Summary
On March 10th, 2024, at the 96th Academy Awards Ceremony, history was made. While many eyes were focused on categories like Best Picture and Best Lead Actor, something else significant was happening in a category that is often overlooked by news outlets. Anime fans around the world were focused on Best Animated Feature, theOscarthat was won byStudio Ghibli’sThe Boy and the Heron.
But why is this win such a big deal? What makes a movie fromStudio Ghibli, a world-renowned studio, winning an Oscar so significant? What setsThe Boy and the Heronapart from other movies in the same category? And why are anime fans and foreign film fans around the world celebrating this victory so much? Let’s have a look at history being made.
It Won Best Animated Feature, NOT Best International Feature Film
The single biggest point for the significance ofThe Boy and the Heronwinning theBest Animated Feature award at the Oscarshas to do with the category itself. There is another category for foreign-language films, Best International Feature Film, where movies that are not made originally in English tend to be relegated to. No matter how high-quality the movie may be, if it was not made in English, it rarely ends up in the Best Picture category.
The Boy and the Heron, however, was able to overcome the obstacle of language. It followed in the footsteps ofParasiteback in 2019, which was the first non-English film to win Best Picture (the movie is in Korean). Upon accepting that award,director Bong Joon Honow famously said, ““Once you overcome the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films,” as reported byDazed.
Studio Ghibli did just that withThe Boy and the Heron. The film was originally made in Japanese, and thoughan all-star cast also produced an English dub, most trailers and promotional material leading up to the Academy Awards featured the original Japanese version of the movie with English subtitles. This is the first time that a non-English film has won the Best Animated Feature category, and only the third time for a non-English film to win outside of the Best International Feature or Foreign Language Feature categories.
The Rise and Fall and Rise of Hand-Drawn Animation
The style ofThe Boy and the Heronalso sets it apart from not only past Best Animated Feature winners, but even most of the other movies in the category. Since the award came about in 2001, only one hand-drawn animated movie has won it. Ironically, it was another Studio Ghibli movie,the extremely famousSpirited Away, which won the award in 2002. Otherwise, all of the other winners untilThe Boy and the Heronhave been 3D animation movies, or stop-motion movies (and there are only two of the latter category as well).
Even this year, theother movies that were nominated for Best Animated FeaturewereNimona,Elemental, andSpider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, all of which are 3D animated. The only exception wasRobot Dreams, which, likeThe Boy and the Heron, was also hand-drawn animation - and a non-English title, it bears saying. 3D animated movies have become incredibly more common than hand-drawn, and the style is what we are more accustomed to seeing these days.
When animated movies began, of course they were hand-drawn. But trends have changed in the past couple of decades, especially following the success of titles likeShrekandToy Storythat helped to make 3D animation so popular and successful. Nowadays, though, people are becoming interested in hand-drawn animation again. Anime fans have never lost their taste for it, but around the world, nostalgia and renewed interest in the style is making it popular once more. Now,The Boy and the Heronhas shown that hand-drawn animation can be award-winning on a global stage.
It’s Not Disney - or Even Pixar
Finally,The Boy and the Heron’s win is important because of the studio. Since the beginning of the Best Animated Feature award, only 7 out of 20 winners has been from a studio other thanDisneyorPixar. More than half of the awards have gone to the same two studios over the years, and even before the Best Animated Feature category existed, the only animated movie to be nomated for Best Feature was Disney’sBeauty and the Beast. Disney also took home special awards forToy Story,Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, andWho Framed Roger Rabbit?before the award was created, dominating the Oscars significantly when it comes to animation.
Studio Ghibli has shown the world that it is still worth trying to compete with giants like Disney and Pixar, and that it is still possible to take home one of the biggest awards in the industry even if you are not one of those household names. It evenbeat out a Disney title,Elemental, this year. At least for a little while, people around the world could see the names Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki, and Toshio Suzuki on their TVs, even if they have never been interested in Japanese animation.
The Boy and the Heron’s win has solidified Studio Ghibli’s place in movie history yet again with another incredible achievement. Add to all the above that Miyazaki is the oldest director to have ever recieved a nomination for Best Animated Feature, and the oldest winner by more than two decades, and you have even more reasons this win was such a big deal.
While Miyazaki and Suzuki were not there in person to accept the award, Kiyofumi Nakajima, a representative of Studio Ghibli, read the following message from Suzuki as published by theWashington Post:
Both Hayao Miyazaki and I have aged considerably,” he said through a translator. “I am grateful to receive such an honor at my age, and taking this as a message to continue our work, I will devote myself to work harder in the future.
It seems that they are not done yet, either, which is good news forStudio Ghiblifans both new and old, around the world.
