The Boy and the Heron deserves the Oscar win, but it doesn’t need it

The Boy and the Heron taking home the Oscar for best animated feature is a bit of a historic win. Not as big as Spirited Away’s win more than 20 years ago, but Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki’s latest is the first 2D, hand-drawn film to win the award since Spirited Away, the second time a foreign animated film has won (the first again being Spirited Away), and at 83, Miyazaki is the oldest director to have won the award. It’s an incredibly deserved win, too; the film has quickly become one of my personal favourites, as a clear look back to the director’s impressive library of works. But to be honest? It didn’t need the win.

When I say it didn’t need the win, I don’t mean because any of the other four films did, though maybe there’s an argument to be made there another time. It didn’t need it, because, at least when it comes to animation, who cares about the Oscars? Gasp! How could I say such a thing about an institution like the Academy Awards! The answer is that it’s because the Oscars has never treated animation with all that much respect, in particular anime.

Out of the 23 years that the Oscars has had a category for best animated feature, Disney has won 15 times, all of which were for 3D films. There have been a handful of nominations that have gone to foreign films, but again, pretty often Disney gets more than one nomination. In the first place, that just shows you how much animation as a medium is regarded as something that’s just for kids – Jimmy Kimmel, host of last night’s Oscars, even made a joke about just that! That’s ok though, no one finds him very funny anyway, so we can just ignore him.

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