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Tekkonkinkreet Wins Japan's Academy Award for Animation

The Nippon Academy-Sho Association, a Japanese group roughly comparable to America's Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of Oscar fame, has awarded Michael Arias and Studio 4°C's Tekkonkinkreet with the Animation of the Year award in the 31st Japan Academy Prizes on Friday. The film was competing with Hideaki Anno and Khara's Evangelion: 1.0 You Are [Not] Alone, Keiichi Hara and Shinei Animation's Summer Days with Coo, Masayuki Kojima and Madhouse's The Piano Forest, and Yasuichiro Yamamoto and Shogakukan/TMS Entertainment's Detective Conan: Jolly Roger in the Deep Azure. Tekkonkinkreet just won the Grand Prix award at the Anima 2008 festival in Brussels, Belgium last Saturday. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the film in theaters and on home video in North America last year.

This is only the second year that an award in the Animation of the Year category has been presented. Mamoru Hosoda and Madhouse's The Girl Who Leapt Through Time won the first award in the previous year. Before the introduction of the Animation award, Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli won the overall Picture of the Year Award with Princess Mononoke and again for Spirited Away.

Jōji Matsuoka's Tokyo Tower walked with five awards: Picture of the Year, Best Director, Best Screenplay (Suzuki Matsuo), Best Leading Actress (Kirin Kiki), and Best Supporting Actor (Kaoru Kobayashi). Always Zoku San-chōme no Yūhi (Always: Sunset on Third Street 2), Takashi Yamazaki's adaptation of Ryōhei Saigan's Sanchoume no Yuuhi - Yuuyake no Uta post-war slice-of-life manga, earned two awards out of 13 nominations: Leading Actor of the Year (Hidetaka Yoshioka) and Sound Recording of the Year (Hitoshi Tsurumaki). Letters from Iwo Jima, Clint Eastwood and Warner Brothers' film about World War II from the Japanese perspective, won for Foreign Film of the Year. Viz released Tadamichi Kuribayashi's Picture Letters from the Commander in Chief, a non-fiction collection of war-era letters and one of the two main sources for Eastwood's film.

Source: animeanime.jp

Image © 2008 Taiyo Matsumoto/Shogakukan, Aniplex, ASMIK Ace, Beyond C., dentsu, TOKYO MX. All Rights Reserved.

Update: The director of Detective Conan: Jolly Roger in the Deep Azure should be Yasuichiro Yamamoto; "Taiichiro" was a misspelling. ANN apologizes for the error.