My Neighbor Totoro is that rare delight, a family film that appeals to children and adults alike. While their mother is in the hospital, 10-year-old Satsuki and 4-year-old Mei move into an old-fashioned house in the country with their professor father. At the foot of an enormous camphor tree, Mei discovers the nest of King Totoro, a giant forest spirit who resembles an enormous bunny ...

Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
Starring: Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto, Shigesato Itoi, Sumi Shimamoto, Tanie Kitabayashi
Directed By: Hayao Miyazaki

In Hayao Miyazaki's magical Kiki's Delivery Service, a 13-year-old girl meets the world head on as she spends her first year soloing as an apprentice witch. Kiki (Kirsten Dunst) is still a little green and plenty headstrong, but also resourceful, imaginative, and determined. With her trusty wisp of a cat Jiji (a gently subdued Phil Hartman) by her side she's ready to take on the world, or ...

Manufacturer: Walt Disney Video
Starring: Minami Takayama, Rei Sakuma, Kappei Yamaguchi, Keiko Toda, Mieko Nobusawa
Directed By: Hayao Miyazaki

True to its Sega video-game roots, this futuristic 60-minute movie includes a lot of yelling, crashing, and exploding on the way to saving the world. Sonic and his sidekicks are determined to thwart a plan that would turn their Land of the Sky into the equivalent of The Land of Darkness, which lurks beneath the surface (and is obviously the former planet Earth). So they plow through to the ...

Manufacturer: Adv Films
Starring: Masami Kikuchi, Martin Burke (III), Hekiru Shiina, Lainie Frasier, Yasunori Matsumoto
Directed By: Kazunori Ikegami

This Japanese import featuring five teenagers with superhero powers may turn out to be for older girls what Pokémon is for the pee-wee set. The fantasy-action story lines of Sailor Moon (named for the leader) is typical anime fare--which means it's far more creative than anything you'll see on Saturday morning. And far more complex--the stories are intricate and flashback sequences feature ...

Manufacturer: Geneon [Pioneer]
Starring: Kotono Mitsuishi, Tôru Furuya, Michie Tomizawa, Aya Hisakawa, Emi Shinohara
Directed By: Kunihiko Ikuhara

The highest grossing film in Japanese box-office history (more than $234 million), Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away (Sen To Chihiro Kamikakushi) is a dazzling film that reasserts the power of drawn animation to create fantasy worlds. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and Lewis Carroll's Alice, Chihiro (voice by Daveigh Chase--Lilo in Disney's Lilo & Stitch) plunges ...

Manufacturer: Walt Disney Video
Starring: Miyazaki's Spirited Away

Based on the Japanese comic books, this two-part story introduces viewers to 14-year-old Serena's millennium-ago past as moon princess. Queen Serenity, the mother Serena/Sailor Moon doesn't remember, reappears to guide her daughter through a vision of what was, in "The Past Returns." Sailor Moon learns the sad fate of her family and civilization at the hands of the evil Queen Beryl's army, as ...

Manufacturer: Buena Vista Home Video
Starring: Tracey Moore, Terri Hawkes, Linda Ballantyne, Karen Bernstein, Liza Balkan
Directed By: Junichi Sato

When the first Evangelion feature, Death and Rebirth, proved no more satisfying than the last episodes of the original series, Hideaki Anno brought his watershed epic to its conclusion in this final installment. End of Evangelion begins where the series ended: with the Angels defeated, the sinister cabal SEELE attacks NERV headquarters to seize the Evas and realize their ...

Manufacturer: WEA
Starring: Megumi Ogata, Megumi Hayashibara, Yűko Miyamura, Kotono Mitsuishi, Yuriko Yamaguchi
Directed By: Kazuya Tsurumaki, Hideaki Anno

Manufacturer: Urban Vision
Starring: Legend of the Crystals, Legends of the Crystals

Manufacturer: Urban Vision
Starring: Legend of the Crystals, Legends of the Crystals

The world domination of Pokémon begets their first theatrical movie. This adventure is a little more complex and dark than the popular TV series, but kids who live for the show will gobble up this film and ask for seconds. Those baffled by the show's popularity, however, will see nothing better here. Mewtwo, a new type of Pokémon designed by scientists to be the ultimate fighter, decides he wants ...

Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Pokémon