The Anime of the Year, which is always awarded during the Tokyo Anime Award Festival, is one of the most coveted and prestigious awards in Japan’s animation industry, and for this year, the winners have finally been announced during last night’s awarding ceremony.

The Anime of the Year award is actually divided into three categories, one for movies, one for TV anime, and one for the fan vote. Here are the winners:

Anime of the Year for movies: Frozen

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Anime of the Year for Television: Ping Pong the Animation

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Anime of the Year (fan award): Tiger & Bunny: The Rising

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Yes folks, your eyes are not deceiving you as Disney’s Frozen won the coveted Anime of the Year award for movies as it defeated Ghibli’s The Tale of Princess Kaguya, Sunrise’s Gundam UC Episode 7: Over the Rainbow, and Stand By Me Doraemon. This will be another prestigious award added to Frozen’s collection, which already includes last year’s Oscar for best Animation.

Ping Pong the Animation meanwhile might not look like your average sports anime, but it has depth and a good story, which gave it the edge to win the Anime of the Year for Television over Love Live!, Youkai Watch, and Knights of Sidonia. Tiger & Bunny meanwhile proved to be very popular, especially with the mainstream audience because the fans have voted that it should also deserve the Anime of the Year.

The nominees should have been shown in Japan from 1 November 2013 until 31 October 2014 in order to be nominated.

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And while the Anime of the Year served as the main dish for the Tokyo Anime Award Festival, the event also featured plenty of other winners, and they are:

Best Director– Isao Takahata (The Tale of Princess Kaguya)

Best Script – Jukki Hanada (Love Live!)

Best Animators– Kumiko Takahashi (Mobile Suit Gundam UC), Osamu Tanabe (Grave of the Fireflies) and Nobutake Itou (Ping Pong the Animation)

Best Character and/or Mecha Design – Takahiro Kishida (Haikyuu!!)

Best Art Director – Kazuo Oda (The Tale of Princess Kaguya)

Best Seiyuus – Daisuke Ono (Black Butler’s Sebastian Michaelis and Barakamon’s Seishuu Handa) and Kouki Uchiyama (Ping Pong’s Makoto “Smile” Tsukimoto and Nisekoi’s Raku Ichijou)

Best Music – Hiroyuki Sawano (Kill la Kill and Gundam UC)

The Anime of the Year awarding ceremony was held at the TOHO Cinemas in Nihonbashi Japan yesterday, 22 March. You can also check out the lifetime achievement award winners through this link

Source: Cinema Today