Cheery Lunatic said:
Iron Giant.
Best. Animated. Movie. Ever.
No competition!
Care to expand on that?
OH WAIT NO I ALREADY AM.
The Iron Giant is the tale of a young boy. It's the 50's, the cold war is taking its toll on America. Then, one night, something falls out of the sky. A meteor, of course. It lands in the ocean, scares the hell out of some old fisherman, who says he saw "a metal man." Enter Hogarth, one of our protagonists. He's your basic kid, but is very well-characterized throughout the beginning. One night, Hogarth is left alone while his mom works late, and the TV stops working. He goes out to check on the Antenna when he spots some oddities in the landscape. And then, he sees something. Something large. Something metal. A giant robot, chomping his way through all kinds of metal objects. Finally, it grabs onto a power transformer with both hands, about to eat it, when electricity rushes through it and knocks it out. Hogarth manages to shut down the transformer before he runs away.
That's maybe the first half hour, if that. It really only gets better from there.