"When I see articles like Paste's Top 100 Anime Movies of All Time I grit my teeth a little, because I know what to expect, and it's hard not to get a little frustrated. List articles, so-called “listicles,” are the junk food of the internet—they're fun and easy to read, and from a writer's standpoint, fun and easy to create, so the supply of them is limitless. Before I even clicked on the link to the article, my brain exploded in visions of Studio Ghibli's oeuvre dominating the top 25. In that respect, the Paste list lived up to expectations – it dutifully included every single Ghibli film minus three (two of them being Goro Miyazaki movies), as well as a trio of notable pre-Ghibli Hayao Miyazaki outings, plus all of Satoshi Kon's films and most of the filmographies of Mamoru Oshii, Makoto Shinkai, and Mamoru Hosoda. That alone makes up for no less than 39 entries. So right from the start, almost 40% of the list was sort of a gimmie, a fat stack of well-known favorites that'd be really easy to write about.

Of course, it's still a pretty good list, a nice point of reference that showcases the power of the medium in broad strokes. As a writer myself, I couldn't help but scrutinize it and think, “You know, I could make a better Top 100 than this one.” On Twitter, I made a joke about doing a completely separate top 100, one that omitted the obvious choices entirely. One of my online pals suggested that doing this would be an ordeal, a real chore, and I'd end up scraping the bottom of the barrel. Ahhhhh, shit! I love this kind of challenge, and before I knew it, I was mentally making that list, and it filled up fast.

On this list, I've raided the entire 60-year-plus span of modern anime history for some lesser-known, lesser-loved classics. The Paste list includes quite a few OVAs, but I've tried to be a little more selective. (Man, I could do a pretty good list of Top 100 OVAs…) Short OVAs that ran in theatres are fair game, I think."

NOTE: Movie #10 was not in the Letterboxed Database

www.animenewsnetwork.com/the-mike-toole-show/2017-03-19/.113010

www.animenewsnetwork.com/the-mike-toole-show/2017-04-02/.114168

www.animenewsnetwork.com/the-mike-toole-show/2017-04-16/.114706

www.animenewsnetwork.com/the-mike-toole-show/2017-04-30/.115495