With Studio Ghibli and the more recent advent of Makoto Shinkai, anime movies these days are most remembered for being whimsical, emotional affairs that let you experience the wonder and crippling melancholy of various stories.
However, while anime can excel at making you feel things, the medium also shines just as bright when it is time to slug it out. The flexibility of animation makes once-impossible to capture feats are now very possible. When you have a sizable budget and only just over an hour to tell a story, it allows for some impressive action set pieces to take place in action anime movies.
These days, most people interested in action anime pick themselves out a lengthy shounen TV anime series, and usually those series have great action movies of their own too. What about if you are looking for action anime movie recommendations that have no TV anime, though? Well, that cuts your choices down to just a small handful.
While you have less options than you would expect, there are still a few great anime recommendations out there for those with an interest in action anime movies.
Action Anime Movies
Promare
When it premiered, Promare caught a small amount of flack for having a suspiciously similar premise to the TV anime Fire Force. However, it won people over with its unique visual flair, only to lose them later with some less than flawless plot progression.
Regardless, Promare takes place in a world where flame-wielding mutants suddenly appeared and threatened humanity. This gave rise to a team of firefighters who stood against them to protect an autonomous republic’s safety, only to be consistently undermined by a terrorist organization mysteriously working against them.
Promare showcases Studio Trigger’s trademark energetic and fluid animation style with an explosively interesting color palate. If nothing else, it is fun to watch what is happening even if you don’t quite find the appeal in why it is happening.
Akira
It’s Akira. It brought anime into vogue around the world and showed that the medium wasn’t just cartoons. You don’t really actually have to say much more about it, but new generations of anime fans are made each day who don’t know Akira, and therefore can’t spot the enduring legacy it has even in modern animation.
The dystopian sci-fi epic of Akira, a movie about a two members of a biker gang that get caught up in a sinister government experiment, is a movie that is often ruined by exceptions.
You hear it is an important, legendary anime movie, but forget that it was made in the 80’s when anime was “good because it was new,” and it was building the foundations that allowed for the innovations to storytelling that have been made today.
As such, go into Akira knowing that it was impressively, painstakingly all hand-drawn animation. Go into Akira expecting a cohesive sci-fi story that helped shape the cyberpunk genre. Expect to see that iconic bike slide and reminisce about all the many different places you have seen it in other series. Don’t go into Akira expecting a mind-blowing anime experience, especially if you have already been glutted on modern anime.
Sword of the Stranger
Sword of the Stranger is the very definition of unassuming hidden gem. It came out quietly and it still exists quietly as an action anime movie that people either give a shot and love or pass on completely.
The series doesn’t feature a particularly original plot set up. It follows a boy and his dog on the run from Chinese Ming Dynasty assassins who employs a wandering ronin for protection while traveling to his destination.
The likable characters grip you first, the intrigue increasingly unfolding in the story keeps you interested, and the slick swordplay provided by Studio Bones makes you fall deeply in love.
Vampire Hunter D
With the first movie predating even Akira, Vampire Hunter D gave international anime fans a taste of what anime could be – edgy, ultra violence about a dhamphir – a half-human, half-vampire – that quietly wanders around until a pretty girl asks him to kill an evil vampire to save her pure maidenly body.
While the first Vampire Hunter D leaves a little something to be desired, the 2000 sequel movie, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, does offer everything the original excelled in – the unique sinister atmosphere, the vicious, bloody action – and paired it with storytelling that is more about gripping your attention and less about gripping your rolling eyes that are threatening to leave your skull due to the edginess of it all.
Redline
Redline is a bit famous for being in production for seven years, not because of production problems, but because it was made using only hand-drawn animation. It took seven years, 100,000 drawings, $30,000,000, and probably crippled a few hands permanently.
It premiered in 2009, which is when anime was already starting to move away from hand animation to CGI. So while definitely not the last anime to be made using hand-drawn frames, it served as a great send-off to the then-fading, now-faded standard of early anime.
Redline itself is a racing action anime movie following the most glorious pompadour in all of anime and the man attached to it as he competes in the titular most anticipated racing event in the universe for for the big prize amidst military and criminal organizations looking to use the race to their own advantage.
The Journey – The Story of Miracles and Battles of the Ancient Arabian Peninsula
You don’t actually get a lot of modern action anime movies that aren’t feeding the fandom of an existing TV anime series. In this age of Shinkai, most anime movie creators have cashed in on the popularity that comes from creating emotional dramas, or at least less action-focused adventures in whimsy.
The Journey is not only the rare modern anime action movie, but it is made even more rare by being about a historical Islamic event. The series follows a depiction of the Year of the Elephant where a massive army marched on Mecca and a miracle happened that was written into the lore that contributed to the city becoming Islam’s most holy site.
As it had a limited international release in – unsurprisingly – North Africa and the Middle East, it can be a difficult film to track down, but it offers up a passionate take on a story that some may have never heard. Anime as a medium does have that unifying ability to tell tales that may have never been sought out previously.
Kara no Kyoukai
Why have one action anime movie when you can have eight action anime movies told non-linearly so you have to watch them all to fully understand the story? That’s how Type-Moon of the Fate/Stay fame keeps you invested with its less famous, but no less enjoyable Kara no Kyoukai series.
Kara no Kyoukai is a dark series that grows increasingly complex as it goes on, but it starts simple enough about an investigation into a series of violent deaths in a town. This leads the normal main character to a beautiful, but anti-social girl with a supernatural connection to the deaths.
Kara no Kyoukai is one of those series where writing out a synopsis that is understandable and not incredibly vague is a spoiler. However, what the synopsis lacks in its ability to grab you, the beautiful visuals can make up for.
Tekkon Kinkreet
Despite the unique art style trademark to Taiyou Matsumoto of Ping Pong fame, Tekkon Kinkreet tells a fun and easily accessible story that is not as avante garde as the art makes it seem – at least, at first.
In the beginning, Tekkon Kinkreet is about a pair of orphans that rule the streets under an infamous moniker of The Cats. They are then forced to rise above chasing off rival street toughs to protect the town that protects and abuses them in equal measure against yakuza that want to pave over everything with new development.
While it catches you immediately with its gravity-defying, energetic action, Tekkon Kinkreet can lose people in the second half when it grows above two kids fighting for their town against vicious enemies and moves into loftier concepts.
Dead Leaves
Anime can often be weird, and for some, that is the very charm of the medium. Dead Leaves is an action anime movie that is for those that like a specific brand of energetic anime weirdness. It is for the FLCL and Gurren Lagann fans that like the plot and dialogue to move at a manic pace, but with a surprisingly deep story being told in a splatter of full saturation colors.
That is the vibe that Dead Leaves comes at you with. The movie follows a pair who wake up naked on the streets with no memories and decide to turn to a life of crime and mayhem with their freshly clean slate.
This rough life lands them in the titular high-security prison on the moon where they discover a dark secret, recover their memories, and form a large scale escape plan with the other inmates.
The plot seems rather simple, and it is, but it comes at you with a furious energy, fast pace, and crude characters that keeps audiences engaged.
Dead Leaves isn’t a movie for those looking for an Oscars contender, but for those looking for a movie with foul-mouthed characters, poop jokes, and eccentric violence.
Ninja Scroll
Ninja Scroll, as an older anime movie, often gets the great benefit of being lumped in with the good legends like Akira or Ghost in the Shell. However, Ninja Scrolls is an anime action movie that fed what a lot of anime adult anime fans wanted from anime at the time.
It wasn’t the youthful romp like Pokemon or Astro Boy, it viscous and bloody with plenty of sex added to prove that anime could be for adults. As such, while it puts a lot of viscera into the action, Ninja Scroll lacks much love for any depth of plot.
However, the plot about a master-less sword-for-hire who is forced by intrigue to carve through a group of sinister supernaturally-powered ninjas, does offer what action anime fans occasionally want – frequently and bloody action.
Cencoroll
The first Cencoroll “movie” is more a 26-minute short that was the sort of experience that is absolutely beautiful to watch, but actually told you profoundly little. However, the plot of Cencoroll is greatly improved upon in the following, actual full-length movie with still the same high quality animation. In fact, the second movie, Cencoroll Connect, sums up the first “movie” so you no longer need to watch it.
While Cencoroll’s plot is expanded in Connect so that it actually has one, it is still a movie that lives in the “mystery through lack of explanation” school of storytelling. It takes place in a city where a boy befriends a shape-shifting octopus creature of mysterious origin. He then is attacked by another boy who wanted to take his shape-shifting friend to harness his powers for his own mysterious purposes.
This ambiguous beginning sets the stage for Cencoroll’s fluid and fast battles and promises to be even further expanded upon plot-wise in an upcoming Cencoroll third movie that was announced in 2019 and has sat dead since.
Fuse: Memoirs of the Hunter Girl
When it comes to anime movies, you can either have action or you can have emotional drama and/or romance. It seems like it is difficult for an anime movie to have all of those things within the time allotment, but Fuse does try to make it happen.
Fuse follows a hunter girl from the country moving in with her brother in Edo after the death of her grandfather. On her journey, she meets a boy named Shino who is a persecuted Fuse, a race of half-human, half-dog beings that threaten humanity – allegedly. Well, as these things go, she is caught between her growing feelings for this boy and her loyalty to her brother who is a hunter that hunts down Fuse.
As any good anime movie should be, Fuse’s simple story is carried by its strong animation and surprisingly engrossing character story. Of course, as it does focus on romance, it means that Fuse isn’t as action-packed as some others on this list.
Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade
Jin-Roh is a movie that not many gave a shot unless they were looking for bleak, future-fascistic romps about a soldier struggling with his PTSD, but it is a movie whose aesthetic you will recognize.
Jin-Roh, or perhaps Kerberos Panzer Cop, the manga on which the movie is based on, helped form the techno-fascist aesthetic that you see in the likes of Killzone or Fallout’s Brotherhood of Steel.
Iconic aesthetic aside, Jin-Roh tells the story of a cop who failed to stop a suicide bombing that caused massive destruction in the unrest-laden, foreign-occupied Japan in this alternate history re-imagining.
He is sent back to the military academy for revaluation where the slow burn of events lead to him being caught in a power struggle between government agencies.
While there are no slick sword-swinging fights or bare-fisted slug-outs where you feel each impact, Jin-Roh offers some of the most beautiful shootout scenes in anime, even to this day.
Do you know more excellent action anime movies that don’t spawn from an already established TV anime? Let fans know your recommendations in the comments section below.
