Re: Join the posthumous honor goal club

Osamu Kobayashi said to me that he enjoyed the Satoshi Kon exhibition at Japan Expo Sud festival[in Paris] (Kon was his friend)

7. BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Tokyo Godfathers (2003)

Back before the Best Animated Feature category was considered an instant-win for Pixar, the award was a breath of fresh air with the clever (perhaps too clever) Shrek picking up the first Animated Feature Oscar and Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, um… spiriting away the second. But the 2004 nominations gave us the first great snub in the category’s history when it nominated the utterly forgettable Disney flick Brother Bear over the (now late) anime legend Satoshi Kon’s utterly unforgettable Tokyo Godfathers. The film, a modern remake of the 1948 film Three Godfathers, told the story of three homeless people – a failed father, teenaged runaway and drag queen – who find a baby on Christmas Eve and struggle to take care of the child and find its parents. Maybe it sounds like Three Men & A Baby, or maybe it sounds a little boring, but in Satoshi Kon’s adept hands the film is nothing short of a thrilling masterpiece, filled with more heart, laughs and jaw-dropping twists than you could fit in a grown bear… fraternal or otherwise. Finding Nemo probably would have won the award anyway, but a nomination would have elevated Satoshi Kon’s status in America to the extent that his next feature, the snubbed sci-fi mindbender Paprika, might have stood a chance in the category as well. Satoshi Kon was never nominated, and sadly died in 2010.