Japanese anime giant Hayao Miyazaki won a U.S. Academy Award for "The Boy and the Heron" on Sunday, claiming one of the industry's top honors for the second time with his long-awaited comeback release, while the latest Godzilla film became the first title from Japan and Asia to win best visual effects.
Miyazaki's 124-minute fantasy, which was selected in the Academy's animated feature category, also won top prizes for the genre at the Golden Globes in January and the British Academy competition last month after its release in Japan last year.
The latest work by Miyazaki, 83, is a fictional story set during World War II. Its protagonist, a Japanese boy named Mahito, moves to a new town after the death of his mother and meets a talking heron that leads him to a fantasy world.
The film, created at Studio Ghibli in Tokyo, beat four other features in the Academy awards category, including Walt Disney's "Elemental" and U.S. superhero movie "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse."
"We are just extremely grateful. Miyazaki was very happy," Toshio Suzuki, a producer and co-founder of Studio Ghibli Inc., Miyazaki's production company, said at a press conference in Tokyo. Miyazaki did not attend the press conference.
Although Miyazaki had announced his retirement in 2013 after producing "The Wind Rises," another of his Oscar-nominated films, he began his latest work in 2017.
Miyazaki's "Spirited Away" won an Oscar in 2003, after being awarded the Golden Bear, the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, the previous year.
Around 50 people gathered at the studio in western Tokyo, cheering after hearing the announcement.
Fans of the film also applauded the win as they watched a live broadcast of the ceremony at a movie theater complex in Tokyo.
"I grew up with Miyazaki's anime and was also given the hope to live by 'The Boy and the Heron,'" said Seiji Machida, 46, from Chiba Prefecture. "I'm very happy that (Miyazaki) returned, and that he won an award."
Meanwhile, Takashi Yamazaki's "Godzilla Minus One," set in postwar Japan, is the latest installment in the long-running franchise about a fire-breathing, city-stomping monster.
The film follows the story of a Japanese pilot burdened with guilt for surviving a kamikaze mission who joins forces with others to battle Godzilla, a giant reptilian monster that emerges in Tokyo and which threatens the city, already devastated by U.S. air raids during the war, with new destruction.
"To someone so far from Hollywood, even the possibility of standing on this stage seemed out of reach," Yamazaki said upon receiving the award in Los Angeles.
"This award is proof that everyone has a chance," the 59-year-old added.
The director had earlier described the film as a combination of "the newest digital technologies and classic methods from Japanese cinema" that created "the warmth of something handmade."
The movie was made with a limited budget and utilized the traditional "tokusatsu" technique for Japanese monster films, a method that uses composite images and miniature sets.
The Godzilla franchise is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year since the first film was released in 1954, inspired by the U.S. nuclear bomb testing in Bikini Atoll.
Speaking at a press conference after winning the award, Yamazaki sought to draw a connection between the film and the current global situation, saying that the movie was about "subduing Godzilla" -- a symbol of war and nuclear weapons.
"Maybe the world is desiring this sense of subduing," he said.
"Godzilla Minus One" was rolled out in U.S. theaters in December, becoming the highest-grossing Japanese live-action film in the country, according to its distributor Toho Co.
Related coverage:
Miyazaki's Ghibli anime "The Boy and the Heron" wins British Academy award
Miyazaki fantasy anime, Godzilla film among Oscar nominees from Japan
Japan anime giant Miyazaki's latest fantasy wins Golden Globe
