Nimona reigns supreme at the 2024 Annie Awards with 9 nominations

Nimona is getting its flowers.

The groundbreaking animated film based on the graphic novel by ND Stevenson is leading all films with nine nominations at the 51st Annie Awards, which celebrate accomplishments in animation.

Nimona scored nominations in all the major categories, including Best Feature, Best Direction, and Best Writing. It also got nominated for Best Storyboarding, Best Voice Acting (for Chloë Grace Moretz, who played Nimona), Best Character and Production Design, Best Character Animation, and Best Editorial.

Three other films got seven nominations each - Across the Spider-Verse, The Boy and the Heron, and Suzume, who will all go up against Nimona in the Best Feature category along with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, which scored six nominations.

Nimona follows a knight named Ballister who is falsely accused of murdering the queen and must go on the run to try to prove his innocence. It’s then that he meets the chaotic and boisterous Nimona, a shapeshifting teen girl who’s gender is as fluid as her form.

It’s a beautiful film, visually and story-wise, with themes of loving yourself and others for who they are, not changing yourself to fit others’ expectations, and questioning who and what we are told is bad and good. Plus, it’s packed full of queer characters, including the main two heroes.

On the TV side, the show Blue Eye Samurai, which features queer themes and characters, leads all shows with seven nominations, followed by Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur and Star Wars: Visions, which each scored six. Other shows with more than two nominations include Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire, What If…, and Scavengers Reign.

The 51st annual Annie Awards will be held on Saturday, February 17 at 7pm PST.