Anime Titans Join the Oscars Race: KPop Demon Hunters, Demon Slayer, and Chainsaw Man
The Oscars are opening the Best Animated Feature race to anime and anime-inspired films, expanding the field and recognizing the medium’s surging global influence.
Animation has been on a heater this year with both audiences and critics, and now the Academy has made it official: the Oscars posted the slate of movies that qualified for Best Animated Feature consideration. It is a big, eclectic list, and yes, anime is heavily in the mix.
Anime shows up in force
Alongside the usual studio heavy hitters, the eligibility roster includes a bunch of anime and anime-adjacent titles: Chainsaw Man - The Movie: Reze Arc, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle, KPop Demon Hunters, the Hatsune Miku mobile game tie-in Colorful Stage! The Movie: A Miku Who Can't Sing, plus ChaO and The Legend of Hei 2. If you follow Japanese and Chinese animation, this lineup will not be a surprise, but seeing so many of them on one Oscar list is still a little wild.
The full eligibility list
- All Operators Are Currently Unavailable
- Arco
- The Bad Guys 2
- Black Butterflies
- Boys Go to Jupiter
- Chainsaw Man - The Movie: Reze Arc
- ChaO
- Colorful Stage! The Movie: A Miku Who Can't Sing
- David
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle
- Dog Man
- Dog of God
- Dragon Heart - Adventures Beyond This World
- Elio
- Endless Cookie
- Fixed
- Gabby's Dollhouse: The Movie
- In Your Dreams
- KPop Demon Hunters
- The Legend of Hei 2
- Light of the World
- Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
- Lost in Starlight
- A Magnificent Life
- Mahavatar Narsimha
- Night of the Zoopocalypse
- Olivia & las Nubes
- 100 Meters
- Out of the Nest
- Scarlet
- Slide
- The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants
- Stitch Head
- The Twits
- Zootopia 2
"My ballot? Chainsaw Man deserves a spot. It goes full-bore weird and still lands a gut punch, and the back half is flat-out gorgeous."
Quick reminder: eligibility is not a nomination. The branch will whittle this down to the usual five nominees. Expect the official nominations in January, with the ceremony following in March.