The 2024 Academy Awards ceremony, held Sunday in Los Angeles, was a big night for Japan as two of the country’s cultural titans — anime powerhouse Studio Ghibli and the 70-year-old Godzilla franchise — won high accolades from Hollywood’s elite. The award for best animated feature film went to Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron,” while Takashi Yamazaki’s monster film “Godzilla Minus One” won best visual effects.
A common theme throughout the event was the weighty consequences of violent conflicts, as both “The Boy and the Heron” and “Godzilla Minus One” — as well as the winner of best international feature and best sound, “The Zone of Interest,” and the event’s biggest victor, “Oppenheimer,” which took home best picture and six other awards — examine the devastation of World War II from different perspectives.
Studio Ghibli’s “The Boy and the Heron” won best animated feature film early in the night, marking Miyazaki’s second time to claim an Oscar. He received his first in 2003 for “Spirited Away,” and also received two Oscar nominations for “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “The Wind Rises,” in 2006 and 2014, respectively.