Best movies like Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki

A lifelong love of flight inspires Japanese aviation engineer Jiro Horikoshi, whose storied career includes the creation of the A-6M World War II fighter plane.

After a global war, the seaside kingdom known as the Valley of the Wind remains one of the last strongholds on Earth untouched by a poisonous jungle and the powerful insects that guard it. Led by the courageous Princess Nausicaä, the people of the Valley engage in an epic struggle to restore the bond between humanity and Earth.

At Kichijōji Station, Tokyo, Taku Morisaki glimpses a familiar woman on the platform opposite boarding a train. Later, her photo falls from a shelf as he exits his apartment before flying to Kōchi Prefecture. Picking it up, he looks at it briefly before leaving. As the aeroplane takes off, he narrates the events that brought her into his life...

On a trip to the countryside to pick safflowers, a young Japanese woman recalls her life when she was ten years old.

It is 300 years into the future. Earth's environment had been devastated by mankind's own foolish plans and humankind is beleaguered by the sentient forests which they have awoken. The world balance is tipped when a young boy named Agito stumbles across a machine that glowed in a strange blue hue inside a forbidden sanctuary.

A young witch, on her mandatory year of independent life, finds fitting into a new community difficult while she supports herself by running an air courier service.

Two high schoolers find hope as they fight to save an old wartime era clubhouse from destruction during the preparations for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

14-year-old Arrietty and the rest of the Clock family live in peaceful anonymity as they make their own home from items "borrowed" from the house's human inhabitants. However, life changes for the Clocks when a human boy discovers Arrietty.

A young boy and a girl with a magic crystal must race against pirates and foreign agents in a search for a legendary floating castle.

A young girl, Chihiro, becomes trapped in a strange new world of spirits. When her parents undergo a mysterious transformation, she must call upon the courage she never knew she had to free her family.

Sophie, a young milliner, is turned into an elderly woman by a witch who enters her shop and curses her. She encounters a wizard named Howl and gets caught up in his resistance to fighting for the king.

When Sosuke, a young boy who lives on a clifftop overlooking the sea, rescues a stranded goldfish named Ponyo, he discovers more than he bargained for. Ponyo is a curious, energetic young creature who yearns to be human, but even as she causes chaos around the house, her father, a powerful sorcerer, schemes to return Ponyo to the sea.

After a successful robbery leaves famed thief Lupin the Third and his partner Jigen with nothing but a large amount of expertly crafted counterfeit bills, he decides to track down the forgers responsible—and steal any other treasures he may find in the Castle of Cagliostro, including the 'damsel in distress' he finds imprisoned there.

While the Second World War rages, the teenage Mahito, haunted by his mother's tragic death, is relocated from Tokyo to the serene rural home of his new stepmother Natsuko, a woman who bears a striking resemblance to the boy's mother. As he tries to adjust, this strange new world grows even stranger following the appearance of a persistent gray heron, who perplexes and bedevils Mahito, dubbing him the "long-awaited one."

Ashitaka, a prince of the disappearing Emishi people, is cursed by a demonized boar god and must journey to the west to find a cure. Along the way, he encounters San, a young human woman fighting to protect the forest, and Lady Eboshi, who is trying to destroy it. Ashitaka must find a way to bring balance to this conflict.

In order to escape a greedy Pokémon hunter, Celebi must use the last of its energy to travel through time to the present day. Celebi brings along Sammy, a boy who had been trying to protect it. Along with Ash, Pikachu, and the rest of the gang, Sammy and Celebi must encounter an enemy far more advanced than the hunter, with the fate of the forest hanging in the balance.

In 2026, four years after the infamous Sword Art Online incident, a revolutionary new form of technology has emerged: the Augma, a device that utilizes an Augmented Reality system. Unlike the Virtual Reality of the NerveGear and the Amusphere, it is perfectly safe and allows players to use it while they are conscious, creating an instant hit on the market. The most popular application for the Augma is the game Ordinal Scale, which immerses players in a fantasy role-playing game with player rankings and rewards. Following the new craze, Kirito's friends dive into the game, and despite his reservations about the system, Kirito eventually joins them. While at first it appears to be just fun and games, they soon find out that the game is not all that it seems...

Takao, who is training to become a shoemaker, skipped school and is sketching shoes in a Japanese-style garden. He meets a mysterious woman, Yukino, who is older than him. Then, without arranging the times, the two start to see each other again and again, but only on rainy days. They deepen their relationship and open up to each other. But the end of the rainy season soon approaches.

Two sisters move to the country with their father in order to be closer to their hospitalized mother, and discover the surrounding trees are inhabited by Totoros, magical spirits of the forest. When the youngest runs away from home, the older sister seeks help from the spirits to find her.

In Italy in the 1930s, sky pirates in biplanes terrorize wealthy cruise ships as they sail the Adriatic Sea. The only pilot brave enough to stop the scourge is the mysterious Porco Rosso, a former World War I flying ace who was somehow turned into a pig during the war. As he prepares to battle the pirate crew's American ace, Porco Rosso enlists the help of spunky girl mechanic Fio Piccolo and his longtime friend Madame Gina.

A retired actress whose husband has recently died visits her summer home. There she has encounters with old friends and acquaintances who bring various stories and news of death and the past

The Raccoons of the Tama Hills are being forced from their homes by the rapid development of houses and shopping malls. As it becomes harder to find food and shelter, they decide to band together and fight back. The Raccoons practice and perfect the ancient art of transformation until they are even able to appear as humans in hilarious circumstances.

Amon is a boy who can control the wind. Branik, ruler of the Empire of the Golden Snake, wants Amon's power to complete the ultimate weapon and sends his troops to capture the boy. Amon, using his talents, manages to runs away with Maria, one of the People of the Sea. Together, they try to stop the Empire of the Golden Snake from destroying and conquering everything.

In the aftermath of a war fought by magnetic weapons which caused massive earthquakes, a young and spunky boy naned Conan gets involved in a grand adventure. Conan lives in a world that is mostly oceans; the major land masses having been destroyed by the weapons of the great war. He meets a young girl named Lana, and they eventually foil the plans of the city-state of Industria which wants to regain the lethal weapons. Note: This film is only a compilation of the final three episode of the television series.

An aspiring young filmmaker gets involved with an eccentric gangster for the financing of his first film.

A recently retired fire captain suffers from boredom, until one of his friends is killed battling an arson fire. It becomes his purpose in life to track down the arsonist. As he gets closer to finding the killer, things become dangerous for him and his family.

A young girl named Chihiro finds herself trapped in a mysterious world inhabited by spirits and when her parents are turned into pigs, she must rescue them. The movie version of the stage production was filmed during the play’s 2022 run at the Imperial Theatre in Tokyo.

Heidi (1974) Japanese anime series by Zuiyo Eizo (now Nippon Animation) based on the Swiss novel Heidi's Years of Wandering and Learning by Johanna Spyri (1880). It was directed by Isao Takahata A feature-length film Heidi in the Mountains, aka The Story of Heidi, was edited from the series by Zuiyo (which by then was a separate entity from Nippon Animation, which employed many of the TV series' animation staff) distributed in 1979. All cast were replaced excluding Heidi and the grandfather. This movie is also the only incarnation of the Heidi anime to have been released commercially in the United States in English (on home video in the 1980s). Isao Takahata remarked "Neither Hayao Miyazaki nor I are completely related to any shortening version" on this work.

A fantastic adventure of a brother and sister flying a ghost ship, guided by a red crow, in search for an old captain. The ghost ship was designed by Hayao Miyazaki and the red crow was done by Jim Henson's Creature Shop.

BBC's 1994 documentary on the manga and anime phenomenon that was just starting to hit the UK at the time, and its origins in Japan. Presented by Jonathan Ross.

NHK TV special about the making of the Japanese animated film "From Up on Poppy Hill" (コクリコ坂から)

A remake of episodes 51-52 of the TV version.

A remake of episode 22 of the TV version.

Follows the behind-the-scenes work of Studio Ghibli, focusing on the notable figures Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, and Toshio Suzuki.

Set in the future: Two men learn that a mysterious winged girl has been taken prisoner, and then decide that they must free her at any cost.