Why Inu-Oh deserves the Oscar for Best Pro­duc­tion Design

In a new series, we’re cel­e­brat­ing the films we loved that aren’t like­ly to dom­i­nate the awards race. Over the new few weeks, our writ­ers make pas­sion­ate argu­ments for the per­for­mances and craft that stood out to them, from block­busters to art­house and every­thing in between.

“Ani­ma­tion is not a fuck­ing genre, ani­ma­tion is film”, so direc­tor Guiller­mo del Toro has repeat­ed­ly stressed dur­ing the the press tour for his adap­ta­tion of Pinoc­chio with co-direc­tor Mark Gustafson. His admirable rein­force­ment of the mul­ti­fac­eted nature of the art form and insis­tence that it’s not some­thing triv­ial or sole­ly a children’s pur­suit has been con­tin­u­al­ly boost­ed by oth­er enthu­si­asts and ani­ma­tion indus­try professionals.

But as far as the Acad­e­my is con­cerned it’s busi­ness as usu­al, with no indi­ca­tion they’ll be chang­ing their ways any­time soon. It’s not so much that the wrong films are being hon­oured – despite a lack of 2D ani­ma­tion this year actu­al­ly has a decent line­up con­sist­ing of del Toro’s Pinoc­chio, Turn­ing Red, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and Mar­cel the Shell With Shoes On. There’s some vari­ety despite some puz­zling omis­sions – and a dis­tinct lack of inter­na­tion­al film – but this year had me won­der­ing more about the ways that ani­ma­tion doesn’t get treat­ed with the same breadth that live action films do.

As Alber­to Miel­go said at the 2022 cer­e­mo­ny, ​“ani­ma­tion is an art that includes every sin­gle art that you can imag­ine”, and it’s rare that ani­mat­ed films get such recog­ni­tion beyond their cor­doned-off seg­ment of the cer­e­mo­ny, a whole umbrel­la of dif­fer­ent art­forms flat­tened into one homoge­nous cat­e­go­ry. The most rep­re­sen­ta­tion any ani­mat­ed fea­tures get out­side of this is prob­a­bly in the sound­track and orig­i­nal song cat­e­gories, as far as Dis­ney is con­cerned any­way. So as well as insist­ing that Inu-Oh, the lat­est film by Masaa­ki Yuasa, also obvi­ous­ly should be stand­ing in the Best Ani­mat­ed Fea­ture cat­e­go­ry, I would also argue that it deserves its place in the tech­ni­cal cat­e­gories beyond that too.

In an ide­al world where all the facets of inter­na­tion­al ani­mat­ed work got their deserved props, Inu-Oh would also be sit­ting com­fort­ably in pro­duc­tion design. Why not? Avatar: The Way of Water, which is nom­i­nat­ed in that cat­e­go­ry, is a film that’s most­ly ani­mat­ed through its motion cap­ture per­for­mances and com­put­er gen­er­at­ed back­grounds, so it’s not unthinkable.

Before 2012 the award for Best Pro­duc­tion Design was orig­i­nal­ly Best Art Direc­tion, and was expand­ed to include set design­ers and dec­o­ra­tors – an all-encom­pass­ing cel­e­bra­tion of the artists who make film inte­ri­ors. Ani­ma­tion, of course, has pro­duc­tion design and art direc­tion too, and Inu-Oh’s is excep­tion­al for its play­ful­ness with visu­als that feel both anachro­nis­tic and traditional.

The sto­ry itself is set around 600 years ago, in a peri­od of new rule after the Heike Clan were destroyed at the Bat­tle of Dan-no-ura. Reminders of the clan are held only in lost arte­facts and the songs of trav­el­ling Biwa priests, recit­ing his­tor­i­cal sto­ries through music. The cen­tral premise of Inu-Oh is this: what if the Noh per­form­ers of this time con­duct­ed them­selves with the music, looks and atti­tudes of con­tem­po­rary rock­stars, the moves of bal­let dancers and break dancers?

In his pre­sen­ta­tion of these anachro­nisms, Yuasa’s con­tin­u­al for­mal exper­i­men­ta­tion proves as enthralling as ever. The art direc­tion from Hide­ki Naka­mu­ra incor­po­rates dif­fer­ent styles from across time, evok­ing Japan­ese paint­ings from across time in back­grounds that build upon the var­ied styles of Yuasa’s past work. Even as the film leans into the super­nat­ur­al, Nobu­take Ito’s char­ac­ter designs (orig­i­nal­ly designed by man­ga author Taiyō Mat­sumo­to) keep things feel­ing ground­ed, accen­tu­at­ing lit­tle human flaws.

One thing that stands out is while Yuasa’s direc­tion often leans into abstrac­tion and expres­sion­ism, Inu-Oh also empha­sis­es tac­til­i­ty and real­ism in cer­tain places to make its place­ment of mod­ern stage­craft and per­for­mance in the past feel believ­able. This goes right down to the design of the sets and stages on which Tomona and Inu-Oh per­form, as the movie shows with great intri­ca­cy the tech­ni­cal logis­tics and the effects work of the con­certs, to the point that the mechan­ics feel utter­ly real.

I’ve spo­ken before about these moments as some of my favourites of the film, and how it presents the mag­ic of the duo’s shows – for exam­ple, we see brief flash­es of how the stages and props are phys­i­cal­ly oper­at­ed, and there’s just enough oper­a­tional detail shown that for just a moment it feels as though they’re not objects ful­ly with­in the director’s control.

This is still only just one small, uncan­ny mov­ing part: an ear­ly stand­out sequence melts away much of the envi­ron­ment and soft­ens its art­work in rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Tomona’s expe­ri­ence of the world after los­ing his sight (I would give the same sequence as a case for Inu-Oh also deserv­ing props in the sound cat­e­gories – songs includ­ed). Through­out its rel­a­tive­ly short run­ning time, so many dif­fer­ent styles of draw­ing, paint­ing and move­ment are seam­less­ly sewn togeth­er; it’s a vari­ety of sen­so­ry plea­sures unri­valled by so many cin­e­mat­ic con­tem­po­raries, and it has just as much ambi­tion and visu­al wiz­ardry as the films cho­sen for the actu­al Pro­duc­tion Design shortlist.

If Inu-Oh’s nature as a 2D (and some­times 3D) ani­mat­ed film is a bar­ri­er to con­sid­er­a­tion in this cat­e­go­ry, then you could also take the pro­duc­tion design of Pinoc­chio (plus Netflix’s oth­er 2022 stop-motion fea­ture, Hen­ry Selick’s Wen­dell & Wild) as a reminder that stop-motion ani­mat­ed films do aston­ish­ing work with phys­i­cal sets, cos­tumes and props them­selves. Take also Phil Tippett’s gross-out odyssey Mad God, which along with Pinocchio’s Curt Ender­le and Guy Davis has been picked out for Best Pro­duc­tion Design at the Annie Awards, award­ed by the Inter­na­tion­al Ani­mat­ed Film Association.

The rather con­tro­ver­sial choice to cre­ate a siloed-off Best Ani­mat­ed Film cat­e­go­ry was made in 2001, seem­ing­ly to avoid nom­i­nat­ing Shrek for Best Pic­ture, and ever since then win­ners have been what­ev­er Dis­ney or Pixar pro­duced film came out that year (Shrek, Spir­it­ed Away, Wal­lace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rab­bit and Spi­der-Man: Into the Spi­der-Verse being the notable excep­tions). Fol­low­ing the 2017 rule change to allow vot­ers out­side of the ani­ma­tion pro­fes­sion to vote – as Sam Sum­mers observes in his 2018 piece for Vox – the category’s sup­port for both inter­na­tion­al and indie ani­ma­tion has dwin­dled while the gap between this and say, some­thing like the Annies has widened. One won­ders if Alê Abreu’s upcom­ing film Per­limps will receive the same kind of recog­ni­tion as Boy and the World did. It’s easy to hand­wave this as yet anoth­er sign of the unse­ri­ous­ness of main­stream awards shows, of how out of touch Acad­e­my vot­ers are, but as Sum­mers points out, there’s a tan­gi­ble effect that it has on the exhi­bi­tion and view­er­ship of cer­tain films, what might get intro­duced to an audi­ence beyond ded­i­cat­ed enthusiasts.

Per­haps recog­ni­tion in tech­ni­cal cat­e­gories out­side of the ani­ma­tion industry’s own awards cer­e­monies would do the same on a macro lev­el, rein­forc­ing the idea of all of the dif­fer­ent arts and prac­tices that go into ani­ma­tion. Bar­ring some rather thor­ough rule changes as well as changes in per­cep­tion of ani­mat­ed medi­ums, it won’t hap­pen because of the way that Acad­e­my vot­ers are – they seem dif­fi­cult to con­vince to watch any ani­ma­tion that isn’t Dis­ney-pro­duced, let alone any­thing inter­na­tion­al. Maybe this could be fixed if more ani­ma­tion indus­try vot­ers were picked up, but I can’t pre­tend to know about such insid­er technicalities.

It’s not as though the effort put into ani­mat­ed films goes total­ly unrecog­nised – the Annies and oth­er ani­ma­tion indus­try awards shows exist to recog­nise these cre­atives, and break down cat­e­go­ry awards for ani­mat­ed film to this extent (though nat­u­ral­ly, high pro­file domes­tic fea­tures pick up the most nom­i­na­tions over inter­na­tion­al or under­ground pro­duc­tions). The Oscars are far from the only awards stage that mat­ters. But it’s nice to imag­ine a state where the tech­ni­cal prowess of ani­mat­ed films are treat­ed with respect on an equal lev­el to the live-action films which the Acad­e­my Awards sup­pos­ed­ly cham­pi­on – a reminder that there’s more they can (and should!) be giv­en cred­it for.