Starring: Fumi Hirano, Toshio Furukawa, Akira Kamiya, Kazuko Sugiyama, Saeko Shimazu, Mayumi Tanaka, Shigeru Chiba

Before storming the globe with sci-fi blockbuster Ghost in the Shell, director Mamoru Oshii started off in the anime industry as chief director of romantic comedy series Urusei Yatsura, an adaptation of writer Rumiko Takahashi’s popular manga about a high school boy and his hot alien girlfriend.

Oshii thrived in the role, but the director longed for greater creative heights than a silly teenage romcom. When the chance finally came to direct the series’ second feature with complete creative control, Oshii ran wild. More Tarkovsky than Takahashi, Beautiful Dreamer marked a massive shift for the series, a loopy, visually formal meditation on time and consciousness that sets the series’ characters adrift in a dream that won’t end.

When it hit theaters in 1984, reception was chilly (fans sent Oshii razor blades in the mail), and Oshii lost his gig at the helm of the series. The movie lingered, though, and as it eventually made its way over to Western markets on home video, Beautiful Dreamer became quite a cult sensation. Today, fans reference the film as the high point for the series, and it frequently draws comparisons to Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind as a breakthrough for anime as a legitimate cinematic form.