From Demon Slayer to KPop Demon Hunters: Oscars Should Rethink Anime

Traditionally, the Animation Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has not been known for risk-taking. Since the best animated feature Oscar was introduced in 2002, the category has overwhelmingly rewarded studio-backed, 3D CGI family fare of the Disney-Pixar-DreamWorks school. In more than two decades, exceptions have been rare: one claymation winner (Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit), one stop-motion drama (Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio) and one independent (last year’s Latvian breakout Flow).

As East Asian animation — from Japanese anime to South Korean hanguk aeni and Chinese donghua — exploded into a global pop-culture force, the Academy has remained largely unimpressed. As far as Oscar voters are concerned, Asian animation can be defined as beginning and ending with the films of Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, The Boy and the Heron) and his devotees at Studio Ghibli. Miyazaki’s singular style — his hand-drawn, painterly aesthetic and his thematic focus on a child’s-eye view of morally complex, humanistic tales — has been treated as the sole Asian animation worthy of entry into the Oscar canon. To date, Mamoru Hosoda’s 2019 time-travel drama Mirai remains the only non-Ghibli anime feature ever nominated.

Things will be different this year.

Two of the season’s animation frontrunners — Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters and anime blockbuster Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, both Golden Globe nominees — have little in common with a Miyazaki movie. KPop is a neon-soaked action musical about a chart-topping girl group, Huntrix, juggling stadium tours with their secret lives as superpowered demon hunters. Demon Slayer, the first of a series-ending film trilogy, is a master class in hyper-kinetic, violent battles and high-stakes melodrama, in which a sequence of epic duels is intercut with emotional character backstories. Dark horse contenders include Scarlet from Hosoda, an action-fantasy reimagining of Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a surreal revenge tale; and Ryu Nakayama’s Chainsaw Man, another anime series to film adaptation, featuring a hero whose arms and head turn into chainsaws, who falls for a girl who can transform into a nuclear bomb.

Aside from the out-there storylines, these movies look nothing like Studio Ghibli or the photorealism of a Disney/Pixar film. The animation is a combination of 3D CGI and anime’s traditional 2D style — where scenes are shot at 12 frames per second instead of the standard 24 fps of classic Western animation — giving the films a more comic book/manga feel. KPop is full 3D film, but the directors mimic elements of the 2D animated style, including exaggerated, cartoonish expressions. The eyes of K-pop superstars/demon hunters Rumi, Mira and Zoey (voiced by actors Arden Cho, May Hong and Ji-young Yoo) turn into giant red hearts to show physical attraction. When they are angry or determined, their mouths contort absurdly and wail.

This is unlike anything the Academy has seen — or at least recognized — before.

Devoted fans, however, are familiar. The Demon Slayer TV series, based on Koyoharu Gotouge’s best-selling manga, has been a global hit since its launch in 2019. The first Demon Slayer film, Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (2020), grossed more than $500 million worldwide (Infinity Castle blew past that, earning nearly $800 million). Director Haruo Sotozaki’s style, with its focus on fighting, fellowship and flashbacks, fits clearly into the established shonen (“young boy”) genre of anime, whose lineage includes popular ’90s TV series like Dragon Ball Z and Naruto.

KPop, in turn, draws heavily from the mahou shojo (“magical girl”) subgenre of anime, which Sailor Moon popularized worldwide, in which transformation sequences and secret identities provide a metaphor for female empowerment. Directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans also take inspiration from K-drama series — a staple on Netflix worldwide — with their blend of fantastical action and relatable character flaws, and their themes of secret identities and found families. K-pop music videos and stadium concerts are also a major influence. The style of Huntrix and their demon-led boy band rivals Saja Boys mirrors real-life K-pop acts like Blackpink, BTS and Stray Kids. (Seasoned K-pop producers such as Teddy Park, Lindgren and Stephen Kirk worked on the film’s chart-topping soundtrack.)

Part of the appeal — and a good portion of the commercial success — of Demon Slayer, KPop Demon Hunters and other breakout anime features is down to their fan service. These films give audiences what they know and love. There’s no spoon-feeding or hand-holding. Viewers are expected to be familiar with these worlds and their codes without the need for explanation or exposition.

That these movies are part of the awards conversation points to a shift in how the Academy defines an Oscar-worthy animated movie. What was once dismissed as merely pop could now be anointed as art.

The global success of anime has played a role in this. After all, 300 million anime fans — Netflix’s estimate of the number of subscribers who watched anime content on its service in 2024 — can’t be wrong. But pop anime’s long journey to prestige recognition is also a result of deeper changes in the animation industry. A generation ago, when the first animated feature Oscar was presented (to DreamWorks’ Shrek), virtually all the members of the Animation Branch worked within the U.S. studio system. The Disney/Pixar/DreamWorks style was gospel. The Academy made room for the occasional hand-drawn feature — Miyazaki’s films; Sylvain Chomet’s Triplets of Belleville, a 2003 nominee; Tomm Moore’s 2009 nominee The Secret of Kells — but the gold standard was 3D photorealism in studio movies made for parents and their kids.

In the decades since, talents coming up in the business, who grew up watching and loving anime series like Akira, Sailor Moon and Neon Genesis Evangelion, have worked on U.S. shows with deep anime DNA, such as Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, Cartoon Network’s Samurai Jack or Netflix’s Castlevania. At the same time, international anime, which had been trickling into U.S. theaters (Disney released several Studio Ghibli films; Warner Bros. handled the first three Pokémon movies), became a mainstay. The success of anime features released by indies like Funimation (Dragon Ball), Crunchyroll (Demon Slayer and One Piece Film: Red) and GKIDS (which took over the Studio Ghibli catalog from Disney in 2011) attracted studio attention. Sony bought Funimation in 2017 and Crunchyroll in 2021. Japanese studio Toho acquired GKIDS in 2024. The outsider art has gone mainstream.

When it comes to the Academy, and to U.S. Animation Branch voters, the impact of Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was also key. While not an anime, Sony’s $400 million blockbuster used anime-style techniques, blending 3D CGI with 2D hand-drawn characters, 12 fps animation and non-photorealistic rendering. It showed you could break all the rules of Hollywood studio animation and still win an Oscar.

The forward march of East Asian animation from pop celebration to prestige recognition is not preordained. KPop Demon Hunters is this year’s Oscar favorite, but Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle is no shoo-in. It was just snubbed at the animation industry’s Annie Awards. Chainsaw Man and Scarlet — or other anime contenders, like ChaO, 100 Meters or Dragon Heart — Adventures Beyond This World — are unlikely to make the Oscar final five. In contrast, Disney’s Zootopia 2 and Elio, as well as Netflix’s In Your Dreams, family-friendly 3D CGI films, are strong contenders. So are a pair of hand-drawn European features — Arco and Little Amélie or The Character of Rain — both clearly inspired by the Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli style.

There is also a $2.24 billion Ne Zha 2 hole in the race. The Chinese animated juggernaut, the most commercially successful film of any kind in 2025, wasn’t submitted for Oscar consideration. It will be at least another year before Chinese donghua, and its combination of Pixar-like 3D CGI with Chinese mythology and storytelling techniques, gets a chance at Oscar glory.

Whether recognition comes this year or next, the direction of travel is clear. If the Oscars embrace films like KPop Demon Hunters or even a shonen juggernaut like Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, it won’t just be a genre victory or a belated nod to anime fandom. It will mark a broader recalibration of how animation itself is viewed inside the Academy.

The family-friendly consensus that has dominated the best animated feature category for decades could be giving way to something messier, riskier and more reflective of the full range of global animation and its fans. Not just talking animals giving reassuring life lessons (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but genre mashups that target teens and adults, films with darker tones, stylized violence and hybrid aesthetics. The industry is already moving in that direction — Chainsaw Man outgrossed Elio worldwide — and if the Oscars validate that evolution, things will only accelerate.

This isn’t about dethroning Disney or replacing Miyazaki. But if the Academy embraces KPop Demon Hunters, Demon Slayer and their kin, it could help widen the definition, among Hollywood’s gatekeepers, of what animation can be and who it’s for. The question is not whether this sort of animation belongs at the Oscars, but how long the Oscars can afford to pretend it doesn’t.

This story appeared in the Jan. 15 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.