Many of the results from the 96th Academy Awards, such as the best picture win for “Oppenheimer,” had been widely predicted for weeks in advance. Not so for best animated feature, which analysts pegged as a toss-up between Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.” So when the latest film from the 83-year-old Japanese auteur was announced as the winner, even its biggest boosters were a bit surprised.

“I thought ‘Spider-Verse,’ with its distinctly contemporary and American preoccupations would be easier to approach and appreciate, especially among U.S. Academy voters,” says Susan Napier, author of “Miyazakiworld: A Life in Art.”

“‘Spider-Verse’ was huge in terms of box office, and is an incredible achievement in animation,” says David Jesteadt, president of GKids, which distributed “The Boy and the Heron” in North America and helped shepherd it to an Oscar nomination. Jesteadt, who was in attendance at the awards with several executives from Studio Ghibli, Miyazaki’s animation studio, calls the win “a beautiful moment.”

“I was really happy that the studio got to feel the love and appreciation from the American audience and got the congratulations they were due for decades of amazing filmmaking.”

The seeds for a second Academy Award win for Miyazaki and Japanese animation in general (the first was for “Spirited Away” in 2003) were first planted years ago. In 2017, GKids, which became the U.S. distributor for Studio Ghibli’s films a decade ago, began screening the studio’s back catalog in North American theaters, (re)introducing audiences to Ghibli’s output. Their 2023 edition in particular “contained all of Hayao Miyazaki’s films, going in order and building to the release of the new film,” says Jesteadt. “It was helping to remind everyone, through press and audience participation, just how many classic moments Miyazaki has had.”

Next came positioning “Heron” as the opening film at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, a first for both an animated feature and one from Japan. Festivals like TIFF typically choose star-studded films as openers, but that year’s actors’ strike made such considerations moot, says Jesteadt. Finally came the film’s general North American release on Dec. 8, which got it “in the hands of critics in New York and Los Angeles earlier than they might have otherwise, helping us build some momentum and elevate the film,” says Chance Huskey, director of distribution at GKids. In addition to critical success, “The Boy and the Heron” opened in first place and became Miyazaki’s highest-grossing film in the U.S.

In a broader sense, the film’s Oscar win was also aided by “the increasing acceptance of adult-oriented animation and the rise of interest in Japanese popular culture that has been going on since the late 1990s,” Napier says.

Japanese animation now has two wins at the Academy Awards, but will this latest award open the door to movies directed by someone other than Hayao Miyazaki?

“I’m honestly not sure,” Napier says, “but I do think that Makoto Shinkai’s amazing body of work should be recognized, and that of Mamoru Hosoda as well.”

“The cultural gatekeepers who have been fans of Ghibli for 20 years now are still kind of catching up on Japanese animation generally,” says Jesteadt. However: “The Academy’s effort over the last couple of years to diversify has yielded a really interesting dialog between traditional Hollywood films and international films. I think the door is opening.”