Despite all of the crumby Summer blockbusters, 2009 was a good year for movies, but even more so, it was a great year for animated movies. Pixar gave us another classic with Up, Wes Anderson entered animation with Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Disney returned to the traditionally animated musicals that made them what they are.

It was such a great year for animation in fact, that for only the second time in history, the Best Animated Feature Oscar contains five nominees (as apposed to the usual three).

And yet, with five nominees for Best Animated Feature in one of the best years of animated features, there is one film that is tragically and shamefully absent from the Oscar race: Ponyo.

And the most simple of questions must be asked: Why?

Why wasn’t Ponyo nominated for Best Animated Feature? For all intents and purposes, it should have.

Ponyo was one of the best reviewed films of 2009 (animated or live-action), along with the likes of Up and The Hurt Locker (it can claim to be better reviewed than at least four of the Animated Feature nominees). Does highly positive critical reception account for nothing?

Or how about legacy? Ponyo is the newest film by Hayao Miyazaki, who is considered the “Japanese Walt Disney” and is probably the only animator who’s name is referred to in the same light as Orsen Welles, Alfred Hitchcock or Akira Kurosawa. Hayao Miyazaki’s influence in filmmaking stretches even beyond the world of animation. Along with the likes of John Lasseter and Pete Doctor, many live-action directors praise Miyazaki’s films as works of art, such as James Cameron and Steven Spielberg (and the aforementioned Akira Kurosawa during his lifetime).

And Ponyo is a more than worthy entry in the director’s unblemished resume.  It combines artistry with a sense of childlike wonderment in a way that it truly is one of so few moving and entertaining film for all ages.

But do the legacy and respect of the film and its director mean nothing to the academy? Surely it should contribute something. The likes of Jimmy Neutron, Monster House and Surfs-Up have been nominated in the Best Animated Feature category in the past, and the vastly overrated Happy Feet even stole the award one year. Are any of these films more deserving of the nomination than an wonderful animated film created by one of the most respected of filmmakers?

What about creativity? Shouldn’t that account for something? Especially when talking about an animated film.

The academy seems to be going nuts over Avatar’s creativity, why is it a different case with Ponyo?  Is it because Avatar has fancy computer graphics at its disposal whilst Ponyo instead opts for the older (prettier) hand-drawn visuals? And with all due respects for James Cameron’s film, Ponyo is a much more meaningful movie than Avatar. And personally, Ponyo captured my imagination in a way Avatar never could.

So why can one creative, visual feast be nominated for Best Picture while another creative wonderland doesn’t even get a mention as Best Animated Feature? I suppose it would just be more of the academy’s “select seeing.”

And I mentioned the words “traditional” and “hand-drawn.” And I must ask myself, did Ponyo get snubbed because of its more traditional look? Yes, The Princess and the Frog (one of the nominees) is hand-drawn, but it has the Disney name attached to it very strongly. Yes, Disney also distributed Ponyo, but I get an impression that the academy chose Princess and the Frog (wonderful movie by the way) because it fits in with the primary Disney canon, and decided that one traditionally animated film was enough.

It should also be noted that Princess and the Frog did use some CGI, whereas Ponyo is the first 100% hand-drawn film in…well…a very, very long time. That in itself is a statement and an innovation that shouldn’t be so overlooked. In this day and age, where CGI dominates the animation scene (and is over abundant in live-action movies), Ponyo’s mostly forgotten visual style is made all the more beautiful.

Or is it that Disney didn’t campaign hard enough for it? Is it now expected that a film with such a big name as Disney attached to it should have a certain amount of hype and make a certain amount of money in order to be nominated? I would hate to think that’s the reason, but knowing that there’s not a more petty lot of people than the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.

That certainly wasn’t the case back in 2003, when Miyazaki’s Spirited Away won the award (in case you were wondering, that was the other time there were five nominees). A few years later, Howl’s Moving Castle was nominated, but it didn’t win the award (but hey, it was nominated!). But now Miyazaki doesn’t even get a mention? None whatsoever?

Has the academy decided the one Oscar was a good enough token for a Japanese animator? Or have they decided one was good enough because they have Pixar to be the new golden goose of animation (I mean no offense to Pixar whatsoever, they have produced a good number of my all time favorite films, but to hold them in place of Miyazaki instead of alongside him would be tragic).

Ash and Kristofferson search for answers to Ponyo's snubberry.

What ever the reason was, it’s not a good reason. There is never a good reason to take any praise, even a nomination, away from something that truly deserves it (I could write another blog about how Ponyo was robbed of a Best Original Score nomination).

I have seen four of the five films nominated, Up, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Princess and the Frog and Coraline (the fifth, Secret of Kells, has yet to have a more proper release, take that for what it is worth). All of the films nominated are wonderful, Princess and the Frog and Fantastic Mr. Fox are amongst my favorite films of the year. But of the lot, Up is the only one I feel as strongly about as Ponyo, and since both films were released I thought for sure the Best Animated Feature category was going to boil down to those two.

But it was not to be. The academy, always ready for a lackluster performance and always willing to disappoint, has insured that they can even put a damper on the world of animation (which is usually distant from their usual politics and agendas) by snubbing out one of its finest films.

In a year that was so kind to the world of animation, Ponyo was one of the biggest highlights. It’s a shame the academy doesn’t want you to know that.