Masaaki Yuasa’s ‘Inu-Oh’ Surprises With A Golden Globe Nomination

The animation nominees for the 2022 Golden Globe awards look a lot like what many were suspecting, with one exciting surprise.

2022 Golden Globe Best Animated Feature Nominees

• Inu-Oh (GKIDS)
• Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (A24)
• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (Dreamworks Animation)
• Turning Red (Pixar)
• Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Netflix)

Inu-Oh’s presence among the nominees is a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one. Masaaki Yuasa’s film has dazzled audiences and juries at festivals around the world since premiering at the Venice Film Festival back in 2021 – a noteworthy honor for an animated film – and it has always looked like one of the foreign features most likely to make an impact during this year’s awards season. (This is also the first time since Mirai in 2019 that an anime film has been nominated, and only the second time since the Globes added the award in 2007.)

Disney, which was the only U.S. studio to get a Golden Globe animated feature nod last year, is nominated again this year for Turning Red. Despite only getting a limited release, the film has been Disney’s best-received feature of 2022, while other Disney and Pixar films that did get theatrical releases have flopped at the box office and with critics and audiences. It’s little surprise that Turning Red was nominated today, and it seems a shoo-in to be recognized by the Oscars as well, where Disney fare is often disproportionately represented.

A clear favorite here and at any other awards ceremony where it’s picked, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio always felt an inevitable inclusion. The film also got some musical love, scoring nominations for best original score and best original song – “Ciao Papa.” Del Toro added another hyphen to his job title with Pinocchio when he helped write “Ciao Papa,” penning the original lyrics for the song. He talked about the songwriting process, and a lot more, in a video interview with INBTWN Animation, the exclusive online event partner of Cartoon Brew.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is a strong awards contender that keeps getting stronger as the season rolls along. Last week, the stop-motion/live-action hybrid feature won the New York Film Critics Circle award for best animated feature, which has regularly been a barometer for later awards success. It was also selected by the National Board of Review as the best animated feature of the year and won the Saturn Award for best animated film. This is distributor A24’s first Golden Globe nomination in the animated feature category.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, which has scored big with critics as well as U.S. audiences in special preview screenings, has earned awards recognition before even going wide in American theaters. Universal will finish 2022 as the highest-grossing animation distributor at the box office, and it always felt like at least one of its films deserved some awards season love. The Bad Guys and Minions: The Rise of Gru both performed strongly in cinemas, and Puss in Boots looks guaranteed to follow suit after an impressive opening weekend abroad that grossed $8.9 million in only 24 territories.

This year’s Golden Globes, the 80th edition, will air on NBC and Peacock. The scandal-plagued awards were not broadcast last year. Traditionally the awards have been held on a Sunday, but this year have been moved to Tuesday, January 10, 2023.