30 Animated Movies That Are Not for Children

Since the 1970s, as animation technology developed and became the dominant form in children's programming, more and more animations have been made with an adult audience in mind, strengthening and shaping the craft in new and exciting ways all across the globe.

Whether working in claymation, stop-motion, drawn cells, CG, or other multimedia approaches, animator innovators have been pairing animations of all shapes and sizes with talented voice casts, grand philosophical themes, and NSFW content for decades, and the results are a sight to behold. Charlie Kaufman gives us a disturbing new level of suburban malaise, the Wachowskis an essential entry in their Matrix franchise, Katsuhiro Otomo adapts his manga for the big screen, Adam Elliot introduces us to clayography, and Mikk Mägi and Oskar Lehemaa make sure we will never visit an Estonian farm. 

Taking in the full spectrum of genres and forms of animation, spanning war movies, science fiction epics, anime classics, and surrealist deep cuts from all corners of the globe, we are shining a light on not just the big productions, but the indie features, the oddities that have still yet to enter the canon and the many non-English language films that haven't enjoyed the exposure they deserve. 

Send the kids to bed and grab a glass of the heavy stuff, because these are 30 animated movies that are definitely not for children. 

Animator extraordinaire Bill Plympton helmed Cheatin’ pretty much by himself, handling directing, writing, production and animation duties (only bringing on additional help to handle the digital colourisation and compositing of his work), and delivering what can easily be considered one of the most original animations this century.

We follow Elle, a voluptuous woman who seems unable to escape the attention of drooling, slavering, simian men, until she finds Jake, a drooling, slavering, simian man whose attention and affections she can not only stand but returns in full. What follows is a bawdy love affair constantly challenged by the advances of other women, which takes an unexpected dip into science fiction with body swaps and electrical reanimations.

The sketch drawing style contains an innovative plasticity that constantly plays with proportion and perspective, forcing us to pay attention and creating the space for beautiful and comedic compositions in equal measure; think Looney Tunes meets Charles Demuth. And no opportunity is wasted to sculpt an indelible image.

The sexual politics of the film may be a bit shaky at times, as most of the women in this film only want to get cracked open by the Neanderthalic male protagonist. However, the brilliance of Cheatin’ is that it manages everything without a line of dialogue, conveying all narrative detail visually - the sound design of the animated world, the score, and the squeaks and grunts of Plympton’s characters filling the space where dialogue might otherwise go.