Best animated films 2025

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Best and worst animated films of 2025

Time for my year-end countdown of the best and worst animated films of the year (based on Rotten Tomato scores, so take from that what you will).

In the 80s, I started a magazine called “Animato!” that later grew quite large and popular. I got to meet and interview great animators like Chuck Jones and Ralph Bakshi but later sold the magazine, and it went on to even bigger successes until the internet killed all magazines. So you can see my interest here.

This list only includes films that got at least 10 reviews, and ties are broken by the number of reviews. I did not include films that are motion-capture (that’s not animation!) or films that had a lot of CGI unless the CGI was for a major character in the film.

There are a lot more foreign films on the list this year — I don’t think that’s because there are more being made, but more are being shown in America thanks to streaming and as such, more are getting reviews than ever before. I also wonder though if this is very accurate, as some of the foreign films that did extremely well here did not get a ton of reviews. Maybe the only people reviewing them are people who love anime (for instance) and are already biased in favor? Then again, maybe not. I haven’t seen many of them so I can’t really say. (What are your thoughts? Comment below!)

Anyway, here we go:

  1. Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle (98%)
  2. Lesbian Space Princess (98%)
  3. Little Amélie or the Character of Rain (98%)
  4. Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc (96%)
  5. K Pop Demon Hunters (95%)
  6. Predator: Killer of Killers (95%)
  7. Ne Zha 2 (92%)
  8. Zootopia 2 (91%)
  9. Arco (91%)
  10. Endless Cookie (90%)
  11. Lost in Starlight (89%)
  12. The Bad Guys 2 (87%)
  13. Dog of God (87%)
  14. In Your Dreams (86%)
  15. SpongeBob: The Search for SquarePants (85%)
  16. The Light of the World (85%)
  17. Elio (83%)
  18. Dog Man (82%)
  19. Death Does Not Exist (79%)
  20. Scarlet (74%)
  21. A Magnificent Life (72%)
  22. Plankton: The Movie (71%)
  23. Stitch Head (71%)
  24. David (68%)
  25. The King of Kings (61%)
  26. The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep (58%)
  27. Fixed (56%)
  28. The Twits (50%)
  29. A Minecraft Movie (48%)
  30. Sneaks (29%)
  31. Smurfs (20%)

Yeah, I know Zootopia isn’t at the top of this list, but it is the most obvious one people have heard of so I put it at the top. Here’s a poster of the #1 film. Doesn’t look like anything I’d be interested in.