“What are Isao Takahata’s Best Movies?” We looked at all of Takahata’s directed filmography and ranked them against one another to answer that very question!

We took all of the movies directed by Isao Takahata and looked at their Rotten Tomato Critic, Rotten Tomato User, IMDB, and Letterboxd scores, ranking them against one another to see which movies came out on top. The movies are ranked in our list below based on which movies have the highest overall score between all 6 review sites in comparison with all of the other movies by the same director. The process is all very scientific with no flaws at all.

The full ranking chart is also included below the countdown on the bottom of the page.

Happy Viewing!

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The Top Film’s Of Isao Takahata

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13 ) Horus, Prince of the Sun (1968)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 10
• IMDB User Review Score: 13
• Letterboxd User Score: 10

Horus, a kid living in a unnamed Scandinavian/Eastern Europe culture of the Iron Age, recovers the Sword of the Sun from the rock giant Moog and learns from his dying father that he must returns to his ancestral territory. In the process, he defends a village from the attacks of Grundewald, a warlord/ice demon and befriends the enigmatic Hilda, a lonely and beautiful girl who sings haunting songs (and who hides a terrible secret).

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12 ) Winter Days (2003)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 11
• IMDB User Review Score: 11
• Letterboxd User Score: 9

Winter Days is a 2003 animated film, directed by Kihachirō Kawamoto. It is based on one of the renku (collaborative linked poems) in the 1684 collection of the same name by the 17th-century Japanese poet Bashō. The creation of the film followed the traditional collaborative nature of the source material – the visuals for each of the 36 stanzas were independently created by 35 different animators. As well as many Japanese animators, Kawamoto assembled leading names of animation from across the world. Each animator was asked to contribute at least 30 seconds to illustrate their stanza, and most of the sequences are under a minute (Yuriy Norshteyn’s, though, is nearly two minutes long).

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9 ) Panda! Go Panda!: Rainy Day Circus (1973)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 9
• IMDB User Review Score: 10
• Letterboxd User Score: 10

The family consisting of two pandas and one girl lives happily when suddenly a little tiger appears at their home. It arrives that the circus had come to their town. All of a sudden starts the pouring rain but it can’t stop them.

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9 ) Panda! Go Panda! (1972)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 8
• IMDB User Review Score: 11
• Letterboxd User Score: 10

The plot follows Mimiko, a bright little girl left alone when her grandmother leaves on a trip. Making a few stops at some local stores, Mimiko comes home to her house in a bamboo grove and finds a baby panda named Panny sleeping on the back doorstep. She quickly makes friends with the little panda, and invites him in for a drink. His father, PapaPanda, soon comes to visit, and they decide to become a family after PapaPanda offers to.

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9 ) Anne of Green Gables: Road to Green Gables (2010)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 11
• IMDB User Review Score: 5
• Letterboxd User Score: 13

Anne is an orphan full of imagination. When she arrives at her new home she learns that sometimes you have to be a sensible person too; at the same time her unique character changes, or at least attracts, the people around her. The story covers Anne’s growth from about eleven to seventeen years old as she makes friends, goes to school and studies. At a difficult point in her life, Anne will have to make a hard choice and perhaps find a new dream.

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8 ) Gauche the Cellist (1982)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 7
• IMDB User Review Score: 9
• Letterboxd User Score: 8

Gauche is a diligent but mediocre cellist who plays for a small town orchestra and the local cinema in the early 20th century. He struggles during rehearsals and is often berated by his conductor during preparations for an upcoming performance of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony (the Pastoral Symphony).Over the course of four nights, Gauche is visited at his mill house home by talking animals as he is practicing.

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7 ) The Story of Yanagawa’s Canals (1987)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 11
• IMDB User Review Score: 3
• Letterboxd User Score: 4

An (almost) live action documentary movie, this independent movie was produced by Nibariki (Miyazaki’s personal office), with the royalty revenue from Nausicaä. At first, it was supposed to be an animated film which took place in the town of Yanagawa. After the success of Nausicaä, Tokuma wanted to produce another animated movie (of course, they wanted a Nausicaä sequel), and Miyazaki was looking for a good project. Miyazaki visited Yanagawa, and was impressed by the beautiful town with its canals, and came up with an idea for a film about high school boys and girls in Yanagawa, and thought that Takahata, who worked as a producer for Nausicaä, should direct such a film…

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6 ) My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 5
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 6
• IMDB User Review Score: 7
• Letterboxd User Score: 4

The Yamadas are a typical middle class Japanese family in urban Tokyo and this film shows us a variety of episodes of their lives. With tales that range from the humourous to the heartbreaking, we see this family cope with life’s little conflicts, problems and joys in their own way.

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5 ) Chie the Brat (1981)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 3
• IMDB User Review Score: 8
• Letterboxd User Score: 4

Chie Takemoto is a dependable girl who struggles to help her troublesome father run a small tavern in Osaka. Unbeknown to her dad, she occasionally visits her mother who left him not too long ago. She plans on trying to reunite them, but not until her father gets a job.

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4 ) Pom Poko (1994)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 4
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 5
• IMDB User Review Score: 6
• Letterboxd User Score: 4

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.

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3 ) Only Yesterday (1991)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 3
• IMDB User Review Score: 4
• Letterboxd User Score: 3

It’s 1982, and Taeko is 27 years old, unmarried, and has lived her whole life in Tokyo. She decides to visit her family in the countryside, and as the train travels through the night, memories flood back of her younger years: the first immature stirrings of romance, the onset of puberty, and the frustrations of math and boys. At the station she is met by young farmer Toshio, and the encounters with him begin to reconnect her to forgotten longings. In lyrical switches between the present and the past, Taeko contemplates the arc of her life, and wonders if she has been true to the dreams of her childhood self.

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2 ) The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 2
• IMDB User Review Score: 2
• Letterboxd User Score: 2

Found inside a shining stalk of bamboo by an old bamboo cutter and his wife, a tiny girl grows rapidly into an exquisite young lady. The mysterious young princess enthralls all who encounter her – but ultimately she must confront her fate, the punishment for her crime.

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1 ) Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 3
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 1
• IMDB User Review Score: 1
• Letterboxd User Score: 1

In the final months of World War II, 14-year-old Seita and his sister Setsuko are orphaned when their mother is killed during an air raid in Kobe, Japan. After a falling out with their aunt, they move into an abandoned bomb shelter. With no surviving relatives and their emergency rations depleted, Seita and Setsuko struggle to survive.

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Isao Takahata’s Best Movies

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Isao Takahata Review Website Filmography Rankings

Film	RT Critic	RT User	IMDB	Letterboxd	Overal Rank
Grave of the Fireflies (1988)	3	1	1	1	1
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013)	1	2	2	2	2
Only Yesterday (1991)	1	3	4	3	3
Pom Poko (1994)	4	5	6	4	4
Chie the Brat (1981)	6	3	8	4	5
My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999)	5	6	7	4	6
The Story of Yanagawa’s Canals (1987)	6	11	3	4	7
Gauche the Cellist (1982)	6	7	9	8	8
Panda! Go Panda!: Rainy Day Circus (1973)	6	9	10	10	9
Panda! Go Panda! (1972)	6	8	11	10	9
Anne of Green Gables: Road to Green Gables (2010)	6	11	5	13	9
Winter Days (2003)	6	11	11	9	12
Horus, Prince of the Sun (1968)	6	10	13	10	13