[bumblelad]

What broke my spirit as a young kid getting into animation was the discovery that nobody at the Oscars basically gives a shit about animation. Flat out. 'Judges' willingly admit they don't see cartoons as anything but for kids and will regularly not even watch all of the nominees...aside from the Disney cartoons with their kids in theaters. Hence why Disney always wins animation awards. So imagine my disillusion when discovering the great stuff that came out from Japan or France, to lose to the crap by-the-numbers musical cartoons churned out by Disney for the last ~30 years.

This does create a problem though, because while nobody gives a shit about industry awards, they do generate hype and interest (and sales). And these sales generate future projects. Nobody is going to basically attempt an animation project aimed at adults when they know they can't get it marketed as anything but for kids, and even then, always play second fiddle to Disney.

And hence, animation is effectively all but dead in America. You have your Rick and Mortys and Frozens and not much else.

[Bayart]

The Oscars are just a reflection of American culture and the Hollywood film industry. And that's just fine. They don't have to be attuned to the entire world.

[renewiltord]

Sure, but that's just because niches are usually ignored by the mainstream. Sci-fi novels are rarely recognized as great works of literature, but I adore them for the ideas they bring up and the worlds they build. So I go look at the Nebula and Hugo awards, not at the Pulitzer for fiction.

Exhalation and Stories of your Life are two collections of short stories that I think should rank among the top few such anthologies. The fact that they're sci-fi doesn't reduce them, but they're unlikely to be really recognized because of the genre.

[veridies]

Yeah, it's sad – Wolfwalkers was a beautiful, innovative film. While you could argue Soul is better, no one even bothered to look into that category much because the winner was inevitable.

[swyx]

so why isn't there a separate "animation Oscars"?

[Fricken]

The Oscars have a category for best animated short, and best animated feature. Given the relatively tiny number of films produced in these categories, animation awards are disproportionately overrepresented.

[Bayart]

There are major animation awards, they're just not American.