Toei Animation May Have a Shot at Its First Oscar This Year

Being nominated for an Academy Award is often viewed as one of the highest honors any film achieves, let alone winning. The odds are always stacked against you, especially if you’re a foreign picture, yet most studios often try to get their films that coveted Oscar nomination. Toei Animation is one of the biggest animation productions in Japan but have never received an Oscar nomination. However, this year, the company is within reach for a shot at the Oscar for this year’s Academy Awards nominations. The company’s short film, Magic Candies, is on the shortlist of 15 films legible for the Best Animated Short Film Oscar for the 97th Academy Awards.

Magic Candies is a surrealist coming-of-age short film about a boy who enjoys being by himself and playing marbles. He eventually gets his hands on special marble-shaped candies that, after eating one, allow him to hear his sofa speaking. He soon realizes he can communicate with different objects, people, and animals every time he consumes one of the candies. Magic Candies uses special CGI animation that makes the movie appear similar to clay and stop-motion. The short film has received acclaim for its animation and heartwarming story, receiving multiple honors and award nominations.

[RELATED – Toei Animation Announces Global Expansion Plans]

Magic Candies – The Academy Has an Apparent Bias Against Anime

Magic Candies has a slim chance to get nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, let alone win. While the Oscars often nominated foreign films in the Animated Feature and Short categories, there’s a stigma around anime that the Academy has yet to acknowledge. Toei Animation and other anime studios often submit their films for awards and don’t make the final nominations. The Academy skips over popular and even universally acclaimed anime features, like the highly acclaimed Your Name film from 2016. Even Toei’s recent biggest shot, The First Slam Dunk, only wound up shortlisted but not nominated for the 2023 Oscars. In general, the people in the Academy have a juvenile view of animation, choosing to nominate films like The Boss Baby and Ferdinand instead. The Academy’s bias stems from society’s attitudes against animation, believing fallacious notions that the medium is only for children.

The works of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli are the exceptions to the Academy’s bias against anime. Because Miyazaki’s work has had clear and present inspiration for modern-day filmmaking, he and his studio often get a pass and receive award recognitions that other anime films don’t achieve. Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron was able to pull a full victory and was awarded the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 96th Academy Awards. Studio Ghibli previously won the Best Animated Feature award with Spirited Away, becoming one of the few foreign film studios to have more than one Oscar win. The only other anime film nominated and not from Studio Ghibli is Mirai, the 2018 animated film directed by Digimon and Summer Wars director Mamoru Hosoda. While Magic Candies is only on the shortlist, Toei Animation has faith in the project, and the short may finally give the long-lasting company its first Academy Award.

H/T: oricon.co.jp