Best 70S Animation Movies (Ranked)

René Laloux’s cut-out paper odyssey remains an alienating, philosophically profound shock to the senses. Set on the planet Ygam, where giant blue Draags keep diminutive human Oms as playthings, the narrative deconstructs imperial hubris, oppression, and civil resistance with eerie calm. Roland Topor’s pen-and-ink illustrations marry uncomfortably well with Alain Goraguer’s funk-laced, psychedelic jazz score, conjuring an ecosystem of predatory flora and meditative rituals unlike anything drawn before or since. In an era when Western studios leaned into comfortable nostalgia, this Cannes Grand Prix winner asserted that speculative adult science fiction belonged at the absolute apex of the medium.

Hayao Miyazaki’s feature directorial debut hits the gas pedal during its opening car chase and rarely lets up. Tracking the charming gentleman thief Lupin III as he untangles a counterfeiting ring in a faux-European principality, the film balances acrobatic capers with melancholic chivalry. The clock tower climax showcases Miyazaki’s legendary spatial awareness, mechanical obsession, and impeccable comedic timing, demonstrating a dynamic command of architectural scale and physical weight. As the decade closed, this adventure rescued a cynical franchise, provided anime with an enduring stylistic benchmark, and previewed the boundless humanist brilliance that would establish Studio Ghibli in the subsequent decade.

Yuri Norstein’s ten-minute Soviet triumph achieves more existential weight than most full-length features. Following a tiny creature journeying through eerie woods to count stars with a friend, the film relies on revolutionary multiplane glass techniques and stop-motion cut-outs to simulate shifting mists, floating oak leaves, and spectral silhouettes. Its visual depth creates a world where curiosity and terror bleed into one another with quiet grace. Often voted the greatest animated short in history by international animators, this miniature jewel epitomizes the daring, painterly freedom flourishing outside the commercial Hollywood framework during the mid-seventies.

Eiichi Yamamoto’s psych-rock descent into witchcraft and rebellion is a defiant, uncompromising art house scream. Framed as a medieval tragedy about a peasant bride violated by local nobility who trades her soul for demonic vengeance, the film relies on pan-and-scan still watercolors by Kuni Fukai rather than traditional cell fluidness. The resulting collision of baroque eroticism, swirling watercolor textures, and Masahiko Satoh’s screeching acid-rock score plays like an animated invocation of 1970s sexual liberation and rage. Financially catastrophic for Mushi Production, it remains the ultimate underground beacon of Japanese countercultural animation.

Subtle, unhurried, and deeply affectionate, this episodic compilation represents Disney's storybook craft operating at total peace with itself. By directly engaging with the physical pages, margins, and typography of A.A. Milne’s world, the filmmakers broke the fourth wall with breezy, literate innocence. The scratchy pencil lines from the studio's Xerox era lend Pooh, Piglet, and Eeyore an artisanal, hand-stitched tactility that matches Sebastian Cabot’s cozy narration and the Sherman Brothers' folk lullabies. In a decade fraught with industry turbulence, it anchored the studio’s output with pure, evergreen childhood warmth.

A distinct gloom hangs over the bayou in this surprisingly melancholy detective yarn. Bernard and Miss Bianca's quest to extract a frightened orphan from the clutches of Madame Medusa marked a critical changing of the guard, pairing veterans like Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston with emerging prodigy Don Bluth. The film trades brightly colored whimsy for dingy swamp hues, humid decay, and genuine emotional vulnerability, anchored by Geraldine Page's screeching, erratic vocal performance. It grossed heavily enough to keep Disney's animation wing afloat during an existential crisis, proving commercial longevity still lived in hand-drawn storytelling.

Crafted directly by comic creators René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, this original Gallic quest plays with razor-sharp satirical ease. Sending Asterix and Obelix through twelve mythological trials, the story moves from bureaucratic satires of paperwork madness to hypnotic culinary temptations. The visual gags are rapid and unapologetically absurd, grounded in a vibrant visual language that mimics the physical elasticity of Belgian bande dessinée page layouts. It remains a European staple of the era, illustrating how regional comic properties could rival American studio output through wit and irreverent pacing rather than pure budget.

Breezy and unapologetically unpretentious, this anthropomorphic retelling of Sherwood Forest thrives on charm. Robin Hood's sly fox persona and Little John’s bear swagger—channeling Phil Harris with effortless ease—propel an episodic plot buoyed by Roger Miller's country-western whistled ballads. Animators notoriously recycled dance sequences and body movements from earlier productions to cut mounting costs, yet the energetic vocal work from Peter Ustinov and Terry-Thomas keeps the farce lively. While not technologically ambitious, it represents the comfortable, song-driven heart of seventies family entertainment, remaining beloved for its breezy, down-to-earth personality.

Parisian romance meets swinging jazz culture in this breezy, bourgeois comedy of feline manners. The narrative is essentially a gentle road-movie farce, tracing Duchess and her pampered kittens as they hitch rides back to their mansion alongside alley cat Thomas O'Malley. What gives the film its pulse is the scratchy Xerox ink work and the boisterous, neon-tinted performance of 'Everybody Wants to Be a Cat,' where Scatman Crothers injects genuine improvisational swing. It is the last project greenlit by Walt Disney himself, closing an illustrious historical chapter with loose, lightweight bohemian warmth.

Chuck Jones gathered his greatest theatrical Golden Age shorts into this ninety-minute anthology, stitched together with freshly minted interstitial lecture sequences from Bugs Bunny. The sheer comedic brilliance of classics like 'What's Opera, Doc?' and 'Duck Amuck' confirms the peerless timing, kinetic violence, and subversion Jones commanded at Warner Bros. Yet, stripped of its packaging, it functions as a repackaged retrospective rather than a distinct feature project. Its presence on the decade's landscape illustrates the period's commercial reliance on past glories, offering brilliant humor while marking the tail-end of theatrical short compilation supremacy.