{"id":926,"date":"2026-06-28T11:40:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T11:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=926"},"modified":"2026-06-28T11:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T11:40:12","slug":"five-animated-movies-that-grow-up-with-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=926","title":{"rendered":"Five Animated Movies That Grow Up With You"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is an edition of <\/i>The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. <\/i>Sign up for it here.<\/i><\/small><\/p>\n

Read more Thank God for Mel Brooks<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Welcome back to The Daily\u2019s Sunday culture edition.<\/p>\n

Any movie can be a time capsule, but the fantastical nature of animated movies makes them particularly ripe for nostalgia. Revisiting them can be a reminder that although we may grow up, we don\u2019t have to grow out of certain comforts. Here are five recommendations from The Atlantic<\/i>\u2019s writers and editors for animated movies that have stuck with them long after the first watch.<\/p>\n

Kiki\u2019s Delivery Service <\/i><\/b>(streaming on HBO Max)<\/b><\/p>\n

My parents would reject the notion that they were tastemakers, but they often did an excellent job at identifying quality children\u2019s cinema. Or perhaps they were just taken with the back-of-the-box description of Kiki\u2019s Delivery Service<\/i>, a VHS tape of which they brought home when I was still too young to tie my own shoes.<\/p>\n

The Studio Ghibli film, directed by Hayao Miyazaki, stands in contrast to the Disney princess movies that captivated my fellow preschoolers in the mid-\u201990s. Unlike the glamorous Ariel and Belle, Kiki is a short-haired teen witch who wears a shapeless dress; she embarks on a journey of self-discovery with nothing but a broomstick and a chatty black cat. As a child, I found her determination to prove herself worthy of her magical gifts appealing, but Kiki\u2019s anxiety about failing at this task was what resonated with me most. (I was known all over town as an incredibly anxious kid.) A scene in which she experiences some serious ego death and, in response, plops face down on her bed is still the best portrait of a depressive episode I\u2019ve ever experienced. Of Miyazaki\u2019s many coming-of-age stories about girlhood, Kiki\u2019s Delivery Service <\/i>has always been my favorite; it\u2019s a masterpiece of storytelling that feels at once intimate and grand, and is affecting at any age.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Allegra Frank, senior editor<\/p>\n

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Waking Life<\/i><\/b> (streaming on Prime Video)<\/b><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t recall when exactly I first watched Waking Life<\/i>. But I do remember that I first came across it when I was searching for answers to the things I felt inside. I was an obsessive philosophy student then; when my professor assigned a few sections of Hegel\u2019s Phenomenology of Spirit<\/i>, which she emailed us\u2014169 to 199, for those curious\u2014I ended up buying the whole book and rifling through it with \u2026 suspect levels of comprehension.<\/p>\n

Naturally, my desire to engage more deeply with philosophical ideas led me to search for the movies and documentaries they\u2019d inspired. I found Astra Taylor\u2019s 2008 documentary, Examined Life<\/i>,and followed that up with Waking Life<\/i>,a surrealist animated film by Richard Linklater from 2001. The plot is somewhat meandering: A man passes through different dreams and talks about the universe with different characters. Every time I watch it, I\u2019m reminded of the wide net of cast members (Alex Jones and Ethan Hawke make an appearance). But I\u2019d argue that the film\u2019s brilliance\u2014the reason I can\u2019t shake it\u2014lies in how it makes me feel. To find Waking Life <\/i>was to discover an elegant, entrancing call to the act of thinking, an attempt to articulate the things we know to be true.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Adam Harris, podcast host<\/p>\n

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Fantastic Mr. Fox <\/i><\/b>(streaming on Disney+)<\/b><\/p>\n

I was 14 years old when I first watched Wes Anderson\u2019s Fantastic Mr. Fox<\/i>, and I was instantly mesmerized. It was the first time I truly understood that animated movies aren\u2019t just for kids. It was also the first time\u2014as far as I can remember\u2014that a piece of art made me wish I could be that creative. I was fascinated by how Anderson was able to cultivate such a distinct aesthetic, with his symmetrical shots, quirky soundtracks, and color palettes. How cool was it to watch a movie and immediately know who made it? Could I experience that with other directors too?<\/p>\n

Mr. Fox <\/i>didn\u2019t exactly turn me into a movie nerd, but it did surprise me and bring me a sense of joy that outlasted the trip to the theater. It also started a lifelong hobby of going down internet rabbit holes after I watch films. (And for that, I have to thank the behind-the-scenes video of George Clooney voicing the main character.)<\/p>\n

\u2014 Mariana Labbate, assistant editor<\/p>\n

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Only Yesterday <\/i><\/b>(streaming on HBO Max)<\/b><\/p>\n

Before I first saw Only Yesterday<\/i>, I had, like many who have long passed their cartoon-watching days, assumed that animation was largely for kids. This movie completely undid my sense of what that type of filmmaking could be. Slow, bucolic, and reflective, the Studio Ghibli film by Isao Takahata follows Taeko, a burned-out office worker, who ventures out to the Japanese countryside to reset. As she meets locals and bonds with distant relatives while helping with the safflower harvest on their farm, she feels newly in touch with her more whimsical, spirited, and awkward 10-year-old self, who appears during her trip and whose own story and struggles are told interspliced with Taeko\u2019s rural retreat. This film is for anyone who has, in life\u2019s stressful moments, sought dialogue with a younger, less jaded version of themselves. In placing two versions of Taeko beside each other, the movie shows us the subtle, iridescent wisdom of being young\u2014and how, sometimes, to grow and move forward, we first have to go back.<\/p>\n

Read more There Are Three Types of AI Users<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Kelsey Ables, staff writer<\/p>\n

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Inside Out<\/i><\/b> (streaming on Disney+)<\/b><\/p>\n

I was 20 years old when Inside Out<\/i> was released, and although we all know that the best Pixar movies are just as affecting for adults as they are for kids, I felt a strong conviction, sitting in the theater, that the movie was meant specifically for me. The film anthropomorphizes emotion, creating an army of colorful feeling-creatures such as Joy, Sadness, and Anger who guide an 11-year-old girl named Riley after her family moves to a new town. There was something genuinely healing about seeing each emotion exist as its own person, with its own needs and desire to be heard, and then watching them collaborate to make up the fullness of a human being.<\/p>\n

When I was a young adult, the movie was an opportunity for me to make room for the emotions I had come to suppress. But for even younger viewers, it was an early lesson in what it means to feel. Watching the closing scene, in which Riley finally accepts her own mixed emotions, a small child next to me in the theater turned to his mom and asked incredulously, \u201cYou can feel happy and sad at the same time?\u201d I could hear the wheels turning in that little brain, and the whole world opening up.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Isabel Fattal, senior editor<\/p>\n

Here are four Sunday reads from The Atlantic<\/i>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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