Anime got snubbed yet again this year with the Oscars. Michael Arias' film Tekkon Kinkreet which was totally in good company with Persepolis and Ratatouille got snubbed in favor of the artistically relevant and well produced "Surfs Up" which was far better than Tekkon cause you know penguins are cute and stuff...

I guess this is more like a blog post than a forum post, but I thought it would be cool to share a bit about the critical honors that anime receive in its own country, while noting how it has a knack for being snubbed by this country:

In Japan, the Media Arts Festival and the Manichi Film Concourse are a good way to see what the Japanese thought about animation in an artistic sense and an interesting contrast to "Surf's Up" in america:

Media Arts Plaza Online 2007
http://plaza.bunka.go.jp/english/festival/2007/

Every year, a competition is held in a variety of contemporary artistic areas, from video games, to fine art, and consequently anime and manga are included.

While tekkon wasn't selected (for one thing it was released in japan in 2006 so it wouldn't be eligible), the pool is much larger in this competition which includes independent and films that weren't released in the US.

This years grand prize went to a film called "Summer Days with Coo" trailer here.

I feel this movie seems a bit saccharine for my taste, but buzz out of Japan and the few film festivals its been shown at is generally positive - I'm looking froward to watching it but have a bit of cynicism.

Excellence Prizes, a sort of runner up prize was awarded to Gurren Lagaan, and Denno Coil. Both series deserve such an honor. Most interesting is the justification written up on the website for Gurren Lagaan where it seemed the critics had a hard time justifying the award on critical terms, but instead enjoyed it so much that they awarded it anyways :) - making the show pierce the heavens of pretentious snobbery.

Manichi Film Concourse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainichi_Film_Concours

Secondly is the Mainichi Film Concourse, an animation award that is divided into two different awards with different criteria. The Animation Grand Award is usually awarded to more commercial, but artistically significant works (like Miyazaki films, Place Promised in Our Early Days, Jin Roh etc) whereas the Noburo Ofuji Award is usually (but not always - like in 2000 when it went to Millennium Actress) reserved for independent animation produced by individual creators with smaller budgets.

This year the Grand Prix went to Coo as well (hmm I still think the trailer is mediocre), and the Noburo Ofuji went to a short film from Koji Yamamamura who was nominated a few years ago for best short animation oscar for Mt. Head .

I guess its interesting to see how much artistic credit the Japanese give to anime these days, the government helps fund the Media Arts Festival, while a major newspaper is behind the Mainichi Film Councourse. Its really refreshing :).

Surf's Up. You have GOT to be kidding me. That is an absolute joke right there.

Its the same people that passed over both Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers (in the same year!) for Brother Bear...


I had a nasty feeling it was going to turn out this way :P

Seriously. Like, the roomie and I finished watching Gankutsuou last night, and one of my first comments was 'why the HELL can't america have shows like this? Shows that are AIRED ON TELEVISION?' And i'm not even talking just animation, I mean like live action as well.

...I think our conclusion was that America just sucks. There is seriously something wrong with our culture when things that are just rehashed bullshitted trash get passed over for true works of art. Shit, there's american movies that I would have rather seem them pick that freaking Surf's Up!

At least the two other films nominated for animation oscar I think would qualify as art, both Ratatouille and Persepolis are solid films that are hardly typical for the medium...

Surf's up though.... :P...

There is a caveat to what you say about anime being on television in Japan, much of what is popular in American fandom is barely known outside of Japanese fan circles, many of the most popular shows are in fact broadcast at obscure hours of the night, or on niche satellite channels. A surprising amount of mainstream Japanese don't know about this stuff...

I wouldn't be surprised if Count of Monte Cristo (too lazy to spell out japanese word), was broadcast on a weird channel at a weird time. The only anime that gets broadcast at normal times is kids stuff like Pokemon, and occaisionally stuff like Evangelion, which did cross over and become a hit even amongst non animation fans.

Really the only country I know of that consistently reviles in artistic works that are not cliche is the French.

True about the obscure hours of the night thing, but on the other hand, we're of the subset of culture that would totally be willing to track down and either TiVo nifty stuff if it came on or stay up and watch it. I mean, seriously, there have been MANY times I've been sitting and working on cosplay at two in the morning faced with nothing to watch but shitty adult swim original shows and bad informercials.

So, that's still a little preferable, you know?

I was talking about Japan, not the US. In Japan a fair number of these shows are on at weird times at late hours. I'm not sure what DVRs/Tivo Proliferation is like in Japan. The Japanese have a weird habit of not adopting certain useful technologies even though they are widely available in the westren world (cough cough central heading cough cough), so I'm not sure what its like over there.

TIVO is a wonderful invention though, that could make television way better, a station could potentially end up programming weird stuff late at night and gain viewers that normally wouldn't watch said programs due to the time through that invention...

Oh I know you were, I just meant the US thing as comparison, I probably could have worded that more clearly. Sorry XD

O.o I'd be seriously surprised if they didn't have some sort of digital recording.