This article is part of our 2020 Rewind. Follow along as we explore the best and most interesting movies, shows, performances, and more released in this very strange year. In this entry, we explore the best animated movies of 2020.

Peeking back at our 2020 Preview, we entered the year in the same fashion that we do every year: filled with a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and excitement for what lies ahead. Twelve months later, a lot has gone down, and we did not receive every movie we were thirsting to see.

However, while we did not get Raya and the Last Dragon or Evangelion: 3.0+1.0, most of the other animated movies we were craving did find some form of release despite theatrical troubles. Even better, many of the movies we were psyched to see proved to be real bangers and found their way onto the list below.

Pickings were not as slim as you might suspect, and some of the year’s best films sprung from unexpected corners. Short-form animation continues to prove itself as an arena for experimentation and innovation. Several of 2020’s best works don’t even crack an hour. One doesn’t even break ten minutes.

Feel free to get animated yourself as you explore this list of 2020’s finest cartoon movies.

20. My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising

The second cinematic brawl to spin out of the My Hero Academia anime series is more of the same. If you dig that same, then your palate is rewarded. Transferred to a remote island, U.A. High’s Class 1-A find themselves the last line of defense against Izuku Midoriya, the holder of One for All. Together they scream and smash against each other, igniting wave after wave of kinetic, feverish animation. The energy emitted from the screen is all-consuming. Take a bath in it or drown.

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19. Alien Xmas

Alien Xmas springs out of Chiodo Brothers Productions, the same maniacs that brought Killer Klowns from Outer Space and the wannabe Rankin/Bass stop-motion segments of Elf to life. It tells the tale of X, the smallest member of an alien race consumed with a desire to collect trinkets. Charged with invading Earth, X travels to the corner of the planet that seems to have the most toys worth looting: the North Pole. While in the process of taking, he learns the value of giving.

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18. We Bare Bears: The Movie

San Francisco is fed up. The three bear brothers (Grizz, Panda, and Ice Bear) cause one accidental catastrophe too many, and an angry mob forms to push them out of their community. The brothers flee to Canada, dodging the attacks of a villainous wildlife agent.

We Bare Bears: The Movie replicates the Cartoon Network series’s tone and humor and simply makes it longer. Does it feel cinematic? No. That’s fine. More is better when it comes to these awkward, loveable weirdos.

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17. Over the Moon

Over the Moon wants to be a part of the Disney Renaissance. They hired an old school Disney animator (Glen Keane) to helm the project. They jammed it full of poppy songs and crammed a plethora of cutesy sidekicks to aid their hero to her heartfelt destination. You get the sense that there is an algorithm in play, but dammit, the movie charms with its approximation.

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16. A Whisker Away

A Whisker Away is the stupidest title. Ignore it. Let’s pretend Netflix uploaded the anime under its original moniker, literally translated as “Wanting to Cry, I Pretend to Be a Cat.” Ah, that’s better. You’re curious now, right?

Miyo (Cherami Leigh) is an unhappy middle school girl. She absolutely adores her classmate Kento (Johnny Yong Bosch), but he won’t give her the time of day. When a mysterious stranger gives her a kitten mask, she transforms into a feline. In this form, she gains unprecedented access to Kento and discovers the torments of his everyday life.

A Whisker Away is a sorrowful exploration of preteen hell. Each pubescent pang, whether wrapped in magic or mundanity, is felt deeply. You’ll squirm through your watch, but triumph comes through survival.

15. Trolls World Tour

We’ll never be able to talk Trolls World Tour without mentioning the pandemic. With most movie houses closed in the country, Universal Pictures opted to release the film on VOD day-and-date with its theatrical run on April 19th. Maybe it’s because my head was trapped in such a suffocating reality, but clicking “buy” on this flick sparked a gust of much-needed relief.

Trolls World Tour is a confection. It’s sweet, and you can feel your teeth rotting while you chew, but the future may never come, so you might as well enjoy the sugar high.

14. Canvas

This article was already done and submitted to the editor before I had a chance to watch the Netflix short Canvas. I felt good. I felt confident. Then, writer/director Frank A. Abney III ruined it all (so sorry, Scoob!, you gotta scram).

Canvas is a powerfully silent dive into the destructive power of loss. An unnamed, wheelchair-bound grandfather wakens to another morning without his partner by his side. His daughter and granddaughter visit. He puts on a good show for them but refuses to pick up a crayon when playtime calls for it. When the little one wanders into his shuttered studio and uncovers a painting-in-progress featuring his missing bride, a shiver of anger ripples through him. Until the granddaughter reveals the love that remains behind.

Abney learned his manipulative tricks while working for Pixar, animating bits of Coco, The Incredibles II, and Soul. Canvas’ 3D animation would appear right at home amongst his past works, but the way his grandfather falls into the canvas’s healing realm injects a traditional 2D spark to the experience. These nine minutes are a pure surge of cinema, celebrating the form while clawing your heartstrings.

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13. Justice League Dark: Apokolips War

While the world has continued to wait for Marvel movies this year, DC Comics cranked out an incredible array of animated features. Justice League Dark: Apokolips War was one of five and by far the best. Although, the other four (Batman: Death in the Family, Deathstroke: Knights & Dragons, Superman: Man of Tomorrow, and Superman: Red Son) are certainly worth a watch for those who are craving spandex excitement.

Earth barely holds together after Darkseid vanquishes Superman and his Justice League. Our last glimmer of hope resides within the soured soul of John Constantine (Matt Ryan) and his ragtag band of magical miscreants. Clark Kent fought with honor; Constantine fights to win. Honor be damned.

Justice League Dark: Apokolips War is one of those universe-crushing stories that serve as a cataclysmic reboot so Warner Bros. can start all over again with a new style and a narrative clean slate. You can be cynical about it or appreciate the climax so rarely afforded these superhero endeavors.

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12. Out

A man and his dog magically switch bodies, a Freaky Friday situation that comically leads to the man coming out to his parents. Lasting just nine minutes in total, Out pulls every ounce of emotion from your person. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry – all that stuff. That’s Pixar, baby. Damn the runtime.

The studio’s SparkShorts program offers creators from the fringes of Pixar to take front and center. Writer/director Steven Clay Hunter was an animator on Toy Story 4 and The Good Dinosaur, plus a batch of other flicks. Out shows that he can deliver a unique style without imploding the brand. Let’s get him a feature.

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11. Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe

Candace can’t take it anymore. Her mother fails to witness another wild technological scheme concocted by her brothers Phineas and Ferb. The moment she screams her frustrations to the heavens, a spaceship appears above, offering unconditional love and acceptance. You see, Candace is their Chosen One, and it’s exactly the kind of news the big sis has been waiting to receive all her life.

Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe sees Phineas and Ferb on a rescue mission to save their sister from the clutches of her own ego, as well as a horde of combustible aliens. Don’t get them too excited; they’re bound to pop. Gross.

Like My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising and We Bare Bears: The Movie, Candace Against the Universe stays true to its source material. It’s not a pretender. The film ranks above the rest because it never stops with the jokes and visual gags. From the jump, creators Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy“ Marsh steer their army of screenwriters to unload everything they’ve got. A second doesn’t pass without a prank of some kind.

10. The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special

Look, I’m as surprised to see this film as high on the list as you are. The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special may not be canon, but it’s probably the best we’re going to get regarding a follow-up to The Rise of Skywalker. And it most definitely is a follow-up.

The short film begins almost immediately after the fall of the First Order. Rey (Helen Sadler) struggles to teach Finn (Omar Benson Miller) the ways of the Force. While her friends prepare a grand Life Day celebration on Chewbacca’s homeworld, Rey travels to the Jedi Temple on Kordoku, where she discovers a green crystal that allows her to travel back in time.

For most of The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special, Rey spills from one classic Star Wars scene to the next. We re-meet Luke and Yoda on Dagobah, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan during their aggressive negotiations, and a quarreling Darth Vader and The Emperor on Death Star II. The real joy occurs when Rey accidentally propels characters from one film into another; galactic paradoxes abound.

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9. Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge

Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge basically retells the same story as the 1995 theatrical adaptation, but with one key difference. It hooks the narrative on the rage of the video game’s skull-faced, supernaturally savage combatant, Scorpion. Making the undead warrior’s revenge the driving motivation, the film frees the audience to relish in the bloodshed cheerfully.

Mortal Kombat is all about the fatalities, and this cartoon knows how to please its players. We open on Sub Zero’s clan slaughtering their way through Scorpion’s family, and it never lets up from there. Blood flows in torrents, limbs pile in mountains. It’s a gorehound’s delight, sold through a tyrannical sense of justice.

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8. Onward

In a world where magic and fantasy are commonplace, two brothers rediscover wonder and their love for each other as they set off to restore their dead father to the land of the living. Standing in their way is every fantastic creature dumped out of The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons.

With a theatrical life cut short by the pandemic, Onward is destined to meet its audience on the small screen. It’s a hyper geeky adventure, peppered with references to pop culture of every variety. Director Dan Scanlon stitches one big nerd blanket to keep you warm when life looks its coldest.

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7. The Croods: A New Age

The Croods: A New Age is The Croods on acid. The sequel has the same basic prehistoric premise as the original — a family of cave people tries to make it in a savage world where death awaits around every corner — but director Joel Crawford and his crew crank the surrealism of the surroundings to eleven. Then they break the dial. They snap that damn thing off and eat it!

DreamWorks Animation composes a luscious canvas of weirdness, fabricating a reality that seems extrapolated from Ray Harryhausen’s concept of “dinosaur times.” Chicken Seals? Why not? Punch Monkeys? Yes, please.

The warm family fuzzies never quite hit as strongly as they do in a Pixar endeavor, but it’s a whole lot funnier. There is no topping peanut toes or the broad pleasures of sticks in eyes eliciting screaming panic. That’s just good comedy.

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6. If Anything Happens I Love You

The less said about this twelve-minute short film, the better. Although considering that it dominated Netflix nearly immediately upon its release in November and spawned multiple hashtags across several social media platforms, the chances are slim that you’re unaware of its content.

I don’t want to rob any viewer of the experience I had with the film, knowing nothing before pressing play. Written and directed by Will McCormack and Michael Govier, If Anything Happens I Love You uses simplistic line drawings across stark, wide backgrounds to convey a deep sense of loss between two participants.

The film is a haunter. You may want to shake it, but it lingers long after the fade out. If we could only make its ache a memory, this country would be a better place. Preachy? No. Impassioned? Definitely.

5. A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon

Wallace and Gromit may be the crown jewel of Aardman Animations, but the studio’s secret weapon is Shaun the Sheep. The British television series first lept onto the big screen in 2015, scoring a warm critical reception and a modest box office here in the states. Globally, however, the film quadrupled its budget, guaranteeing this sequel.

While the film is not entirely silent — humans and animals jabbering on — the dialogue never soars beyond the adult warble of Charlie Brown cartoons. Action and expression drive the narrative, highlighting the extreme talent of Aardman’s stop-motion animators. In their hands, they shape their own versions of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd. The heroes of silent comedy stand resurrected within Farmageddon‘s alien-infested Mossy Bottom Farm.

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4. The Willoughbys

Mom and Dad are selfish monsters. Let’s murder their ass so we can live the rest of our lives joyfully as orphans. That’s the basic premise of The Willoughbys, a dark odyssey exploring the bleakest of endgames in the classic bad parents narrative.

Based on the novel by Lois Lowry, The Willoughbys introduces its childhood stars through the lens of their repulsive gene doners. Mom (Jane Krakowski) barely notices when her first child Tim (Will Forte) pops out of her body, and Dad (Martin Short) kindly saddles him with a name before bouncing back into the embrace of his beloved. Three more oddball children follow, and after a few years of suffering lovelessly, they hatch a scheme to eradicate the ‘rents.

The Willoughbys feels a little like a Wes Anderson film jacked up on Roald Dahl nightmare juice. It’s weird and uncomfortable and unnerving, and it takes the audience to the precipice of wrong before pulling back to reveal that it does indeed beat with a human heart.

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3. World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime

With the first two World of Tomorrow segments, animator Don Hertzfeldt crammed a science fiction epic about humanity’s desperate desire to extend its miserable life into forty brutally funny and utterly heartbreaking minutes. The adventures of Emily and her increasingly deteriorating, definitely demented backup clones concluded on what seemed like a definitive statement. Three years later, Hertzfeldt returns to his (and probably our) grim future for another episode that surprisingly works independently of the other two while also reframing what came before.

At thirty-four minutes, World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime is slightly longer than the other two and will not alienate anyone unfamiliar with the previous segments. Our heroic stick figure this go-around is David, a space traveler stuffed into a tiny tin can starship, wasting his days inside the internet. After a message from an Emily clone suddenly appears in his memory,  David departs on a star trek across the galaxy to retrieve a vital beacon. The catch? To maintain space for Emily’s message in his brain, David must frequently delete essential functions from his brain.

World of Tomorrow Episode Three initially supplies a barrage of knowing, comical jabs. It’s some of the best comedy of the year, but as David approaches his destination, the laughs make way for a clenching of the throat. Hertzfeldt is a gut punch champion, and he delivers one helluva wallop here.

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2. Wolfwalkers

When Cartoon Saloon makes a movie, you pay attention. Their last three films (The Secret of the Kells, Song of the Sea, and The Breadwinner) were extraordinary displays of the form, refusing to cater to the traditional style of 2D animation while also exporting unique mythology overlooked by the Mouse House’s storytellers and its myriad imitators.

Wolfwalkers is no exception — well, it is an exception because it’s Cartoon Saloon’s greatest glory. Set amidst the English invasion of Ireland circa 1649, the film follows a young girl’s desire to prove her skill to her wolf-hunting father by bringing down the wild pack surrounding their city’s walls.

In her defiance, she encounters another obstinate daughter, but this one can live life as a wolf when asleep. Hunter becomes prey, prey becomes hunter, hunter becomes savior. The passion of its players reverberates through every frame, tearing at the animation, shattering convention.

Wolfwalkers‘ style morphs with emotion. The more heated and terrified the events on screen, the more jagged the characters’ shapes and lines transform. Directors Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart start from a style honoring woodblock prints but gleefully allow for expressionistic ruptures. The film burns with the will of its young heroes.

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1. Soul

Those who can’t do, teach. Except, Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) can do. He’s a brilliant jazz pianist who blissfully falls into the zone when behind the keys. The big break never came, but on the day his middle school prepares to place him on the permanent pay role, including benefits with health care, he also catches the creative break of a lifetime. Dorthea Williams (Angela Bassett), the iconic saxophonist, offers him a seat in her band. All he needs to do is make it to the show on time.

With a plan in play, God laughs. As Joe’s head drifts into the clouds, his body tumbles down a manhole. He awakens in the afterlife with a great big beam of white-hot light inviting him heavenward. Joe turns and runs.

What will kids get out of Soul? I’m not sure. There are some cute cartoons. Free from our bodies, souls manifest as fluffy little blobs of blue marshmallow. It’s frickin’ adorable.

There’s a talking cat. There’s even a pizza rat. Plus, plenty of slapstick and pratfalls as the film spends the first fifteen minutes wandering its central hero through various Rube Goldberg deathtraps a la Final Destination.

Whether children dig on it or not doesn’t matter. This one is not for them. It’s for us, the dreamers who refuse to let go even as those around us, and the world itself, tell us to give up the ghost.

Our dream sometimes blocks our purpose. Soul acts as a slap. Wake up, look around. Your art and audience are everywhere. Validation comes to those willing to receive it.

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