Animated Emmy Awards Nominees Announced
Seemingly every section of the entertainment industry has an awards ceremony of their own. The creators, stars, producers and more gather to celebrate the medium and pat themselves on the back. Next up its the turm to the Academy Of Television Arts and Sciences, who present the annual Primetime Emmy Awards.
You have to look a pretty long way down the page until you see anything animation related. Just as with film awards like The Ocars and The BAFTA Film Awards, animation is ghettoised and relegated to its own category. God forbid that an animated program be considered an equal alongside live-action programming.
That said, this year's animated nominees are quite novel: three of the series nominated for Outstanding Animated Program have never been nominated before. That's because three of the series are on their debuting seasons. Another novelty is that those same three series are not comedy series- a very unusual state of affairs in the category.
Nominated in its debut season is Blue Eye Samurai. Michael Green and Amber Noizumi's period action series, was universally acclaimed and was awarded six Annies earlier this year. There's definitely a lot more sex and violence than your average Emmy animation nominee, but it would be a worthy nominee.
As would fellow nominee Scavenger's Reign, whose debut season may also be its last. The atmospheric sci-fi has already been axed by Max- despite critical acclaim. It's future is hanging in the balance, with Netflix having expressed interest in picking up a second season- if the first season is popular enough on their platform.
The final new nominee is perhaps a little less new, in that's a continuation of a series last seen more than two and a half decades before. X-Men '97 is a continuation of the 1990s X-Men cartoon, with slightly flashier animation and more up-to-date attitudes.
Further down the ballot things begin to look more familiar. The Simpsons gets its now expected nomination- which has to feel like a contractual obligation at this point. Not nearly as entrenched but still a regular nominee is Bob's Burgers, rounding out the category.
The Oustanding Voice Performance also welcomes some newcomers. The predictable Simpsons nominee comes in the form of Hank Azaria. Also frequently nominated is Alex Borstein for Family Guy and Maya Rudolph for Netflix's Big Mouth. Making their first appearance in the category are Sterling K Brown for Amazon's Invincible and Ted Lasso star Hannah Waddingham for Krapopolis.
One other entry permits animated programming: Outstanding Sound Editing For A Comedy Or Drama Series (Half-Hour) And Animation. Here, two animated shows Blue Eye Samurai and Star Trek Lower Decks were nominated against live-action series Ashoka, The Bear and Only Murders In The Building.
Also animation-related (for the most part) is Best Title Design. Nominated for the category are: The 3-Body Problem, Silo, Shogun, Fallout, Lessons In Chemistry and Palm Royale.
The Emmys will take place on September 15 at 8pm Eastern /5pm Pacific and will be broadcast on ABC and streaming on Hulu the next day.
