2024 really was the greatest year for animation ever.

There was an abundance of outrageously wonderful animated features released over the course of 2024 – all sorts of movies, with all sorts of animation styles and points-of-view. The fact that we left off plenty of wonderful movies, like Naoko Yamada’s brilliant, touching “The Colors Within” (which gets a wide release in January – seek it out), the French sci-fi noir “Mars Express” or mainstream gems like Mike Mitchell’s hellzapoppin’ “Kung Fu Panda 4,” tells you what a stellar year it really was.

But enough with the preamble, let’s chart the very best animated features of 2024 – from melancholic stop-motion to wondrous, widescreen computer animation and everything in-between.

DreamWorks Animation/Netflix 10. “Orion and the Dark”

2024’s most underrated movie is, incredibly, a gonzo animated feature written by Charlie Kaufman. Yes, that Charlie Kaufman. Based on the children’s book by Emma Yarlett, it...