La Maison en Petits Cubes Anime Wins Oscar

The long streak of Oscars with no anime winners was finally broken on Sunday night, six frustrating years after Ghibli's Spirited Away became the first anime to win an Academy Award for "Best Animated Feature", in 2003. Granted, it's only a "Best Animated Short Film" award this time around, but still: La Maison en Petits Cubes got it. So congratulations are in order, half-hearted as they may be.



La Maison en Petits Cubes - which is also known as Tsumiki no Ie in Japan, and House of Small Cubes (or House of Blocks) for the linguistically-challenged - is a 12-minute anime short directed by Kunio Katou. It deliberately uses obsolete-looking paper drawings and 2D computer graphics (reminiscent of Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor I'd say, though not quite that psychedelic), and you can see the end result on studio Robot's website - scroll down for a trailer.

"The film is about an old man who lives in a submerged town. As the water rises, he's forced to add additional levels on to his home with bricks (cubes) in order to stay dry. One day he drops his favorite pipe into the lower levels of his home. In the search for another pipe, he decides to purchase a wetsuit instead to use as he dives down to retrieve his original pipe. As he moves downwards through the different stories of his home, he relives scenes from his life." (Wikipedia)

Paprika, Tekkon Kinkreet, The Sky Crawlers and Sword of the Stranger have all strived for Oscars in recent years, but most were not even chosen as final candidates. With such respectable losers, it's rather ironic how the second anime to ever win an Oscar doesn't even look like a typical anime, at all.

Wish I could say this is better than nothing, but it just doesn't feel like it. Gief the real thing!