The Oscars Snubbed Demon Slayer and Chainsaw Man, Even After Their Record-Breaking Year

By the end of 2025, it was almost impossible to deny the fact that anime had officially entered blockbuster territory. Not just in the way fans have always known it, but in the way Hollywood measures success, through box office numbers, global cultural impact, and mainstream visibility. Two films stood at the centre of that moment: Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle and Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc.

Both were huge, both were critically discussed, and both were animated releases that should at least be part of the Oscars conversation. Yet when the Academy announced its nominees for Best Animated Feature at the 98th Academy Awards, neither film made the cut. Instead, the final lineup featured Arco, Elio, KPop Demon Hunters, Zootopia 2, and Little Amélie or the Character of Rain. Once again, anime was nowhere to be found. For many fans (including myself), this was disappointing.

Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle was the cinematic beginning of the franchise’s final arc, adapted from one of the most beloved shōnen manga of the past decade. As the first film in the Infinity Castle trilogy, it carried the emotional weight of years of storytelling while showcasing some of the most technically impressive animation ever put on screen.

Ufotable’s signature visual style, which is fluid fight choreography, cinematic lighting, and seamless integration of 2D and digital effects, reached new heights here. The result was a film that felt less like a TV adaptation and more like a full-scale fantasy epic.

Commercially, the film was unstoppable. It broke international records, dominated the Japanese box office, and performed exceptionally well in Western markets. It even secured a Golden Globe nomination, signalling that it wasn’t just a fan favourite but a film that had crossed into mainstream recognition.

Then came Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, which represented a completely different side of anime. MAPPA leaned heavily into film language with long takes, unconventional framing, moody lighting, and deliberate pacing.

The gamble paid off, and the film performed remarkably well worldwide, especially considering its darker tone and mature themes. Together, these two films showed how diverse modern anime cinema has become.

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Anime’s relationship with the Oscars has always been complicated. For decades, Japanese animation existed outside the Academy’s idea of what “serious” animated cinema looked like. While Disney, Pixar, and European studios dominated awards conversations, anime was often treated as niche entertainment. Something popular with fans but rarely considered awards material.

That perception only started to shift in the early 2000s as Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2003. It felt like a breakthrough moment. The film was visually stunning, emotionally rich, and universally relatable at the same time. For many people, it was a sign that anime could stand shoulder to shoulder with Hollywood animation. Sadly, that victory didn’t open the floodgates the way fans hoped it would.

In the years that followed, several anime films managed to break into the nomination list, yet rarely went further. Howl’s Moving Castle earned a nomination but lost to Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The Wind Rises was nominated but competed against Disney’s Frozen. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, one of the most visually experimental animated films ever made, lost to Big Hero 6. When Marnie Was There couldn’t surpass Inside Out. The Red Turtle, a rare international co-production, lost to the original Zootopia.

Each of these films was critically acclaimed and artistically ambitious. Yet they struggled to compete with Western animation, which benefited from stronger marketing, wider distribution, and greater familiarity among voters.

It wasn’t until decades later that anime would win again. In 2024, The Boy and the Heron claimed the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, which marked only the second time a Japanese anime film had won the category. 

The victory was significant but also revealing. Once again, the film that succeeded was introspective, symbolic, and largely self-contained. It was a far cry from the franchise-driven anime dominating global box offices. Between those rare moments of recognition, countless anime films were overlooked entirely.

Some of the most influential and commercially successful anime releases of the past two decades never even entered the Oscar conversation, despite their impact on global audiences. Year after year, anime would appear on eligibility lists, stir up excitement among fans, and then quietly disappear when nominations were announced.

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One of the biggest reasons anime is often snubbed at the Oscars is that not all anime looks the same. In fact, the anime that has historically impressed the Academy looks almost nothing like the kind of anime dominating cinemas today. When films like Spirited Away and The Boy and the Heron won Oscars, they represented a very specific visual tradition. Studio Ghibli’s animation style is soft, painterly, and understated. Movement is gentle rather than explosive, and the colours are warm and natural. 

Even films like The Tale of the Princess Kaguya took this approach further by using brushstroke-like visuals that looked closer to traditional Japanese art than modern digital animation. These films feel handcrafted, intimate, and timeless. They don’t overwhelm the viewer with spectacle; they draw them in with mood, atmosphere, and emotional subtlety. That kind of animation fits neatly into the Academy’s long-standing idea of what “prestige” animation looks like.

Demon Slayer and Chainsaw Man exist at the opposite end of the spectrum. Demon Slayer is built on spectacle. Ufotable’s animation style is hyper-detailed, fast, and cinematic, blending traditional 2D animation with heavy digital compositing and 3D camera movement. Fight scenes look less like cartoons and more like live-action action sequences translated into animation. The visuals are sharp and intense with dramatic lighting, explosive effects, and constantly shifting camera angles. It’s designed to make audiences feel adrenaline.

Chainsaw Man takes a different but equally modern approach. Instead of bright fantasy visuals, MAPPA leans into realism and film language. The animation is gritty with muted colours, unconventional framing, and pacing inspired by live-action cinema. Scenes linger on small details like empty rooms, cigarette smoke, and awkward silences before erupting into sudden bursts of violence and chaos.

Oscar-winning anime often prioritises universality, simplicity, and emotional restraint. Their worlds feel accessible even to viewers who have never watched anime before. You don’t need context, lore, or prior knowledge to connect with them. Demon Slayer and Chainsaw Man, on the other hand, are products of modern anime culture. They embrace complexity, long-form storytelling, and bold visual experimentation. Their styles are shaped by manga fandom and the expectations of audiences who are already fluent in anime language.

To fans, this makes them thrilling, ambitious, and cutting-edge, but to traditional awards institutions, they can appear loud, overwhelming, or too tied to genre and franchise identity. This contrast might explain why anime films that feel quiet and timeless tend to win Oscars, while anime films that feel explosive and contemporary tend to dominate global box offices instead.

Another quiet tension lies in how anime films are structured. Infinity Castle is not designed to be watched in isolation. It is the beginning of a trilogy and the climax of a story that has been unfolding across multiple seasons of television and earlier films. Its most powerful moments rely on emotional connections built over time.

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc is slightly more standalone, but it still exists within a larger narrative ecosystem that rewards long-term viewers. For fans, this interconnected storytelling is one of anime’s greatest strengths. It allows films to feel like monumental events rather than isolated experiences. For institutions like the Oscars, however, franchise films often exist in an awkward space. They are harder to judge as singular works of art, especially when compared to films that tell complete stories within a single runtime.

Modern anime is increasingly moving in the opposite direction towards cinematic universes rather than standalone features.

The absence of anime from the 2026 nominations doesn’t necessarily mean that Demon Slayer or Chainsaw Man lacked artistic merit. If anything, it highlights a deeper disconnect between how anime is consumed globally and how animation is evaluated by traditional institutions.

Anime has already won the audience. It has proven its commercial power, cultural relevance, and artistic versatility. What it hasn’t fully won yet is institutional validation from bodies that still operate within older frameworks of taste and storytelling.

If even two of the biggest, most ambitious anime films of the decade can’t break through, the question is no longer whether anime deserves recognition. The question is whether the Oscars are equipped to recognise the kind of animation that defines modern global cinema.