Every Anime That Has Been Nominated For An Academy Award

Every March heralds the Academy Awards, featuring a large selection of the past year’s best movies and performers. Also known as the Oscars, this award ceremony is known for being the most prestigious in all of Hollywood. Despite this, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is notorious for its lack of diversity when it comes to the films it honors.

One area where the Academy Awards fail to live up to expectations is its representation in regard to foreign films. This is particularly the case with Japanese animated films, which have been scarcely nominated in Oscar history despite their critical acclaim and cultural relevance. These films are currently the only anime that have ever been nominated at the Academy Awards.

Updated April 24, 2024, by Blaise Santi: It’s been a particularly good year for fans of anime films, as the esteemed Hayao Miyazaki came back to filmmaking for his nearly-ten-year project, The Boy and the Heron. As is par for the course with the acclaimed director, the film was nominated at the 96th Academy Awards this past March, and actually took home an award for Best Animated Feature. Despite this massive win, it’s still rough out there for non-Miyazaki anime film directors, since it’s quite rare for the film medium to earn a nomination at the Oscars. However, the ones that have been nominated are still worth a watch for any cinephile, no matter how familiar they are with anime as a medium.

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11 Spirited Away

Miyazaki’s Magnum Opus Made Oscars History

Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away was the first Japanese animated film to be nominated for Best Animated Feature. Not only that, it’s one of only two anime films that has won in that category. The award is well-deserved, as many view Spirited Away as not only one of Miyazaki’s greatest films, but one of the greatest animated films ever made.

The movie follows a girl named Chihiro who finds herself navigating a world of Japanese folklore creatures. To free herself and her parents (who have been turned into swines), she begins working in a bathhouse, meeting many odd characters along the way. It’s a charming, albeit sometimes disturbing, portrait of Japanese mythology.

10 Mt. Head

Its Simple Poignancy Couldn’t Beat Sony Pictures

In the same year as Spirited Away‘s win, Koji Yamamura’s Mt. Head was also nominated for Best Animated Short Film. It unfortunately lost to The ChubbChubbs!, which premiered alongside Men in Black II and Stuart Little 2. However, at only ten minutes long, Mt. Head tells a simplistic yet effective story.

This short film is based on a Japanese rakugo, an art form consisting of a lone performer sitting and telling a story that usually involves multiple characters. Mt. Head follows a man who, surprisingly, is able to grow a tree on his head. However, he is forced to deal with the noisy people congregating around said tree.

9 Howl’s Moving Castle

Miyazaki’s Favorite Film Is A Fantastical Romance

Howl’s Moving Castle is another of Hayao Miyazaki’s most beloved films. It follows a woman named Sophie who is cursed by a witch to become an old woman. Looking to break the curse, Sophie turns to a mysterious wizard named Howl, who travels in a moving castle. The film takes inspiration from Miyazaki’s disapproval of the US’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.

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Unfortunately, Howl’s Moving Castle lost the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature to Wallace & Grommit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. However, Miyazaki has stated as recently as 2013 that Howl’s Moving Castle is his favorite film he’s ever made, and rightfully so.

8 La Maison En Petits Cubes

Japan Took Home The Animated Short Award

This film, whose title translates to “The House of Small Cubes,” is the only Japanese animated short film to win an Academy Award. Directed by Kunio Katō, the film also won many other awards, including the Hiroshima Prize at the 2008 Hiroshima International Animation Festival.

This short film follows an old man whose house becomes flooded, causing him to relive scenes from his life. The art-style looks very rustic and old-fashioned, which adds to the melancholy of the piece. It’s easy to see how a film that is animated so beautifully could impress voters at the Academy Awards.

7 Possessions

A Different Kind Of Animation Recognized By The Oscars

Possessions is a short anime film directed by Shuhei Morita. It was part of multimedia project titled Short Peace that was released between 2013 and 2014. Short Peace includes three other short anime films, as well as a video game called Ranko Tsukigime’s Longest Day. However, only the Possessions short earned an Oscar nomination.

Possessions, also titled “Tsukumo” in Japan, follows a traveler in a storm who stumbles upon an abandoned shrine where he takes refuge. There, the traveler encounters several spirits who terrorize him. Other entries in the Short Peace collection include separate, anthology stories that are set in other points of Japanese history.

6 The Wind Rises

Its Romantic Fantasies Couldn’t Outdo Disney

Hayao Miyazaki’s wartime drama The Wind Rises was nominated for Best Animated Feature in 2014, but unfortunately lost the award to Disney’s Frozen, an expected win for one of Disney’s biggest hits. The Wind Rises is a stand-out in Miyazaki’s filmography, trading his fantastical depictions of mythology and folklore for an animated biopic.

The film follows the fictionalized story of Jiro Horikoshi, designer of the aircraft planes used by the Japanese army during World War II. It works as a parable about Jiro’s love of flight being taken advantage of for violent purposes. The Wind Rises also tells the heartbreaking love story between Jiro and his wife, Naoko.

5 The Tale Of Princess Kaguya

A Great Director’s Final Film Deserved More Accolades

This historical fantasy film was the last film directed by Isao Takahata before he passed away in 2018. While the film lost 2014’s Best Animated Feature award to Big Hero 6, it’s also considered by many one of the greatest animated films of all time. Its release coincided with fellow Studio Ghibli film The Wind Rises, and the production of both films is the subject of the documentary The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness.

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The Tale of Princess Kaguya is based on an old tale of Japanese folklore titled “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter.” The film is about an old man and his wife, who discover a tiny girl inside a piece of bamboo. As the movie progresses, the titular Princess Kaguya slowly grows into a beautiful young woman.

4 When Marnie Was There

Studio Ghibli Does What They Do Best Here

When Marnie Was There is another film by Studio Ghibli, directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi. In Japan, the film was called Omoide no Mānī, which roughly translates to “Marnie of My Memories.” The film lost the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature to Disney-Pixar’s Inside Out.

The film follows a young girl named Anna who goes to live with her relatives in the Kushiro wetlands after an asthma attack at school. There, Anna encounters the mysterious Marnie, with whom she grows close over the summer as they keep each other’s secrets. It’s a beautiful film, which is par for the course for Studio Ghibli.

3 The Red Turtle

A Non-Japanese Animator Teamed Up With Ghibli

The Red Turtle is an exception on this list, as it was directed by a Dutch animator named Michaël Dudok de Wit. However, it was co-produced by Studio Ghibli’s Toshio Suzuki, who shared a nomination with de Wit at the 89th Academy Awards. The film still lost, however, to Disney’s Zootopia, directed by Byron Howard and Rich Moore.

This simplistic yet visually stunning film follows a man who is stranded on a deserted island. There, he comes across the titular red turtle, and falls in love with the red-haired woman inside it. The film has no dialogue, yet it tells a beautiful story about this man and the woman he finds inside a turtle, as absurd as that may sound.

2 Mirai

Studio Chizu Takes Ghibli’s Place For A Year

The most recent Japanese animated film to be nominated at the Academy Awards is Mirai, which was released in 2018. It is also the first non-Studio Ghibli anime film to be nominated at the Academy Awards. However, the film lost to the wildly popular Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Mirai follows a young boy named Kun who discovers a secret garden in his house that transports him back in time. On Kun’s adventures, he interacts with his relatives at different points in history. Many critics praised Mirai for its simplistic yet beautiful visuals, as well as its emotionally resonant story.

1 The Boy And The Heron

Although it seemed that The Wind Rises was going to be Miyazaki’s final film, the director couldn’t help but continue creating beautiful works of art. The Boy and the Heron is his latest film, which notably won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, beating out tough competition including Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Robot Dreams.

The film is a culmination of Miyazaki’s work, centering on a boy named Mahito who moves to the countryside, where he’s lured by a talking heron into a world plagued by his family’s history. The best part is Robert Pattinson’s English voice dub as the titular Heron, in what might be the actor’s greatest performance. Hopefully, The Boy and the Heron doesn’t end up being the last Japanese animated film to be nominated for an Oscar, and there are many more to come.

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