Any animation fan will know of the historically poor treatment anime has gotten at the Academy Awards. Not only are anime films outside of Studio Ghibli rarely ever nominated for Best Animated Feature, but those few nominations are almost always ignored in favor of Disney, Pixar, and other mainstream Western studios, even if the films they were nominated for are often seen as being weaker than Studio Ghibli’s films.

The lack of respect anime gets at the Oscars has always been disappointing, but there’s finally hope for a change. With the 98th Academy Awards a year away, it’s been announced that the voting process will go through a major upheaval, and thanks to the specific way things have changed, anime will have the best chance of receiving recognition at the Academy Awards it’s ever had from the 98th Academy Awards onward. Granted, it’s not as easy as some people might think, but regardless, it’s something every anime fan should look forward to.

How The Academy Awards’ New Voting Rules Help Anime At The Oscars

Why The Oscars’ New Rule Is Great For Anime

The Academy Awards have never done too much to restrict how people could vote; while voters were encouraged to watch every film nominated for a category, doing so was only an explicit rule for Best International Feature Film and Best Documentary Feature, and for anything else, people could vote for whatever they wanted, even if they hadn’t seen everything. All of that will change from the 98th Academy Awards onward, however, as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has recently announced that all Oscar voters must watch everything in a category they’re voting for or abstain entirely.

That rule change will majorly impact the system as a whole, and no category will be more affected, and for the better, than Best Animated Feature. People who vote for Best Animated Feature have a reputation for only voting for Disney, Pixar, and other mainstream Western studios by default, but now, the new rule change for the Oscars means that voters have to watch anime films and give them a fair chance. Even people abstaining just means the voting will be done solely by the people willing to watch anime, so in either situation, it’s nothing but a good thing.

The Academy Awards’ New Rules Don’t Guarantee An Anime Win Anytime Soon

Why Things Might Still Aren’t Perfect For Anime At The Oscars

As great as the Academy Awards’ rule change is for anime, it doesn’t guarantee that anime will have newfound success. For starters, one major problem with anime at the Oscars is that they never even get nominated for anything, as many anime films, despite their high quality, are linked to shows the average person won’t be familiar with, so it makes sense that they don’t often get nominations. Even with the rule changes to the Oscars, anime won’t even get to the nomination phase so long as people are so selective about them, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.

The bigger issue, however, is that there’s no way to change people’s voting habits. Even if voters now have to watch every film nominated for Best Animated Feature, including the rare anime film, that doesn’t mean they’ll vote for the anime film, as they can still vote for Disney, Pixar, or DreamWorks by default, or simply not like the anime film they had to watch. The change to the voting process is a nice gesture, but unfortunately, the Academy Awards’ new rule won’t help anime so long as voters continue to not take an interest in it.

The Academy Awards Have Gotten Better For Anime, Even Before The Rule Change

Anime Already Had A Renewed Chance At The Oscars

The new rules for the Academy Awards might not be as good for anime as people think, but fortunately, they don’t have to be. Despite Disney’s domination of the Best Animated Feature category, Disney has lost the past three Oscars to Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, 2024’s Flow, and, of course, The Boy and the Heron, with even Inside Out 2 failing to win in favor of Flow. The Academy Awards had already become more accepting of less mainstream animated films before the rule change, so even without it, anime is already in its best position for success in years.

All of that, of course, is nothing but great to think about. It was just a decade ago that anything that wasn’t Disney, Pixar, or DreamWorks was bound to be completely snubbed by voters, but now, the culture around animation has changed so that people are finally willing to give lesser-known studios, even anime studios, a proper chance and reward them appropriately. How much that will benefit anime, specifically, has yet to be seen, but whatever the case, anime fans have never had more reason to look forward to the Academy Awards than they have now.

The Oscars | Academy Awards

Location

Dolby Theatre – Los Angeles, California