The Top 5 Anime Film Directors Working Today Who Aren't Hayao Miyazaki

There's something about Mamoru Hosoda's fluid, membrane-like animation style that recalls something out of a dream. His penchant for exploring fantastical stories that burst to the seams with whimsy only serve to make his films — which range from coming-of-age science-fiction to bittersweet fables — more surreal. Yet his calm and nourishing films are among the most grounded you can find in the anime industry.

The 50-year-old filmmaker got his start on TV before earning his directorial stripes at the young age of 33 helming the movie spin-off of one of the most famous animes at the time, Digimon. Hosoda's burgeoning talent caught the eye of Studio Ghibli, which offered him the opportunity to direct 2005's Howl's Moving Castle, before Miyazaki came out of retirement to take the reins. It wasn't until 2006 when Hosoda proved himself as an anime auteur in his own right, with the vibrant sci-fi film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. The movie puts a fresh twist on the familiar Groundhog Day-type story while doubling as a coming-of-age comedy about a selfish, dolt-headed girl who has no right to time travel. It was a breakout hit, and an auspicious sign of things to come. Hosoda would follow up with a string of inarguable hits: the dazzling digital adventure hailing to his first Digimon feature, Summer Wars; the heart-breaking werewolf fable, Wolf Children; and the bonkers fantasy adventure The Boy and the Beast.

Through all of his deeply felt, achingly human films, run the themes of parenthood and love — which he condenses into easily digestible, family-friendly flicks. But there's a comforting (almost conservative) strain of nostalgia throughout his films that make you feel like you're coming home.

Best Film: The Girl Who Leapt Through TimeLatest Film: Mirai

In the opening minutes of Masaaki Yuasa's explosive, exhilarating debut film Mind Game, our hero, the  weak-willed wannabe manga artist Nishi, meets up with his high school crush on the eve of her engagement to another man. At a yakitori bar, he struggles to confess his lingering feelings for her, but is interrupted by a hot-headed ex-football player and his manager who crash into the bar and hold it hostage. Things escalate, and the two assault Myon while Nishi, watching helplessly, gets shot literally up the butt. It's a brutal, shocking display of violence, amplified by Yuasa's grotesque, constantly shifting animation style.

As you could guess, Yuasa isn't for everyone. But you'd be remiss if you avoided the most idiosyncratic, wildly innovating anime director working today. Those first opening minutes of Mind Game only scratch the surface of Yuasa style (and the movie itself, which involves Nishi getting a second chance at the encounter, only for him and Myon to jump off a cliff into the mouth of a whale, where the rest of the movie takes place) and his capacity for testing the limits of animation.

Even within the limits of a two-hour movie, Yuasa can't seem to decide on an animation style, ping-ponging between flat paper cut-outs, to hastily drawn sketches, and computer-animated...fish? His dizzying, experimental style doesn't once try to mimic reality, but instead bends it to his whims. It's no wonder that Yuasa's one stint in American animation is in the trippy Cartoon Network series Adventure Time, where he tapped into the show's signature quirky style (and perhaps let it influence his own as well as he heads into family-friendlier territory). His work on Netflix's Devilman Crybaby exemplifies the best — and worst — of Yuasa's idiosyncracies (he still has a pretty stunted view of women), but has helped launch him to global success.

Best Film: Mind GameLatest Film: The Night is Long, Walk On Girl

At only 33, Naoko Yamada is a bit of an anomaly in the anime industry, rapidly rising to prominence from work as an in-betweener (drawing the frames between the key animation) to the shining star of her studio, Kyoto Animation. And as a woman in a male-dominated industry, she is even more of anomaly. But in her brief career, Yamada has amassed a portfolio that most of her male peers would be green with envy over.

Yamada began her career drawing inbetween frames for the popular anime series Inuyasha, back when the studio had only around 100 employees. She paid her dues at Kyoto Animation, rising through the ranks as an episode director for Clannad before making her directorial debut with the 2009 TV series K-On!, a slice of life high school comedy. She would find her niche in the love stories of adolescence, bringing them to sparkling life with her keen eye for the cinematic.

Yamada directed her breakout film fairly recently with 2016's A Silent Voice, an adaptation of a manga of the same name by Yoshitoki ?ima. But Yamada's uniquely cinematic approach infused the film with such vibrancy and liveliness that it immediately launched her name to the top of the animation industry. A Silent Voice is visual storytelling at its most powerful, following a teen boy who seeks redemption for bullying a young deaf girl from his childhood. It's a film that exists in the small non-verbal gestures between characters, the changing colors of the sky, and an odd amount of shots of legs. Yamada describes these small, subconscious movements in her animation style as the key to how she approaches film, saying, "Anime is one frame by one frame with something a human has created to move around. It's that 'animation' process that moves people. You never forget that intent when creating something."

Best Film: A Silent VoiceLatest Film: Liz and the Blue Bird