Next week marks the announcement of the final nominees for the 74th annual Academy Awards Ceremony as well as the second annual Akadot Anime Akademy Awards. With the addition of the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, both high-profile awards ceremonies will celebrate the best animation has to offer. Likewise, both ceremonies will preclude two critically acclaimed anime titles.

Blood: The Last Vampire, winner of the Best Feature Theatrical Film Award at the 2001 World Animation Celebration, was excluded because of its length. Despite its successful theater run and festival circuit, neither academy felt a film less than 70 minutes in length could be considered a feature length film.

"If it isn't good enough for the Academy (with a 'c'), it isn't good enough for the Akademy (with a 'k')" explains Akadot spokesman, Luis Reyes. "We do have a category for best TV series and Original Video Animation, but Blood is really a feature, we all know that, so unfortunately we couldn't include it."

Viz/Bandai's Jin-Roh was originally screened in France in 1999 and therefore was excluded from Oscar nomination consideration on the grounds that it did not fall into the eligible time period, January 2000 to December 2001. Akadot, on the other hand, only considers US release dates in terms of eligibility making Jin-Roh a valid candidate. However, the film was withdrawn by Viz under the auspices of fairness.

"We thought Jin-Roh was too good to allow it to compete with the others," states Viz representative Carl Horn. "We wanted to give the other nominees a fighting chance."

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust was initially precluded from Oscar nomination because of Urban Vision's failure to complete all the necessary materials, but after much whining the Academy caved and decided to let them pretend they were a big movie like Monsters, Inc. and Shrek. Akadot just didn't want to put up with any whining and automatically included VHD, despite Urban Vision's still late paperwork.

To round out the nominees for Akadot's Akars, Akademy president Tim Law included Disney's Atlantis and Monsters, Inc.

"I know we're supposed to only look at Japanese animation," assures Law, "But Atlantis is practically Nadia anyway, so why not? And we needed at least three films, so we added Monsters, Inc. just because its Disney."

The Oscar nominees will be announced February 12 with the award ceremony March 24. The Akar nominees will be announced February 13 with the award ceremony March 25.