Armen Boudjikanian, Patrick Drazen, Bob Miller, Emru Townsend and René Walling · December 31, 2006 | It wasn't hard to decide on the subject of our look back at 2006; almost from the beginning, observers were commenting on the number of features being produced in North America, and the biggest news in January concerned the union of the old and new titans of American feature animation, Disney and Pixar. Meanwhile, festival audiences were being treated to exquisite and daring new films from abroad like Princess, Renaissance, The Christies, Book of the Dead and the oblique, partly animated The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes and anime fans found themselves in the midst of a feature revival with Origin: Spirits of the Past, Tachigui: The Amazing Lives of the Fast-Food Grifters, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Paprika and the recently released Tekkon Kinkreet—each one different from the other in style and tone.

With so much variety in new 2006's features, it was impossible to come up with a single defining question. So this year we left things open-ended and simply asked fps contributors for any thoughts they had on the year's long-form work. Perhaps unsurprisingly, their answers were as varied as the productions themselves.