Of the eighteen animated films submitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for consideration in the Best Animated Feature category, none of them were from Japan. That's a sad state of affairs, considering some of the features that were released this year in Japan ... and compared to what's been released domestically.
At least two major releases in Japan come to mind as possible candidates, but one will only be released theatrically next year over here. That's The Secret World of Arietty, the new production from Hayao Miyazaki's perennially-excellent Studio Ghibli, an adaptation of Mary Norton's Borrowers books (which have been filmed before). The other, RED LINE (shown here), an entirely hand-animated action epic of far-future high-speed racing that was some seven years in the works, did play domestically but inexplicably wasn't submitted for consideration by its distributors. (See some RED LINE trailers at YouTube, to get some idea of the level of visual creativity at work here.)
Most of the American submissions were sequels (Kung Fu Panda 2, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked), or adaptations of other properties (The Adventures of Tintin, The Smurfs) rather than original productions (Rango). Not to say that a sequel or an adaptation is automatically inferior work -- I've argued before that "original" is only one element of "superior" -- but to have that many more release slots taken up by such things does leave that many less chances for original work to prosper.
Crunchyroll has a full rundown of the candidates, along with trailers from some titles submitted from a few other countries (Alois Nebel, A Cat in Paris, etc.)
Image: Redline, from Manga's booth at New York Anime Festival. Photo © Serdar Yegulalp.
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