The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that Kunio Kato's Tsumiki no Ie ~ La Maison en Petits Cubes was nominated for Best Animated Short Film at the 81st Academy Awards. Also nominated for the award are Konstantin Bronzit's Lavatory - Lovestory, Emud Mokhberi & Thierry Marchand's Oktapodi, Doug Sweetland's Presto, and Alan Smith & Adam Foulkes' This Way Up.

Mamoru Oshii's The Sky Crawlers and Masahiro Ando's Sword of the Stranger, which were both considered for Best Animated Feature, are officially out of the running. Instead, the nominees for Best Animated Feature are Disney's Bolt, Pixar's Wall-E, and Dreamworks' Kung Fu Panda.

Kato's Tsumiki no Ie has already won a number of awards, including the Annecy Cristal and Junior Jury Award at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival and Market, and the Hiroshima Prize and Audience Prize at the Hiroshima International Animation Festival.

The 81st Academy Awards will air on February 22.