Wolfwalkers.

Wolfwalkers is the latest film from the Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon, the 2-D specialists who have received Academy Award nominations for all three of their previous full-length films, Song of the Sea, The Secret of Kells, and The Breadwinner. Based on an original story by Will Collins, writer of Song of the Sea, this film – available only on Apple TV+ right now – is Cartoon Saloon’s best yet, with its most cohesive story and stunning hand-drawn animation, enough that it should win the studio their first Oscar, even though that won’t likely come to pass.

The story takes place in the 1600s in Kilkenny, a town in southern Ireland, where Robyn and her father Bill Goodfellowe have just arrived. The town is threatened by wolves in the nearby forest, which the town’s Lord Protector wishes to clear-cut, which would kill off the wolves or force them to move to another stand. Bill is a soldier, and wants Robyn to stay at home, for her own protection and other reasons that will become apparent, while Robyn is every young person in every animated movie ever – she wants to go out, explore, be a warrior, and so on. She gets into trouble multiple times, and ends up in the forest herself, where she discovers a Wolfwalker, a young girl named Mebh who can project herself into a corporeal wolf, leaving her human body in repose. The two become friends, and Robyn realizes that her father and her town will destroy Mebh’s entire pack – and kill Mebh’s mother, who left in her wolf form some weeks before and has yet to return.

The themes here are pretty straightforward – mankind’s inability to find balance with nature or respect other sentient species, and the dangerous combination of superstition and ignorance – and the Lord Protector character is fairly one-note, although he’s less overtly evil than the typical villain in animated fare. The relationship between the two girls is the real heart of the story, and the best sequences are when the two are together in human or wolf form, from their initial bickering to a very real argument that starts because Robyn tries to protect Mebh without respecting the latter’s agency. The relationship between Robyn and her father could have been more fleshed out early in the film, although it’s authentic enough as it is.

What sets Wolfwalkers apart from other animated films, and even Cartoon Saloon’s prior work, is the animation style. Cartoon Saloon’s animated people have a certain look to them, which is no different here, but the world around the characters explodes off the screen in color and texture – and that includes Mebh’s hair, which you’ve seen if you’ve seen any promotional materials for the film. The Breadwinner‘s setting required a grim color palette and harsh backgrounds, but Wolfwalkers is set on the Emerald Isle and the animators make sure you never forget it. It’s a visual feast, and even the occasional shot within the town walls, where colors are muted and you can almost feel the dust and soot in the air, can still be a marvel of layering and imagination.

You can guess most of the story’s ending by its midpoint, although the way our heroines defeat the Lord Protector has at least one surprise in it, so the development of Robyn’s character, and her relationship with Mebh, end up carrying the weight in the plot. It’s fortunate that the script is up to that task, and the two young women who voice those lead characters, Honor Kneafsey and Eva Whittaker respectively, are so good, with an on-screen relationship reminiscent of the one the Fanning sisters showed in My Neighbor Totoro. There’s a little violence here that would make this inappropriate for the youngest viewers, but less than you’d find in a typical super-hero movie (including Into the Spider-Verse). I haven’t seen all of the possible nominees yet, but I’m high enough on Wolfwalkers to say it’s going to be the best animated film of 2020.

Wolfwalkers was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film, but lost out to Pixar’s Soul, which seems likely to recur at the Oscars, where Onward (meh) and Over the Moon will probably get two of the other three nominations but have no chance to win. I don’t think there’s any comparison here; Soul is the more technically impressive film, and funnier, but has a far less interesting story, worse character development, and isn’t as visually appealing.It’s just very hard for other studios to beat Pixar/Disney; those studios have taken 13 of the 19 Oscars in this category, and 7 of the last 8. They often deserve the wins, but have also won several for no apparent reason other than commercial popularity – Frozen over both The Wind Rises and Ernest & Celestine comes to mind, as does Brave over, well, anything decent – so the odds seem to be stacked against any competing studio. Wolfwalkers is clearly the better film, however, and if you are one of the 18 people in the United States who has Apple TV+, add this to your queue.