The 10 Best Anime Movies of the ’80s Beyond ‘Akira’ and Studio Ghibli

Kambole Campbell
·2 min read
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In many respects, the ‘80s are highlighted as a boom period for anime, something perhaps unwittingly foretold by Mobile Suit Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino in his famous “Anime New Century Declaration” — a promo event for the “MS Gundam” compilation movie “Mobile Suit Gundam 1” that unexpectedly drew a crowd numbering in the thousands. The event was emblematic of that coming explosion — anime production reaching newfound scale, finding larger audiences in turn, and maturing as both a medium and an industry. It would be a decade that saw more confident spending, bigger original productions, and a much deeper roster as new creators. 

In a retrospective piece about the moment, “Anime: A History” author Jonathan Clements wrote that while Tomino would become a figurehead, his “new world order” would belong to the next generation. It would be a dynamic new age defined by works like the famous Daicon III & IV Opening Animations, made by the artists and anime otaku who later went on to found Studio Gainax; artists and anime otaku like Hideaki Anno, whose canonical “Neon Genesis Evangelion” contains a reference to Tomino’s declaration in its very title. 

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Tomino’s declaration was also prescient of how fandom was beginning to shape the direction of the industry itself, as the growing video market and the birth of the Original Video Animation — usually attributed to Mamoru Oshii’s “Dallos” (1983) — would synthesize enthusiasm with technological advancements in order to help anime reach a whole new crowd.

In a booklet essay included in Anime Ltd’s release of “Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêmaise,” critic Ryusuke Hikawa observed that until the beginning of the ’80s, the majority of anime feature films were compilations of TV series, and now with increasing frequency the audience of anime such as “Space Battleship Yamato” and “Gundam” would become creators themselves in an era where more original anime films would find their way to theaters.

Aesthetic developments would follow in turn, displaying themselves in more lavish film production as well as the first signs of 3D animation, like in 1983’s “Golgo 13.” The international proliferation of “Star Wars” combined with the success of works like the aforementioned “Yamato” and “Gundam” factored into a general tilt toward science-fiction.

While general audiences might associate the anime of the ‘80s with “Akira” and Studio Ghibli efforts like “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Castle in the Sky,” the real story of how the industry evolved over the course of those 10 years is best told through relatively lesser-known films that made a massive imprint from inside Katsuhiro Otomo and Hayao Miyazaki’s shadows. The 10 features listed below — presented in chronological order — are representative of the gradual changes and emergent talent that defined the decade, or what Tomino would call “the new century.”

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