The International Animated Film Society, ASIFA-Hollywood, announced the nominees for its 47th Annual Annie Awards on Monday. In addition to the Best Indie Feature category, Makoto Shinkai’s Weathering With You anime film was nominated for the Best FX for Feature (Hidetsugu Ito, Yuko Nakajima, Jumi Lee, Ryosuke Tsuda), Best Direction – Feature (Shinkai), and Best Writing – Feature categories (Shinkai).
Alita: Battle Angel (Michael Cozens) and Pokémon Detective Pikachu (Dale Newton, Waiyin Mendoza, Rochelle Flynn, Leila Gaed, Paul Jones) were nominated for the Best Character Animation – Live Action category. Kingdom Hearts III (Munenori Shinagawa, Kayoko Yajima, Koji Hamada, Koji Inoue) was nominated for the Best Character Animation – Video Game category. Rilakkuma and Kaoru (Masahito Kobayashi) and Ultraman (Kenji Kamiyama, Shinji Aramaki) were nominated for the Best Direction – TV/Media category, while Carole & Tuesday (Shinichiro Watanabe) was nominated for the Best Storyboarding – TV/Media category. Viz Media and Powerhouse Animation Studio’s Seis Manos (Carl Thiel) was nominated for Best Music.
The Best Indie Feature nominees also include Madhouse’s Okko’s Inn and Trigger and XFLAG’s Promare.
ASIFA-Hollywood added the Best Animated Independent Feature award for the 2016 awards in order to “recognize not only features in wide release, but also the independent animators, international studios, anime and special productions that might not otherwise get the attention they deserve.” Mamoru Hosoda’s Mirai anime film won the Best Animated Independent Feature award this year. Sunao Katabuchi’s In This Corner of the World and Kenji Kamiyama’s Napping Princess were nominated for the award in 2017, but no anime received awards. Production I.G’s Miss Hokusai, Michael Dudok de Wit and Studio Ghibli’s The Red Turtle, and Makoto Shinkai’s your name. were all nominated in the category in 2016, and The Red Turtle won the award.
The Annie Awards recognize outstanding achievement in animation. The awards ceremony will be held on January 25, 2019.