Will It Win Best Animated Film?
There have been no shortage of groundbreaking animated films to have come out over the past couple of years, especially from Japan.
Just take a gander at Your Name and The Boy and the Beast.
Their popularity over in the west has steadily grown, to the point where even the Academy has had to recognize their worth.
As it happens, in a welcome display of international appreciation, it looks like Naoko Yamada’s A Silent Voice has found itself nominated for the Beat Animated Feature award at next year’s Oscars. It managed to one up the likes of other anime films like Mary and the Witch’s Flower and In This Corner of the World, while also being the first nominated anime film to not be produced by Studio Ghibli.
The plot of A Silent Voice is one of atonement, as a former bully seeks out to make amends with a deaf girl who he had previously wronged. All the while, we the audience witness the complexities of high school politics, the teenage mindset and day to day life as a human being reflected through surrealist shifts in the environment. Before you know it, we’re balling our eyes out as we pray that our characters find redemption and peace by the time the credits role.
It has already joined quite an elite club, with previous nominees being none other Howl’s Moving Castle, The Wind Rises, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, When Marnie Was There, The Red Turtle and of course the award-winning Spirited Away.
Will this masterwork of the medium take home the win? We certainly hope so, and perhaps in the process prove that animation for Japan shouldn’t fall on deaf ears.
You can check out the trailer for A Silent Voice below!
