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Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio won Best Motion Picture – Animated category award at the 80th Golden Globe, which took place on Jan 10, 2023 at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, as Masaaki Yuasa’s widely acclaimed anime film, Inu-Oh, missed out on the honors.
Inu-Oh, the only anime film to be nominated for the Globes this year, went up against Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and Pixar’s Turning Red, among others in the category.
It is only the third anime movie, after Mamoru Hosoda’s Mirai and Hayaoi Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises, to earn a nomination at the Golden Globe.
Inu-Oh Japanese animated musical film directed by Masaaki Yuasa and produced by Science SARU. It is based on the novel Tales of the Heike: Inu-Oh by Hideo Furukawa. Taiyou Matsumoto is the original character designer and Akiko Nogi handled the script.
The movie premiered at the 78th Venice International Film Festival in September 2021, with the film releasing in Japan in May 2022. GKIDS began screening the film in U.S. theaters on Aug 12, 2022.
Inu-Oh is also among the list of anime films which were considered eligible to get an Oscar nomination. It was also selected to screen at the Annecy Festival and the 34th Tokyo International Film Festival.
GKIDs describes the plot of the movie as follows:
Inu-Ou is born with unique physical characteristics, and the horrified adults cover every inch of his body with garments, including a mask on his face. One day, he meets a boy named Tomona, a blind biwa player, and as Tomona plays a delicate song of tangled fate, Inu-Ou discovers an incredible ability to dance.
Inu-Ou and Tomona become business partners and inseparable friends, using their creative gifts to survive on the margins of society, as song after song gain them notoriety and propel them to stardom. Through the songs, Inu-Ou mesmerizes his audiences on stage, and gradually begins to transform into someone of unequaled beauty. But why is Tomona blind? Why was Inu-Ou born with unique characteristics? It is a story about the friendship of Inu-Ou and Tomona, who dance and sing to get to the truth and break each other’s curse.
Source: NHK
