Welcome! Hope you’re doing well. It’s a new Sunday issue of the Animation Obsessive newsletter, and this is the plan:

• 1) Our 2025 gift guide.

• 2) About a film from Berlin.

• 3) On the success of Mexico’s animated underdog of the year.

• 4) Newsbits.

With that, let’s go!

1 – Gifts for the animation inclined

Christmas is almost here again. A lot of folks are already shopping for presents. And, since 2021, it’s been our tradition to publish an annual guide to animation-related gifts. We’re back with the fifth installment today.

Picking out gifts in 2025 is more complicated than it was last year. Money’s tighter for many — and, in America, the end of the de minimis exemption on small-dollar imports makes it harder to order stuff from abroad. We’ve kept these things in mind while assembling today’s list.

There’s also the availability question. Around 60% of our readers live outside the States, where we’re based. So, when possible, we’ve included purchase options for all countries where our readership exceeds 1,000 people.1 Although most of these are Amazon links, it’s our policy never to accept sponsorship or affiliate deals — we have no ties to Amazon. If you’re like us and prefer to buy from other sites, we encourage it.

Our goal with this guide is to offer enough ideas to fit many budgets and most interests. We hope it’s a help as the holidays near!

Art books

• Studio Ghibli Storyboard Collection: Kiki’s Delivery Service (AU, BR, CA, DE, FR, IT, MX, UK, US)
  — Hayao Miyazaki’s complete storyboards for Kiki’s Delivery Service, which are as good as you might imagine.

• The Illusion of Life (AU, BR, CA, DE, ES, FR, IN, IT, MX, UK, US)
  — Still one of the great books about the craft of animation, and definitely the best about the Disney style.

• Art of the Breadwinner (Global)
  — For our money, The Breadwinner is Cartoon Saloon’s finest film. This new book collects the artwork that built it.

• Painting the Worlds of Studio Ghibli (AU, BR, CA, DE, ES, FR, IN, IT, MX, UK,