This year, expectations are high between the two countries seeking the prize best animated film of the 81st edition of the Golden Globeswhose ceremony will be next January 7 in Beverly Hills, California. The United States, with four proposals, and Japan, with two, dominate this section.

Depending on the number of nominations in these awards, the participants are:

1. Spider-Man: About the Spiderverse

Directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson, this was a true Spider-Men outpouring. The protagonist is the teenager Miles Morales, but in total he presents himself 280 variants of Spider-Man, 95 of them identified by name; To this we must add various incarnations of Peter Parker, Spider-Woman, and Mary Jane Watson, to name some of the other characters. Each of the spiderverses It had its own animation style and color palette.

He could receive a statuette for his cinematic and box office performance and for the best soundtrack, the latter for the British Daniel Pemberton, who was a candidate for it in 2016 Steve Jobsthrough 2017 Gold and into 2020 Motherless Brooklyn.

It must be said that it has the admiration of the 2023 Oscar winner for Best Animated Feature, Guillermo del Toro, as well as the actor Andrew Garfield (The great Spider Man).

2. The Super Mario Bros. Movie

The Mario franchise is Japanese and Nintendo was fully involved in this dual nationality production, since the entertainment giant collaborated with the American studio Illumination and Universal Pictures. Mario and Luigi, surprisingly, give a lot of the fame to Princess Peach and the antagonist Bowserwith its story of unrequited and possessive love.

Critics called it a ‘long-running commercial’, but the public approved: the worldwide gross was $1,361.9 million.

It also competes for price due to its performance at the box office, but perhaps its biggest advantage the nomination for the unforgettable song peaches, performed and created by Jack Black, in collaboration with Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic, Eric Osmond and John Spiker.

3. The boy and the heron

Director Hayao Miyazaki has an advantage, a previous Oscar in the same category Through Ghostly away (2001), the only time an anime film has achieved this. One of the things going against him is that his studio, Ghibli, did not run an advertising campaign for the film. They relied on their own prestige, and on Japanese soil that was enough. To finance production, they negotiated with Netflix your movie catalogue.

It was not released in Ecuador. Reviews call it an animator’s classic, the growing up story of Mahito, a 12-year-old boy who struggles emotionally because he has lost his mother, his city and his school, and on top of that he is besieged by a fantastic character, the heron. This time the main character is a boy (in most of Miyazaki’s films, girls play the leading role). It is set during the Pacific War (1943). It’s traditional 2D animation, five years’ worth of hand-drawn panels, sped up during the pandemic lockdown.

It is nominated for best soundtrack, written by Miyazaki’s inseparable composer, Joe Hisaishi.

4. Elementary

Disney and Pixar They have a strong bet with this encounter in a society in which the aquatic species is dominant, and in which the creatures of the air and land thrive, but in which The people of fire have arrived as part of a migration wave, settle in the suburbs, make sure there are no leaks, spills or floods, live close, but not too close.

Ember and Wade, two sensitive young people, meet and begin a friendship in which meeting each other’s families is terribly problematic and almost seen as a betrayal of one’s roots. American director of Korean descent Peter Sohn thus recalled his own family’s arrival and adjustment to New York City, and he also offered it as a tribute to the genre most watched by his family, the romantic comedy.

5. Suzume

From the maker of your nameMakoto Shinkai, comes the story of Suzume, the door closer, a girl who goes through an old door in an abandoned house and that simple fact causes a series of tragedies in Japan and a long and eventful journey for her, who must go about opening and blocking of the Doors of Disaster, to stop what he started.

Is another pandemic film, pre-produced between January and March 2020, and developed from April lastJust when the Japanese country declared a state of emergency due to Covid. The atmosphere of that time, that post-apocalyptic feeling, was captured in the script, Shinkai would later say. The film can be seen on the specialized platform Crunchyroll.

6. Wish, the power of wishes

Disney’s 100th anniversary film is a fantasy musical directed by Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn, combining digital and traditional animation. Young Asha wants to enroll as an apprentice to the king and sorcerer Magnífico, in the island kingdom of Rosas. The king’s magic specializes in granting the wishes of his subjects, once they have given him the memory of that wish, until he can make it come true.

But that method leaves some people without fulfillment and without a dream, until Asha finds her own method to grant wishes: asking a real star for them.

The movie contains Disney’s Symbol Song, If you wish on a star (1939).