Studio Ghibli's films are loved for many reasons, including their loveable characters, incredibly moving stories, and vast imaginations. But perhaps the most appealing thing about them is their beautiful art: it's impossible to watch Spirited Away without wanting to explore the magical bathhouse, or Howl's Moving Castle without dreaming about having dinner in Howl's cozy kitchen. In all of their films, there are plenty of sweeping landscapes and open skies.
Background art might not get much better than Studio Ghibli, but there are plenty of equally amazing examples to be found in other anime, too. Character designs and action scenes tend to get most of the love, but here are 10 series where what was going on in the background stole the show.
10 Tsuritama Feels Like A Piece Of Summer
Featuring both fishing and an alien invasion, Tsuritama is definitely a unique show, and it has background art to match. The series takes place in a small town by the sea, meaning the background is almost always taken up by beaches and wide, open sky.
Most anime skies are perfectly gentle and pleasant, but these feel dynamic. Wide slashes of shading give a feeling of almost painterly movement, and the colors are eye-poppingly bright. Just watching this show will have viewers reaching for their sunglasses.
9 Neon Genesis Evangelion Is A Feat Of Sci-Fi Imagination
There's a wonderful scene in Neon Genesis Evangelion where Misato takes Shinji to a hill overlooking Tokyo-3 at sunset. She shows him (and the audience) the true marvel that is the city they're protecting, as the buildings retract into the ground in a beautiful piece of science fiction world-building.
Evangelion's background art is also instrumental in building up the atmosphere of NERV, as its underground headquarters seem like the surface of an alien planet -- and that's before the audience gets a glimpse of the surreal landscapes where Lillith and the clones of Rei are kept.
8 Girls' Last Tour Makes Ruins Beautiful
It can be relatively easy to find beauty in the natural world -- and a lot harder to find it in metropolises of concrete and metal. That's why it's so amazing that Girls' Last Tour, which takes place entirely in an enormous, half-destroyed cityscape, manages to be one of the most visually stunning anime ever made.
Each part of the city is a perfect piece of world-building, as it all looks just strange enough to make it clear it's science fiction, while still seeming practical and realistic. There is also an amazing variety of settings within the city that stop it from ever seeming boring: the girls visit an aquarium, a graveyard, and a temple, to name just a few.
7 Bakemonogatari Is SHAFT At Peak Artsiness
What sets the Bakemonogatari series apart from other harem romances isn't just its less-than-human heroines or its famously verbose dialogue: it has a unique aesthetic that makes watching it feel like watching a piece of experimental art, rather than an ecchi show.
The backgrounds, although often simple, make up a huge part of that aesthetic; they have a luminous, almost otherworldly quality to them, and they are almost always completely empty, with no background characters at all. It almost feels like the main characters are walking through projections, backdrops that aren't even real to them.
6 Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! Brings A Sketchbook To Life
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! looks a bit different from most anime from the very start, thanks to director Masaaki Yuasa's trademark cartoony, free-flowing style. But it's when the series launches into the scenes of the three girls making anime that it really starts to shine.
The show perfectly captures what a sketchbook would look like animated straight off the page, and it uses this unique style to capture everything from helicopters to giant robots. Asakusa's mind definitely seems like an interesting place to be.
5 A Lull In The Sea's World Will Make Viewers Want To Get Their Feet Wet
Few ideas capture the imagination like "what if people lived underwater?" and A Lull In The Sea, which is set in a world where there are both land-dwelling and aquatic societies, gets the best of both worlds. Its gorgeous art captures both a nostalgic seaside town and an amazingly creative vision of underwater life.
The gorgeous setting and excellent writing combined to make a show so relaxing yet moving that it's no surprise that P.A. Works tried to recapture the magic with a second slice-of-life show with supernatural elements, GLASSLIP. Unfortunately, to say that wasn't a success is putting it lightly.
4 Flip Flappers Is Over-The-Top In The Best Possible Way
Flip Flappers is the story of Kokona, a seemingly normal girl who ends up being pulled by the mysterious, eccentric Papika into the alternate dimension of Pure Illusion in order to search for crystal shards. Each mission into Pure Illusion throws them into a different world, all of them illustrated in gorgeous detail, whether they're a candy-colored children's fantasy or a cyberpunk city.
Even when Kokona and Papika are in the 'real' world, this series doesn't settle for boring normality: their hometown looks straight out of an old storybook, giving the whole show a unique fairy tale aesthetic.
3 Serial Experiments Lain Creates A Haunting Atmosphere
Serial Experiments Lain is proof that anime doesn't have to be overly flashy to pack a big aesthetic punch. Much of the background art in this cyberpunk series is simple -- indeed, in an interesting twist, it's the shadows that contain the most interesting details. Throughout the series, they appear to be filled with blooms of red unnervingly like bloodstains.
The result is something that looks like no other anime out there, especially combined with the washed-out, pale quality of much of the other background art. It's no surprise that this series stuck in fans' minds, and is now one of the most iconic cyberpunk series ever.
2 March Comes In Like A Lion Features Stunning Watercolors
March Comes in Like a Lion is a show that truly has a gentle touch, tackling difficult issues like depression, bullying, and grief with a subtlety that makes it as soothing as it is moving. It makes sense, then, that the anime chose soft, delicate watercolors for its backgrounds.
This means that the riverside neighborhood where Rei lives is beautifully realized, with an artistry that also makes sense in the context of the plot: as Rei opens up and forms more connections with people, he starts to see the true beauty of the world around him.
1 Mononoke Is A Cavalcade Of Color
Horror series tend to have darker, more subdued palettes, but the supernatural anthology series Mononoke opts instead for art so bold that it's almost garish. These fantastical worlds perfectly mirror the strange, chaotic situations that the enigmatic Medicine Seller is thrown into every episode.
The series is set at the end of Japan's Edo period, and the crisp lines of the background art subtly evoke classic Japanese woodcuts, while the colors still make it feel fresh. Every moment of Mononoke feels like a piece of modern art.