Horus: Prince of the Sun

Two of Studio Ghibli's future founders were already making films together before the studio ever existed — and this is where it started. Horus: Prince of the Sun is a 1968 movie from Toei Animation, directed by a young Isao Takahata with Hayao Miyazaki on the production team, and it holds up in ways that might genuinely surprise you. The setup: Horus is a young boy living in isolation with his aging father, who reveals on his deathbed that they're refugees — survivors of a village torn apart by an ice demon named Grunwald, who manipulated the villagers into turning on each other. Horus sets off to find his homeland, and along the way pulls a legendary sword from the shoulder of a rock giant and encounters Hilda, a girl with an unnervingly beautiful voice whose presence raises quiet, unsettling questions. The animation style blends traditional Japanese aesthetics with Scandinavian-inspired landscapes, and Michio Mamiya's orchestral score gives the whole thing an emotional weight that feels decades ahead of its time. If you've seen Wanpaku Ouji no Orochi Taiji or Tatsu no Ko Tarou and enjoyed that classic Japanese folklore adventure energy, this fits right in — but with a darker undercurrent about community, betrayal, and what happens when people stop trusting each other. It's a single film, just under an hour and a half, and it's the kind of thing that makes you understand why Takahata and Miyazaki became who they became.