Animated steampunk is where the style is at its most free. A live-action film has to build its airship, or pay for a computer to draw it, but an animator can draw a castle that walks, a city that floats or a submarine the size of a cathedral with nothing more than a pencil and time. Some of the best loved steampunk stories of all are animated, and many people met the look for the first time in a Japanese animated film.
This guide explains why animation suits steampunk, then goes through the machines of Studio Ghibli, other Japanese animated films, animated films from the West and the animated television series. It ends with films for children and families and a suggested order for watching. Each film is named with its year and director. Where we give an age rating, it is the British Board of Film Classification's (BBFC), as its own website showed it on 12 November 2026; check again before watching, as ratings can change and versions can differ. We do not say where to watch anything.
Why animation suits steampunk
Any machine can be drawn
Steampunk is a style of impossible machines, and animation is the art of making impossible things move. A Victorian engineer could only dream of a flying fortress driven by steam; an animator can draw one and show every piston working. The cost is time rather than materials. Katsuhiro Otomo's Steamboy, for example, was ten years in production and used more than 180,000 drawings, with a budget of 2.4 billion yen that made it the most expensive Japanese film produced up to then.
Drawings that look like old books
Steampunk's look comes partly from Victorian printing, the fine lines and cross-hatching of the engravings in Jules Verne's novels. Animation can copy that look directly. The Czech film-maker Karel Zeman did so in Invention for Destruction (1958), mixing actors with animation to recreate the original Verne engravings, and our guide to the best steampunk films says more about it. Modern animators often keep the same warm browns and fine detail in their designs.
Old and new together
Many animated steampunk films have a rule about how much of the old world to keep. The team behind Disney's Treasure Planet worked to what they called the 70/30 law, which the art director Andy Gaskill credited to the co-director Ron Clements: the film's look should be seventy per cent traditional and thirty per cent science fiction. It is a good rule for steampunk in general, in a costume or a room as much as on screen.
Studio Ghibli's machines
Studio Ghibli is a Japanese animation studio based in Koganei, Tokyo. It was founded on 15 June 1985 by the directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata and the producer Toshio Suzuki, after they acquired the assets of the studio Topcraft. Miyazaki's love of flying machines runs through his films, and several of them are among the finest steampunk films ever made.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
Written and directed by Miyazaki from his own manga of 1982, Nausicaä was made by Topcraft before Ghibli was founded, but Studio Ghibli's own list of its works includes it. It is set in a far future after a war, not in the past, so it is not strictly steampunk, but its flying machines are wonderful: the young princess Nausicaä rides a small jet-assisted glider with folding wings, called the Möwe, the German word for gull. In 2004 a Japanese project began trying to build a real working glider based on it. The BBFC rates the film PG.
Castle in the Sky (1986)
Castle in the Sky, written and directed by Miyazaki and produced by Takahata, was the first film animated by Studio Ghibli. Pazu, an orphan working as a mechanic in a nineteenth-century mining town, catches Sheeta, a girl who falls from the sky, and the two are chased by a government agent, the army and a family of air pirates, all of whom want her crystal necklace, the key to the legendary flying city of Laputa. There are airships of every size, among them the huge military airship Goliath, and ancient robots that first appear as terrifying guardians and are later found peacefully tending the city's gardens. Those robots go back to a similar character in the television series Lupin the 3rd Part I (1971 to 1972), which Miyazaki and Takahata partly directed, itself inspired by The Mechanical Monsters (1941), a Superman cartoon directed by Dave Fleischer. Miyazaki was inspired by Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson, and partly by his visits to Wales, where the Big Pit coal mine, by then a museum, influenced the mining village at the start. The BBFC rates it PG.
Porco Rosso (1992)
Porco Rosso, also written and directed by Miyazaki, is set over the Adriatic between the two world wars and follows an Italian former fighter pilot of the First World War who now hunts air pirates as a bounty hunter. Its period makes it closer to dieselpunk, one of steampunk's related styles, than to steampunk itself, but it shows Miyazaki's long fascination with flying as clearly as any of his films.
Howl's Moving Castle (2004)
Howl's Moving Castle, written and directed by Miyazaki from Diana Wynne Jones's novel of 1986, is set in an invented kingdom where magic and early twentieth-century technology exist side by side, during a war. Sophie, a young hat maker, is turned into an old woman by a witch and finds her way to the walking castle of the wizard Howl, whose magic and movement come from a fire demon called Calcifer. War machines and bombers cross the skies, and the film has strong anti-war themes. It was first shown at the Venice Film Festival on 5 September 2004. The BBFC rates it U.
The Wind Rises (2013)
The Wind Rises, Miyazaki's film about the life of the Japanese aircraft engineer Jiro Horikoshi from his student days in 1923 to a test flight in 1935, is a fictionalised history rather than a fantasy. It is worth seeing for its dreams of early flying machines and its picture of an engineer at work.
Other Japanese animated films
The Castle of Cagliostro (1979)
Miyazaki's first feature film as director, Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro, was made before Ghibli existed. The gentleman thief Lupin travels to the tiny country of Cagliostro, the source of forged banknotes, and the film is full of clever machinery, including an autogyro and a climax fought on the face of a great clock tower among its giant moving hands. The BBFC rates it PG.
Metropolis (2001)
Metropolis, directed by Rintaro, written by Katsuhiro Otomo and made by the studio Madhouse, is loosely based on Osamu Tezuka's manga of 1949. In a city where robots do the work and poor humans resent them, a boy befriends Tima, a girl who does not know she is an android. It is usually described as cyberpunk, but its city of towers and its robot workers sit close to steampunk. The BBFC rates it PG.
Steamboy (2004)
Steamboy, directed and co-written by Katsuhiro Otomo and made by the studio Sunrise, is the most purely steampunk film in this guide. Ray Steam, a thirteen-year-old inventor in Manchester, is sent a mysterious metal sphere, the Steam Ball, by his grandfather. He is chased by agents of a foundation who want it, meets the engineer Robert Stephenson, and is taken to London, where an imagined Great Exhibition is being prepared in 1866. At its centre is the Steam Castle, a vast machine that turns out to be a flying fortress, and the climax is fought over the Thames. The BBFC rates it PG.
Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva (2009)
Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva, directed by Masakazu Hashimoto, is based on the Professor Layton puzzle games. Professor Hershel Layton and his young assistant Luke go to an opera house on the White Cliffs of Dover, which turns out to be a ship, and the composer plays a great one-man orchestra machine called the Detragan. Our guide to steampunk games describes the games it comes from.
Animated films from the West
Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)
Atlantis: The Lost Empire, directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise for Disney, is set in 1914. A young linguist, Milo Thatch, joins an expedition on the submarine Ulysses to find the lost city of Atlantis. The film-makers drew on Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, and its look is based on the style of the comic artist Mike Mignola, the creator of Hellboy, who was one of its production designers.
Treasure Planet (2002)
Treasure Planet, directed by John Musker and Ron Clements for Disney, retells Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1883) in space. The ships look like the sailing ships of the eighteenth century but sail between the stars on solar sails, and Long John Silver is a cyborg with a mechanical arm. Because the film is set in space and on sailing ships, it stretches steampunk a long way, but its brass, wood and canvas belong to the family. The BBFC rates it U.
9 (2009) and The Boxtrolls (2014)
9, directed by Shane Acker from his own short film of 2005, is set in an alternate 1940s after machines have wiped out humanity, and follows a small rag doll and his companions; our guide to steampunk robots, animals and insects describes its mechanical beasts. The Boxtrolls, directed by Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi for the stop-motion studio Laika and loosely based on a novel by Alan Snow published in 2005, is set in 1897 in the hilltop city of Cheesebridge. Eggs, a boy raised by trolls who live underground and wear cardboard boxes, has to save them from Archibald Snatcher, an exterminator with a monstrous machine. As a stop-motion film, it was made by moving real puppets a little at a time on real sets, which suits a style that loves things made by hand. The BBFC rates it PG.
April and the Extraordinary World (2015)
April and the Extraordinary World (Avril et le Monde truqué), a French film directed by Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci with Marion Cotillard as the voice of April, is set in a steampunk world based on the drawings of the comics artist Jacques Tardi. Over seventy years the world's scientists have disappeared one by one, so technology has stopped advancing and pollution has spread. In 1941 a young scientist, April Franklin, carries on her family's research and searches for her missing family. It is one of the most thoughtful films in this guide. The BBFC rates it PG.
Animated television series
Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990 to 1991)
Created by Hideaki Anno for the Japanese broadcaster NHK, Nadia ran for 39 episodes from April 1990 to April 1991. Set in an alternate 1889 and inspired by Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, it follows Nadia, a former circus performer, and Jean, a young French inventor, who are rescued by Captain Nemo and his Nautilus and drawn into a fight against those who want to rule the world.
Last Exile (2003)
Last Exile, made by the studio Gonzo with the director Koichi Chigira, the character designer Range Murata and the production designer Mahiro Maeda, was shown on TV Tokyo from April to September 2003. On the world of Prester, people fly small aerial vehicles called vanships, and two young sky couriers, Claus and Lavie, are asked to deliver a girl who holds the key to ending a war. The vanships and the great battleships of the sky were made with computer animation; the director and the two designers had worked together before on Blue Submarine No. 6, one of the first Japanese animated series made with computer graphics. A sequel, Last Exile: Fam, the Silver Wing, followed from October 2011 to March 2012. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction counts it among the most memorable animated series in the steampunk and dieselpunk styles.
Fullmetal Alchemist (2003 to 2004) and Brotherhood (2009 to 2010)
Both series come from Hiromu Arakawa's manga, and both were made by the studio Bones. The first ran for 51 episodes from October 2003; Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, a closer adaptation, ran for 64 episodes from April 2009 to July 2010. They are set in Amestris, a country modelled on Europe at the turn of the twentieth century; Arakawa was inspired by reading about the Industrial Revolution, especially in England. The brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric search for a way to restore their bodies, and Edward wears automail, mechanical arms and legs made in a whole town devoted to the trade. The stories deal with war and loss, so they suit older viewers.
The Legend of Korra (2012 to 2014)
The Legend of Korra, created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko for Nickelodeon, ran for 52 episodes. Its Republic City was inspired by the 1920s, and its creators have said film noir and steampunk influenced the city's design.
Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress (2016) and Arcane (2021 and 2024)
Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, made by Wit Studio and shown on Fuji TV in 2016, is set on an island country where people shelter in fortress stations from monsters and travel between them on armoured steam locomotives; its hero, Ikoma, is a young steamsmith who builds a new kind of weapon, the piercing gun, with his friends. It ran for 12 episodes, and two compilation films followed. It is a horror story, for older viewers. Arcane, created by Christian Linke and Alex Yee and made by the French studio Fortiche for Riot Games, set in the world of the game League of Legends, ran for two seasons, in November 2021 and November 2024. It follows two sisters caught between Piltover, a rich city of inventors, and Zaun, the poor city beneath it. At its heart is Hextech, a technology created by the scientist and inventor Jayce Talis, and the struggle over who will control it. Check its own age advice before watching it with children.
Films for children and families
Several of the best animated steampunk films suit families. The ratings below are the BBFC's, from its own website on 12 November 2026.
- Howl's Moving Castle (2004), Hayao Miyazaki. U.
- Treasure Planet (2002), John Musker and Ron Clements. U.
- Castle in the Sky (1986), Hayao Miyazaki. PG. The BBFC's note for the 2016 cinema release mentions mild violence and threat, including children threatened by a robot.
- Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), Hayao Miyazaki. PG.
- The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), Hayao Miyazaki. PG.
- Steamboy (2004), Katsuhiro Otomo. PG.
- The Boxtrolls (2014), Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi. PG.
- April and the Extraordinary World (2015), Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci. PG.
- Metropolis (2001), Rintaro. PG.
What U and PG mean
The BBFC says a U is suitable for audiences of all ages, though not all U-rated films are aimed at children, and a U is unlikely to unsettle a four-year-old. A PG is suitable for general viewing and should not generally unsettle a child of about eight, though some scenes may be unsuitable for more sensitive children. Each film's page on the BBFC's site has short notes on what it contains, and reading them first is the best way to decide.
After the film
Animated films are wonderful for getting children drawing and making. After Castle in the Sky or Howl's Moving Castle, try drawing an airship or a walking house together, using the steps in our guide to how to draw steampunk. After The Boxtrolls, a cardboard box, some bottle tops and a little paint make a costume or a model. Our guide to steampunk trains, cars and machines has more machines to copy.
What to watch first
For a first taste of animated steampunk, start with Castle in the Sky. It has nearly the whole look in one film: airships, a mining town, sky pirates, robots and a city in the clouds. Follow it with Howl's Moving Castle for its walking castle and its war machines, and Steamboy for a story set in Manchester and London that is steampunk from the first frame to the last.
From the West, Treasure Planet and Atlantis: The Lost Empire are bright adventures for a family evening, and April and the Extraordinary World is the one to watch when you want something more thoughtful. For a series to follow, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water brings Captain Nemo back, and Last Exile has some of the most beautiful flying machines ever drawn. Older viewers who want something darker can move on to Fullmetal Alchemist or Arcane.
For the live-action films, see our guide to the best steampunk films; for the stories on the page that many of these films came from, see our guide to steampunk books; and for the flying machines themselves, our guide to steampunk airships.
