It Always Amazes Us

Welcome! Glad you could join us for a new issue: a wrap-up of our first half of 2026.

Back in February, the Animation Obsessive newsletter reached its five-year anniversary. Running a publication for so long (with 73,000-plus readers signed up now) is never something we take for granted. We’ve been thinking a lot about how to keep things fresh and continue to push ourselves. It’s guided the work.

And we’re very lucky. Thanks to readers’ amazing kindness and support this year, we’ve gotten to do some of our favorite issues to date.

Today, we’re looking at a few standouts of the year so far. And, at the end, we’re rounding up great animation that’s come online for free in 2026. Let’s go!

Big moments

Most of the stories we publish begin as ideas on our list. A number of them linger on that list for years, as we gather research material and allow ourselves to bump into sources organically.

The first article of January, Miyazaki’s Sherlock, was stuck on the list for maybe four years. Finally pulling it together, in that last study-and-production rush, was tricky. But it’s a story we love, and one of our most popular of 2026 — right now, it ranks in the newsletter’s top 10.

Another addition to the top 10 this year: Designing One Hundred and One Dalmatians. The film has serious fans online, especially on Substack, but the response to this one still took us by surprise.

Even more surprising was How the Little Guy Moved, about the rotoscoping of Prince of Persia (1989). The newsletter tends not to cover video games, so we didn’t have high expectations — but the piece did extremely well, and the shout-out from creator Jordan Mechner was a highlight.1 We also cut a promo clip for social media that we enjoy rewatching:

Yet the biggest surprise of the past six months was Dangerous Light. Artist Josh Fagin, or spktra, wrote it for us. The topic: that searing, glowing light you’ve seen in cel animation like The Secret of NIMH and Akira.

Josh uncovered its secrets and digitally recaptured…