Beyond Spirited Away: 5 Studio Ghibli Films That Deserve a Spot on Every Fan's Watchlist
Ask someone to name a Studio Ghibli movie and you'll almost always get the same three answers: Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke. Those are genuinely great films — no argument there. But if that's where your Ghibli knowledge stops, you're missing some of the most quietly extraordinary animation ever put to screen.
The studio's catalog has over 20 feature films, and a surprising number of them fly completely under the radar in Western fandom. Some got limited theatrical runs in the U.S. Others just never caught the same cultural wave as Chihiro's bathhouse adventure. Whatever the reason, they deserve better. Here are five Ghibli films that are long overdue for their moment.
1. The Wind Rises (2013) — A Love Letter to Dreams and Their Cost
Hayao Miyazaki's supposed farewell film (he's since come out of retirement, because of course he has) is one of the most mature things the studio has ever made — and probably the most misunderstood.
The Wind Rises is a fictionalized biography of Jiro Horikoshi, the engineer who designed the Japanese Zero fighter planes used in World War II. That premise alone tends to make Western audiences hesitant. But the film isn't a war movie — it's a meditation on the relationship between artistic passion and moral consequence. Jiro loves planes the way a poet loves language. He wants to create something beautiful. The fact that his creations will be used to kill people is a weight the film never lets him — or the viewer — fully escape.
For American audiences who grew up with clear-cut WWII narratives, this is genuinely challenging territory. It asks you to sit with ambiguity rather than resolve it. The animation is breathtaking — wind and flight have never looked more alive in 2D — and the romance at the center of the story is heartbreaking in the most understated way. This one sticks with you.
2. Only Yesterday (1991) — The Ghibli Film That Feels Most Like Real Life
Here's a Ghibli film with zero magic, zero spirits, and zero fantastical creatures. Just a 27-year-old woman on a trip to rural Japan, remembering her childhood. That might sound uneventful, but Only Yesterday is one of the most emotionally precise films in the entire catalog.
Directed by Isao Takahata (the underappreciated genius behind Grave of the Fireflies), the film cuts between Taeko's present-day journey and vivid memories of her fifth-grade self — first crushes, family tensions, the strange social politics of being a preteen girl. The childhood sequences are animated in a slightly softer, hazier style that makes them feel genuinely like memory rather than flashback. It's a subtle but brilliant technique.
This film didn't get a wide U.S. release until 2016, which explains a lot of its obscurity here. But for anyone who's ever felt the gap between who they thought they'd be and who they actually became, Only Yesterday hits with quiet, devastating accuracy.
3. Pom Poko (1994) — The Wildest Environmental Fable You've Never Seen
If you want proof that Ghibli has range, look no further than Pom Poko — a film about shape-shifting raccoon dogs (tanuki) waging guerrilla warfare against suburban development in Tokyo. Yes, really.
Also directed by Takahata, Pom Poko is simultaneously a slapstick comedy, a folklore deep-dive, and a genuinely moving environmental allegory. The tanuki try everything to scare off the humans destroying their forest: elaborate illusions, haunted house tactics, full-on spectral parades drawn from Japanese mythology. It's delightfully weird and visually inventive in ways that are unlike anything else in the Ghibli lineup.
But underneath all the chaos is a story about loss that lands harder than you'd expect. The tanuki are losing their home and their way of life, and no amount of magical trickery is going to stop it. For U.S. viewers who grew up watching forests and green spaces disappear to development, that central tension isn't exactly subtle — and it's not supposed to be.
4. The Cat Returns (2002) — Pure, Joyful Comfort Viewing
Not every great film needs to carry thematic weight. Sometimes a movie's greatest achievement is being exactly what it sets out to be, executed with total confidence. The Cat Returns is that movie.
A loose spin-off of Whisper of the Heart, this one follows a teenage girl who accidentally gets entangled with the Kingdom of Cats after saving a royal feline from traffic. It's breezy, funny, and packed with inventive visual gags. The Cat King is an absurd delight. The whole thing runs under 75 minutes and never wastes a single one of them.
American fans who came to Ghibli through Spirited Away sometimes sleep on The Cat Returns because it feels lighter. But that lightness is intentional and beautifully executed. It's a reminder that Ghibli's mastery of tone extends to pure, uncomplicated fun — and that there's real craft in knowing when a story just needs to be a good time.
5. When Marnie Was There (2014) — The One That Will Make You Cry on a Tuesday Afternoon
Ghibli's final film before its temporary 2014 hiatus is, depending on who you ask, one of its most emotionally devastating. When Marnie Was There follows Anna, a withdrawn, anxious 12-year-old sent to the countryside for her health, who becomes obsessed with a mysterious girl named Marnie living in an old mansion.
What unfolds is a ghost story, a mystery, and ultimately a film about grief, identity, and the way love can reach across time. The pacing is slow and deliberate — this is not a film that rushes anywhere — but the emotional payoff is enormous. By the final act, the pieces of the story click into place in a way that recontextualizes everything you've already seen, and the effect is genuinely stunning.
This one tends to resonate especially with viewers who have complicated feelings about family, belonging, or their own sense of self. In other words: a lot of people.
Where to Start If You're New to the Deep Cuts
If you've already got Spirited Away and Totoro checked off your list, The Cat Returns makes for the most accessible entry point into Ghibli's lesser-known work — low stakes, high fun. From there, When Marnie Was There is the natural next step if you want something with more emotional heft. Save The Wind Rises for when you're ready to sit with something that doesn't offer easy answers.
Ghibli's famous films earned their reputation. But the studio's real depth lives in these quieter, less-celebrated corners of the catalog — and they're absolutely worth finding.
