Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 all the way until his death in 2013. He was so well known for his work that in 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. Ebert had many followers who adored his film reviews and hung on his word like gospel. Even now, his reviews are seen as highly accurate and very insightful. Although anime films weren't his primary selection for watching, he did write some words on different anime works. In an article about Japanese anime movies, Roger Ebert claims,

"To watch these titles is to understand that animation is not an art form limited to cute little animals and dancing teacups. It releases the imagination so fully that it can enhance any story, and it can show sights that cannot possibly exist in the real world.

Ebert wrote an article for his blog, rogerebert.com, titled "Japanese animation unleashes the mind" in which he discusses different anime films and what they mean to him. Some of the titles include My Neighbor Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies. As Ebert said in a review on Princess Mononoke, One common thread that Ebert mentions in his reviews of these anime movies is how people are underplaying animation. The American audience expects animated movies to be soft, tame, and mostly for children. But many anime movies are full of intense emotion and art that makes viewers rethink how simple animated movies have been all these years. The anime movies Roger Ebert comments on have moved him in a way that drives him to descriptions of how beautiful animated movies can be.

"If any anime can win American audiences, this is the one," Roger Ebert said after watching Princess Mononoke before its release to Chicago theaters. Ebert writes about the A-list voice cast, including Minnie Driver and Billy Bob Thornton, both of whom "lovingly" dubbed their characters' lines into English for American audiences. In his official review on Princess Mononoke for his website, he praises the film, saying it was one of the most visually inventive films he had ever seen. Indeed, this film has some very intense and stunning animation that will impress lovers of any genre.

Princess Mononoke involves a lot of nature, and Roger Ebert recounts how beautifully the nature was drawn and how the director, Hayao Miyazaki, sent his artists to study ancient Japanese forests to get a sense of what their animation should look like. Ebert talks about the masterful artistry in the film in moments like when the audience sees the writhing skin made of snakes of the boar god, or when the white wolves bare their fangs, and claims that moments like that would never be able to be captured the same way in live action.

As Roger Ebert comments, "I have never seen anything from Ghibli that isn’t a treasure." So many fans will agree — much of what Studio Ghibli produces is metaphorical gold. Ebert goes on to say that when he first saw My Neighbor Totoro, "I knew that no one would ever again have to explain those shelves of anime to me." There is a big stigma even today that anime movies and series are "childish." Beside that, anime has a reputation in other circles for being crude and distasteful. But when someone sees a movie like My Neighbor Totoro for the first time, it clicks. Anime is truly beautiful. There's a reason the art form is adored by hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

As Ebert points out about this film, there are no monsters, no evil adults, no villains, and no fight scenes, which is unusual for a children's movie. Where there is usually a child hero trying to conquer some evil force, My Neighbor Totoro reframes the narrative and makes a movie for "the world we should live in, rather than the one we occupy." It's a feel-good movie full of whimsy. As Ebert said about the film, "Whenever I watch it, I smile, and smile, and smile." As the child protagonists of this movie meet fantastical spirits that guide them through their emotions, viewers are entranced by the fantasy elements that leave them with a feeling of joy.

Ebert calls Only Yesterday both "touching" and "melancholy," and viewers will agree it is very much those things. He comments on one scene where the director, Isao Takahata, uses silence and stillness to bring a realization of how the boy the little main character likes, likes her back. While Roger Ebert himself doesn't have an online review of the movie posted, a patron of his website, who is keeping it running after Ebert's passing, wrote a review of the movie for the blog. The writer, Glenn Kenny, states that Only Yesterday is both "breathtakingly beautiful and quietly but devastatingly moving..."

and suddenly grow up in a flash, although the years moved by at a normal pace. While the main character, Taeko, a single 27-year-old from Tokyo, is on her way to the countryside to help with a family farm endeavor, she experiences flashbacks on the train to her youth. Many of these flashbacks are sad and a little upsetting, but they all capture what it's like to grow up as a girl or young woman and face societal and social pressures. Her hopes and dreams are relentlessly put down, causing her to grow into a life of reluctance. Even though the movie is melancholy, there is so much truth behind the concept.

This animated film by Isao Takahata is often referred to as Japan's own version of Schindler's List, as Ebert brings up on his blog. This film is also noted to be . The film follows two siblings in Japan during World War II, who are made homeless by the napalm bombings. The siblings, with nowhere else to go, find a cave to live in, but they both meet cruel fates in the end, as is foreshadowed in the beginning of the movie as well. Ebert quotes Ernest Rister, saying, "It is the most profoundly human animated film I’ve ever seen," when he compares it to Schindler's List.

In Roger Ebert's official review on the movie for his blog, he recalls how many movies, including The Lion King and even Toy Story, have brought tears to viewer's eyes, but no animated film has inspired grief like Grave of the Fireflies. This movie has been known to make fans cry since it came out in the '80s. As Ebert says, it's a very powerful film that just happens to be animated. Although this movie would be safe for a child to watch since there isn't any heavy gore or adult scenes, the topics are still very heavy and can be difficult to process. Younger children may find the movie unsettling and the concepts hard to grasp, though children can often be more emotionally intelligent than society credits them.

Ebert gushes that both My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service are "so alive, intelligent and inventive" that adults often get more out of the films than children do, even though these films may seem like they were built for children. Such is the case with many, if not all, Studio Ghibli films. Although the material is suitable for the whole family, it's often the adults who find themselves sobbing over a potent point in the plot. Studio Ghibli films are just that powerful, and Kiki's Delivery Service is no different.

Although it's more of a feel-good film, much like My Neighbor Totoro, there are some really beautiful moments in Kiki's Delivery Service that are tear-jerkers. This young witch has finally reached the age where she can go off on her own, find her own village to help, and set up a life for herself. She soon learns that it is not quite as easy as she had expected, and she faces many challenges including rude clients, feelings of loneliness and homesickness, and impostor syndrome. It's such a real movie, and any adult who has gone off on their own, whether it was in their late teens, early twenties, or later, can relate to Kiki and her struggles.