Spirited Away won Best Animated and that was historic — but animation is still walled off from the top prize. Is that respect, or a ceiling no anime film can break?
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Add your commentAnimation is a medium, not a genre. Walling it off from Best Picture is the Academy admitting it thinks cartoons are for kids. It's prejudice with a trophy.
The Boy and the Heron and Your Name would both have been more deserving Best Picture nominees than half of what gets nominated.
If a French black-and-white silent film can win Best Picture, a hand-drawn Japanese masterpiece sure as hell qualifies.
Best Animated lets niche films get a spotlight they'd lose in the big race. Be careful what you wish for.
Give the award to the best film. If that's an anime three years running, so be it. The category split is just gatekeeping.
Best Picture should go to the best PICTURE. If Grave of the Fireflies isn't 'a picture' then the word means nothing.
Plenty of live-action Best Picture winners are weaker films than Spirited Away or Mononoke and everyone here knows it.
The 'Best Animated' category was invented partly so animated films would stop threatening live-action in the main race. Look it up.
Separate category isn't an insult, it's protection. In an open race animated films would NEVER win against Oscar-bait dramas. The ghetto at least guarantees a winner.
The voters are old and don't watch subtitled cartoons. That's the unglamorous real answer.
Western animation barely cracks Best Picture either. This isn't anti-anime, it's anti-animation, full stop.
Parasite broke the 'subtitles' ceiling. The 'animation' ceiling is the next one and it's overdue.
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