Best Animated Feature Film: Ranking Every Nominee of the 98th Academy Awards
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
Welcome to another year of the Academy Awards Project here on Films Fatale! We rank all of the nominees in each category every day.
The Best Animated Feature Film category can be a treasure trove of exceptional cinema some years — past nominees include The Red Turtle, Anomalisa, and I Lost My Body (these don’t even include the winners like Spirited Away, Flow, and the slew of great Pixar and Disney titles like Wall-E, Up, and Toy Story 3). However, it can also be quite an awful category depending on what that year offers; having The Boss Baby and Ferdinand in the same lineup is not my idea of fun when going through all of the nominees. The 2026 nominees are solid for the most part. None of these films are The Boss Baby bad (although you can definitely argue that one feels like an outlier compared to the others). In that same breath, none of the nominees blew me away. I would call 2025 a bit of a weaker year for animated cinema, but the highs are still fairly great films that I am glad to see wind up in the final five nominees. At the end of the day, this could be one of the more obvious predictions you can make at this year’s Oscars, so the bigger conversation in that respect is fairly meaningless; I also promise that I am not a contrarian and that my ranking is true to my heart (and not a method of bothering readers). I hope you trust me, even if you disagree with me. Well, the proverbial shield has been set up. Here are your nominees for Best Animated Feature Film, ranked from worst to best.
5. Elio
While I didn’t dislike Elio as much as some did, I do think that it is a bit of a flimsy Pixar effort (its nomination here is because the Academy must honour at least one Pixar title every year). I will say that the animation is beautiful aesthetically, including the colour schemes and detailing. However, this dulled-down, cutesy look is getting a bit tiresome with Pixar: a studio that once had individual idiosyncrasy with each and every film it would release. Furthermore, much of the film feels like the gathering of ideas of great concepts as opposed to outright great concepts. I am not fully against Elio being nominated because it was a weaker year for animated motion pictures, but I also don’t like this insistence that Disney and/or Pixar must always have a nominated film even when they haven’t released a strong-enough film in a calendar year. Elio is harmless but also forgettable and unimpressionable: we are meant to be honouring the best of the year here, not just whatever came out just because of who made it. I know it was a weaker year, and I don’t want to sound too harsh, but I also know that this fifth spot could have gone to something else.
4. Zootopia 2
If I liked Elio more than most, I suppose I may have liked Zootopia 2 less than the majority. I think it is a very good followup to one of the better Disney animated films in recent memory (I actually love Zootopia and think it is a clever noir mystery for all ages), but I also feel like Zootopia 2 is a solid film but not a fantastic one. I had a bit of an issue with how Zootopia 2 forwent its twists and turns for more of a buddy-cop tone instead (the fact that Zootopia was a legitimately strong mystery film is what sold me on the idea of another case for our rabbit-and-fox duo to crack). Zootopia 2 is a lot of fun, and much of its heart stems from its lead characters of old and new (Ke Huy Quan as a snake is amazing casting, and his voice can bring so much joy to any animated film, it seems). I also wish it was a bit more than it was, but I suppose — given the state of America and the world — the team behind Zootopia 2 opted for a more direct statement than a mysterious puzzle.
3. KPop Demon Hunters
KPop Demon Hunters is quite a ride. It is the archetypal feel-good animated romp that viewers will latch on to for years; maybe decades. It goes the extra mile with its catchy, bombastic soundtrack (those songs will not leave the minds of young audiences anytime soon). I do feel like the third act feels a little contrived with how it creates turning points and then resolves them a little too quickly, but KPop Demon Hunters is otherwise a highly amusing feature film that had me giggling and smiling for much of its runtime. I think that the film is consistent with its themes of honesty, being true to one’s self, and battling inner demons (naturally), and that it is quite fleshed out in this way; many family-friendly films may just toss on these kinds of themes to try and pass as being ethically sound, but KPop Demon Hunters does walk the walk here. I do have a couple of films that stayed with me longer than this one did, but I understand the infectious appeal of KPop Demon Hunters, its soundtrack, and its detailed, creative animation.
2. Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
Our top two animated films are different takes on the coming-of-age genre. First is Little Amélie or the Character of Rain, which has us following the title character who is not your average three-year-old child; as if to say that this is what Amélie was picturing around her at that age despite the inability to convey herself (even though, through her depiction of events, she was able to speak complete sentences very early on). Her discoveries also lead up to her qualms: realizing the big world around her is full of challenges is captured very well here, given that I doubt most of us remember when we figured out what the real world truly is like. I think that Little Amélie handles some philosophical and theoretical concepts quite well, like how old someone can be before they accept responsibility, whether or not the world can still be magical when you learn a little too much about it, or what those earliest years of our lives were truly like (when we cannot remember them for ourselves).
Read My Review of Little Amélie or the Character of Rain Here
1. Arco
Little Amélie is a close second here because I view it and Arco as borderline neck-and-neck. However, I will give the slight edge to Arco because Arco resonated with me just a little bit longer (especially the breathtaking, bittersweet final sequence). The way that Arco is a coming-of-age film is not with introspective realization like Little Amélie but via the devastation of the world around our protagonists: much is changing, and we cannot stop it. Concerns like climate change can get to the point where they are beyond our control if we do not try our best to revert them before this point of no return. Arco bounces between being a Hayao Miyazaki-inspired adventure — full of animated prose — and a traditional family film (down to bits of sillier comedy; nothing juvenile, at least). The science fiction concepts here are equal parts fascinating and devastating: we cannot prevent the future, so we must embrace it (but in what ways). While I feel like its different tones can butt heads at times, I still found Arco to be the best animated film in a year that was a little weak in this way. Even so, Arco is special. It is the sole animated feature film that made me feel weightless at times, left me thinking about what I had just watched for a while after seeing it, and curious to revisit this film in the future. In the face of AI and the film industry struggling, Arco may not be perfect but it at least feels explicitly human, and that angle of it is lovely.
Who I Want To Win: I have no issue with any of the top four films here winning, but I will still root for the underdog, Arco, here. It has not left me since I saw it back in September.
Who I Think Will Win: KPop Demon Hunters. I just do not see how this will not win at this point in time. We can wait until the Annie Awards in February for confirmation, or we can just call it as we see it: KPop Demon Hunters is unstoppable.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.