anime in large part for the serialized content, however films have been both more "respectable" and more profitable for most of modern history, on both sides of the Pacific and in terms of both Live Action and Animation.  That means theatrically released Anime films frequently have more budget to work with, and less time constraints placed on their production, which allows certain technical advantages. So for many newcomers movies may be where they want to start.

Again as a consequence of my watching Anime mainly for the serieses and sagas, most of the films I have seen are in some way tied to a series.  Of Anime movies that simply are stand alone (or were until they got a sequel), I've seen a handful of Miyazaki films, two non Miyazaki Ghibili films, Akira, Barefoot Gen, Project A-Ko, Metropolis, Kara no Kyoukai, Maquia, A Silent Voice, Your Name and Weathering With You, Vampire Hunter D, a couple mostly now forgotten Fantasy films from around 2010, and one that's basically a more serious take on the premise of Chunibyo, and some more obscure ones slipping my mind right now.

However Anime films that are tied to TV shows come in many forms in terms of how accessible they potentially could be to someone not already into that series and capable of standing on their own.

A note, Anime database websites like MyAnimeList define "Movies" based on how they are released not runtime, so theatrical shorts are classified as movies but feature length OVAs and TV Specials are not.  My mind still prefers to define a movie mostly by runtime and if it wasn't in theaters just call it a TV movie or Direct to Video movie.

First you have the franchises that are largely negative continuity or flexible continuity or at least highly episodic and long running enough to begin with that I generally think the actual first tv episode is almsot the worst first impression because of the early instalment weirdness.  So for these shows one of their ambiguously canonical films probably is the best way to introduce it's cast of characters to someone new.  These are shows like Lupin The Third, Pokémon, 90s Sailor Moon, PreCure and Detective Conan aka Case Closed.  

Sailor Moon R: The Promise of The Rose is all of the core appeal of Sailor Moon concentrated into a well paced easy to follow but highly emotionally dense film.  For Pokémon the Third movie Spell of The Unown is the very best, but ironically one of the few that does something which might be a problem for a viewer who hadn't followed the show up to that point, but maybe not, I think Pokémon fans reading this can guess what I'm talking about without me needing to spoil it.  The first two Pokémon films are perhaps in different ways trying too hard to be "cinematic".  The other Pokemon movies I'd rank as above average are Heroes Latios and Latias, Destiny Deoxys, Ranger Temple of The Sea, The Power of Us and Secrets of The Jungle, but most are perfectly good at what they're meant to be.

Detective Conan/Case Closed is the franchise I have been most obsessed with recently, and so in part thinking about it's movies was what inspired me to write this.  Every movie is in part designed to work for newcomers while also doing something special for fans, that's why at the beginning there is always a brief summery of the show's premise.  But some I consider more recommended for this purpose then others.  The actual first movie The Time Bombed Skyscraper could work well enough with it's cold open basically being how an average episode ends.  The third movie The Last Wizard of The Century is probably the best of them (that seems to happen a lot with Anime, it's like the opposite of how Hollywood franchises are perceived).  Movie 4 Captured In Her Eyes is interesting in how it's cold open is actually a flashback to before what happens in the premise summery segment making it perhaps by default the most chorological movie.  Of the three movies that feature the show's Arc villains, movie 5 Countdown To Heaven is the best executed in how it utilizes them given that they're not allowed to change the status quo, and also of all the movies I've seen the best for getting to know Haibara Ai (called Vi Graythorn in the Funimation Dub). Movies 7-18 do not have Dubs yet and so I've only seen four, of those movie 8 Magician of The Silver Sky is the most interesting, it breaks from the usual formula in a way that allows it to recreate the vibes of the tv show better then any of the others, and it's simpler plot makes it easier to watch Subbed.  

Movies 19-23 are currently the only movies easy to watch legally in English, Subbed or Dubbed, with all of the BangZoom releases purchasable and rentable on Amazon Prime, while prior movies either were never officially released over here or were only via now long discontinued localizations.  These movies and some of the ones preceding them are often criticized by longtime fans for being too much like over the top modern American Superhero movies and thus allegedly less intelligently written then the first 9 or so.  I can't entirely say I disagree since I don't feel like recommending any of those as much as the early ones I just listed, but I do enjoy all of them just fine and I didn't list all of the first 9, their basic appeal is still the same in my view, they've changed similarly to how the show has changed, but the movies were always a good deal more action oriented then the show.  Zero The Enforcer is the only one I can even come close to saying I dislike.

A second type of Anime tie in movie is a kind some less episodic shows have, that may start out feeling as stand alone as the above mentioned movies, but during the last act there will be an increasing amount of plot relevant fan service only followers of the show will get.  There are two main examples that come to mind, A Certain Magical Index: The Miracle of The Endymion, and Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale.  I enjoy both movies, Endymion I give a 10/10, but watch the series first, actually for Endymion there's kind of two series you need to have followed.  However for people becoming fans of those shows know that they are like the above movies in how they won't actually effect the status quo of the show and rarely if at all be acknowledged.

The third type are movies that are sequels or continuations, or sometimes even specifically the Ending, or a Coda to the show's ending.  Type 2 films have a chance of being satisfying to a non fan because by the time the stuff they won't be able to follow factors in they might have gotten invested enough to just roll with it. But Type 3 are explicitly not stand alone works on any level. Char's Counterattack,  The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, End of Evangelion, The Conqueror of Shambala are probably the biggest examples, I also like the Gundam 00 movie and Code Geass R3 Lelouch of The Resurrection, and most recently we had the Sailor Moon Eternal movies which picked up where Sailor Moon Crystal season 3 left off.  Maybe some of these can overcome their continuity lock out issues simply by being good, but being good on it's own is not the barrier breaker some people want to think it is.

Type four would be Recap movies, these are basically a chunk of a series, ranging anywhere from 8 episodes to 25, trimmed down and reedited into a film length, some may try to do a whole show in one but most go for 2 or a trilogy.  There may be some genuinely newly animated material in a few select scenes or as a framing device.  These almsot always fail to be satisfying movies on their own, or even give the fans interested in that concept what they want.  The only definitive exception is the Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 Trilogy which were longer then most and in a unique situation.  I have seen some people speak highly of Macross Do you Remember Love but I haven't watched that one yet.

Type 4b is when the story of a show is fully remade as a movie, or the source material re-adapted, A lot of the movies that fit this category I haven't seen yet even when they exist for a show I like, but the Rebuild of Evangelion films are the most notorious.  The Sailor Moon Eternal films actually also fit this category in relation to Sailor Moon SuperS and the first 6 episodes of Sailor Stars from the 90s Anime.  In the re-adaptation case sometimes the movie version came before the series, but usually the movie still winds up feeling like it should be the less definitive Anime version like with Clamp's X.  Detective Conan/Case Closed Episode "One" The Great Detective Turned Small is basically a remake in the show's modern style of the first episode and a half of the series, but it also starts a little earlier and then ends a bit like a Recap episode.

I wanted to say those 4 categories covered everything, however Crossovers like Lupin The Third vs Detective Conan or the PreCure Allstars films are difficult to categorize, they are often structurally similar to Type 1 but it's hard to imagine seeing any appeal to watching a Crossover movie if you aren't already a fan of any of the parties involved.

And then there is the very unique case of Adolescence of Utena.  At face value it is Type 4b, the fan theorizing that it's actually a sequel on some cosmic time loopy metanarrative level also exists for the Rebuild films but for those films that theory doesn't effect what you think they mean nearly as much.  But beyond all of that is how the Utena movie is even more abstract in it's Symbolism then the TV show titled Revolutionary Girl Utena, to the point where you really need to have seen the show to have any hope of deciphering what's going on in the movie, and even for those of us who have seen it it isn't easy.