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Tom Cruise is considered to be Hollywood box office king – or is he? His latest outing, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, pulled in an impressive $599 millions worldwide. But even that blockbuster number can’t compare with Ne Zha 2, a Chinese animated juggernaut that has crossed the $2 billion mark globally, ranking as 2025’s top grossing release and the fifth highest-grossing film of all time. The catch? It’s animated. An animation, unfairly, is still overlooked as, you know, “for kids.”

That notion is exactly what filmmakers and festival programmers are eager to upend. As Guillermo del Toro has long argued, animation isn’t a genre, it’s a form of cinema. “We are challenging the idea that animation is a lesser form of cinema,” says Mikael Marin, head of France’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival, the industry’s most influential showcase.

Marin was in Los Angeles for Animation is Film, an annual celebration that, for the past nine years, has worked to reframed how the medium is viewed by audience, critics and industry alike. (The 2025 edition ran Oct. 17-19.) It presented a good moment to reflect on standout features that have already made waves at major fest like Cannes, Venice, Toronto and Berlin and a proof that animation has become an essential part of the global film conversation.

Beyond its creative breakthroughs, animation is a serious box office player. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba —  The Movie: Infinity Castle has become number 9 in the worldwide ranking with $588 millions just few thousand shy of Cruise’s latest Mission. Meanwhile, family-friendly studio titles such The Bad Guys 2, Elio or Dog Man all cracked 2025’s Top 25 global earners, further proof that animation drives huge numbers of audiences, and not just children, to the cinemas.

Still, the conversation goes beyond commercial success to artistic achievement. French standout Little Amélie, or the Character of Rain took one more award with the Grand Jury Prize at Animation is Film, while fellow French title Arco — fresh off its Cannes premiere — won the Audience Award. With a clear Japanese sensibility, both in story and style, these two movies also pointed to a clear trend: animation’s center of gravity is expanding beyond Hollywood or Europe, with Asia emerging as a creative powerhouse and muse.

Netflix’s Kpop Demon Hunters, now the streamer’s most-watched movie of all times, is the perfect example of that shift, an original cinematic ride from Korea that has become a global cultural phenomenon. It’s the same with eagerly anticipated Mamoru Hosoda’s Scarlet, the latest work of a Japanese artist that continues to push the creative boundaries of the medium. “In a way,” Marin adds, “we’d like to erase the word animation from the conversation altogether and just talk about these titles as some of the best films of the year. Period.”