The 96th Academy Awards were held on Sunday, March 10, 2024, and it brought home exciting news for anime fans.
Adding to Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli’s legacy, the author’s most recent project, The Boy and the Heron, won the Best Animated Feature Film Award at the Oscars 2024.
The Boy and the Heron: Everything we know about the Ghibli film
Neither the legendary director nor the film’s producer attended the event to receive the award. However, Studio Ghibli’s Vice President, Kiyofumi Nakajima, apologized for their absence and expressed gratitude for the great honor.
This was not an easy win for the film. The Boy and the Heron competed against top-notch animated films nominated in the category, including Elemental and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
Additionally, Miyazaki won this award for the second time after Spirited Away in 2003. Previously, the director received Oscar nominations for Howl’s Moving Castle in 2006 and The Wind Rises in 2014 in the same category.
The film is allegedly Hayao Miyazaki’s last film, and its plot has been inspired by Genzaburō Yoshino’s How Do You Live? novel.
The plot is set during World War II and follows a 12-year-old boy named Mahito Maki. The strong-willed young boy ventures to find his mother after a heron tells him she is alive. As he enters a fantasy world to look for her, the series of his adventures begin.
Apart from the Oscars, The Boy and the Heron has previously won Animation of the Year at the 47th Japan Academy Film Prizes and Best Motion Picture in the Animated category at the 81st Golden Globes Awards. Moreover, it scored honorable awards at the Annie Awards, the British Academy Film Awards, and the EDA Awards.
This is the first PG-13 film in the U.S.A. to have received the Best Animated Feature Film Award. Also, it is the first film distributed by GKIDS that won after 14 nominations.
