‘Blue Eye Samurai’ Wins Big at 51st Annie Awards

Rafu Wire Service and Staff Reports

It was a big night for Netflix’s “Blue Eye Samurai,” which won six prizes at the 51^st annual Annie Awards, honoring the best in animation from the past year.

The ceremony was held Feb. 17 at UCLA’s Royce Hall.

In the television categories, “Blue Eye Samurai” received the most nominations (seven). The adult animated action streaming series was created and written by husband-and-wife team Michael Green and Amber Noizumi. During the Edo period, half-white, half-Japanese warrior Mizu (voiced by Maya Erskine) quests for vengeance against four white men, one of whom is her father, who illegally remained in Japan during the closing of its borders by the Tokugawa shogunate.

On the movie side, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” was named Best Feature and took home half a dozen other awards. This year marked the first time in 32 years that not a single Disney or Pixar film was nominated for Best Feature.

Pixar’s “Elemental,” directed by Peter Sohn and based on his experiences as a child of Korean immigrants, received six nominations but left empty-handed.

Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron” and Makoto Shinkai’s “Suzume” received seven nominations each, surpassed only by “Spider-Man” with eight and “Nimona” with 10. “The Boy and the Heron” took two awards.

During the ceremony, ASIFA-Hollywood presented its Winsor McCay Award for lifetime/career contributions to the late animator director Charlotte Reiniger, Studio Ghibli composer Joe Hisaishi (who was unable to attend), and National Film Board animator/producer Marcy Page.

Hisaishi’s credits include Miyazaki’s “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind,” “Laputa: Castle in the Sky,” “My Neighbor Totoro,” “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” “Porco Rosso,” “Princess Mononoke,” “Spirited Away,” “Howl’s Moving Castle,” “Ponyo,” “The Wind Rises” and “The Boy and the Heron” as well as Isao Takahata’s “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.”

Winners and nominees include the following:

Best Feature: Nominees included “The Boy and the Heron” and “Suzume.” Winner: “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

Best Short Subject: The winner was “War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko,” based on the 1971 song “Merry Xmas (War Is Over)” and executive produced by Sean Ono Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Best TV/Media-Preschool: The winner was an episode of “Ghee Happy,” a playful reimagining of the Hindu deities as little kids discovering their powers in a deity daycare.

Best TV/Media-Mature: The winner was an episode of “Blue Eye Samurai” titled “Pilot: Hammerscale.”

Best TV/Media-Limited Series: Nominees included an episode of “Pokémon: Path to the Peak.” The winner was “Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire.”

Best Student Film: The winner was “The Little Poet” by Justine King, a Chinese Australian filmmaker and artist currently enrolled in the Character Animation Program at California Institute of the Arts.

Best FX-TV/Media: The winners were Thomas Decaens, Karl Burtin and Laurent Bretonniere for an episode of “Blue Eye Samurai” titled “All Evil Dreams and Angry Words.”

Best FX-Feature: Nominees included “Suzume” and “Elemental.” Winner: “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

Best Character Animation-TV/Media: The winner was Alex Bard for Episodes 101, 104 and 106 of “Blue Eye Samurai.”

Best Character Animation-Feature: The winner was Takeshi Honda for “The Boy and the Heron.” Nominees included Kenichi Tsuchiya for “Suzume” and Jessica Torres for “Elemental.”

Best Character Animation-Live Action: Nominees included Rick O’Connor, Mike Beaulieu, Stewart Alves, Kevin Reuter and Wai Kit Wan for “Ahsoka” and Kevin Estey, Kai-Hua Lan, Blaine Toderian, Richard John Moore and Joseph Leong for “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.” Winner: “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3”

Best Character Design-Feature: Nominees included Maria Yi for “Elemental” and Aidan Sugano for “Nimona.” Winner: “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

Best Direction-TV/Media: Nominees included Kenji Ono, Kai Akira and Patrick Harpin for an episode of “My Dad the Bounty Hunter” and Iku Ogawa for an episode of “Pokémon Concierge.” Winner: “Star Wars: Visions”

Best Direction-Feature: Nominees included Hayao Miyazaki for “The Boy and the Heron” Winners: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson for “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

Best Music-Feature: Nominees included Thomas Newman and Ari “Lauv” Leff for “Elemental,” Kazuma Jinnouchi and the rock band Radwimps for “Suzume” and Joe Hisaishi for “The Boy and the Heron.” Winners: Daniel Pemberton and Metro Boomin for “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

Best Production Design-TV/Media: The winners were Toby Wilson, James Wilson and Emil Mitev for an episode of “Blue Eye Samurai” titled “The Great Fire of 1657.”

Best Production Design-Feature: Nominees included Don Shank, Maria Yi, Dan Holland, Jennifer Chang and Laura Meyer for “Elemental,” Aidan Sugano and Jeff Turley for “Nimona,” Yashar Kassai, Arthur Fong and Tiffany Lam for “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” and Yoji Takeshige for “The Boy and the Heron.” Winners: Patrick O’Keefe and Dean Gordon for “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

Best Storyboarding-TV/Media: The winner was Ben Juwono, an Indonesian physicist turned Disney director, for an episode of “Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.” Nominees included Kristine Lee for “Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai” and Grace Liu for “Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight.”

Best Storyboarding-Feature: The winner was Hayao Miyazaki for “The Boy and the Heron.” Nominees included Makoto Shinkai for “Suzume.”

Best Voice Acting-Feature: Nominees included Hokuto Matsumura for “Suzume.” Winner: Chloë Grace Moretz for “Nimona”

Best Writing-TV/Media: The winner was Amber Noizumi for an episode of “Blue Eye Samurai” titled “The Tale of the Ronin and the Bride.”

Best Writing-Feature: Nominees included Hayao Miyazaki for “The Boy and the Heron” and Makoto Shinkai for “Suzume.” Winners: Robert L. Baird and Lloyd Taylor for “Nimona”

Best Editorial-TV/Media: The winner was Yuka Shirasuna for an episode of “Blue Eye Samurai” titled “The Tale of the Ronin and the Bride.”

“This was the first time in my career that I got to work on a show about my culture,” said Shirasuna. “I haven’t had the same struggles as our mixed-race, Edo-period samurai main character, Mizu, in her journey to find herself, but I saw my own, creating a life in the United States.”

Best Editorial-Feature: Nominees included Stephen Schaffer, Amera Rizk, Gregory Snyder, Jen Jew and Kevin Rose-Williams for “Elemental.” Winner: “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” For a complete list of winners and nominees, go to: https://annieawards.org/winners