Since its debut as an official selection at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, acclaimed Japanese director Mamoru Hosoda’s Mirai has steadily generated Oscar buzz for U.S. distributor GKIDS. Considered the epic capstone of Hosoda’s career, Mirai blends traditional hand-drawn artistry with CG animation to tell a story of love passed down through generations. The film was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Motion Picture, and received two Annie Award nominations -- for Best Animated Independent Feature and Outstanding Achievement for Writing in an Animated Feature Production -- and is one of five nominees for Best Animated Feature at the upcoming Academy Awards. In Mirai, which was produced by Japan’s Studio Chizu, the studio behind Hosada’s two previous films, Wolf Children and The Boy and the Beast, four-year-old Kun’s world is turned upside-down with the arrival of his new baby sister Mirai (which means “future”). Kun struggles to maintain what he views as his rightful place in the family as the center of attention, but is no match for the newborn, until one day he storms off into the garden, where he meets a cast of strange characters from the past, present and future -- including a teenaged Mirai. Gloriously bringing the toddler’s vivid imagination to life, Mirai leaps off the screen and into our hearts. Aside from its heartwarming message, what makes Mirai particularly special is that it might very well be one of the last Japanese animated features to employ classic hand-drawn animation. “For this movie, the background was done with paint-on-paper. One might think, ‘Isn’t that normal for anime?’ but it’s actually a dying art. Everyone is moving on to digitalizing or doing backgrounds on a computer, so this film, and probably Miyazaki’s next film, will be the last ones to have backgrounds with paint-on-paper style. It’s really too bad that it’s going to be gone, but that’s just the way life is. Styles and techniques are always evolving and we have to move on,” Hosoda confirms via an interpreter during a recent visit to Los Angeles. Twenty artists in all contributed to the backgrounds in Mirai. “These 20 artists are literally the last people in the Japanese animation world who would use this style of paint-on-paper -- because after they had finished his film, they are probably working on Miyazaki’s last film -- after that, no one is going to ask them to do paint-on-paper, so they’re moving on to digital,” he continues. “It’s really sad.”