The Boy and the Heron deserves the Oscar win, but it doesn't need it
I'm still glad it did win, though.
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The Boy and the Heron taking home the Oscar for best animated feature is a bit of a historic win. Not as big as Spirited Away's win more than 20 years ago, but Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki's latest is the first 2D, hand-drawn film to win the award since Spirited Away, the second time a foreign animated film has won (the first again being Spirited Away), and at 83, Miyazaki is the oldest director to have won the award. It's an incredibly deserved win, too; the film has quickly become one of my personal favourites, as a clear look back to the director's impressive library of works. But to be honest? It didn't need the win.
When I say it didn't need the win, I don't mean because any of the other four films did, though maybe there's an argument to be made there another time. It didn't need it, because, at least when it comes to animation, who cares about the Oscars? Gasp! How could I say such a thing about an institution like the Academy Awards! The answer is that it's because the Oscars has never treated animation with all that much respect, in particular anime.
Out of the 23 years that the Oscars has had a category for best animated feature, Disney has won 15 times, all of which were for 3D films. There have been a handful of nominations that have gone to foreign films, but again, pretty often Disney gets more than one nomination. In the first place, that just shows you how much animation as a medium is regarded as something that's just for kids - Jimmy Kimmel, host of last night's Oscars, even made a joke about just that! That's ok though, no one finds him very funny anyway, so we can just ignore him.
I'm of course happy that The Boy and the Heron won, but Studio Ghibli has nothing to prove. Awards at this scale feel a bit moot in a lot of cases (though of course if Lily Gladstone had won best actress like she deserved I would have been cheering like there's no tomorrow). What does Ghibli, and all of the team that worked on The Boy and the Heron, really get from a win through an organisation that doesn't respect it?
The studio has already cemented itself as a cultural icon - while it constantly seems like it's about to go under, Ghibli has persisted, with merchandise easily found all over the world for the cuddly Totoro, a whole museum dedicated to the spirit of animation, and now even a theme park, Ghibli will likely live forever just through its work.
That's admittedly looking at the studio through a slightly capitalistic lens, so let's move away from that and focus on the fact that Ghibli's film, and Miyazaki's in particular, are also works that people will talk about forever too. Yeah, sure, they're mostly known for their "cosy" vibes, which do them a big disservice, but it's also brought them into the wider consciousness, allowing for more in-depth conversations than just "isn't anime just all fan service and misogyny?"
Ok, that's a lot of anime I will acknowledge, but to write off a whole subsection of a medium because you're not willing to put the effort in to see how much good is out there. Mostly, with The Boy and the Heron taking home this Oscar win, I want you to take it as an opportunity to try something a bit different from the world of animation.
Maybe take a look at Inu-Oh, a period piece set in 14th century Japan rock opera from Masaaki Yuasa, founder of the studio behind Netflix's Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. Or you could check out Flee, an animated documentary nominated for best animated feature in 2021 that follows a man that left his home country of Afghanistan for Denmark.
There's a lot of animation out there that big awards shows won't offer the respect they deserve, and Miyazaki clearly doesn't think all that much of them - he didn't attend them back when Spirited Away won over the US' invasion of Iraq, and I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't attend again now for similar reasons (and also probably because he's pretty old).
The Boy and the Heron, and many other films, actors, and more don't need the Oscars to really be recognised for their work. In the immortal words of best director winner Bong Joon-ho, "The Oscars are not an international film festival. They’re very local."