The winners of the 13th annual Japan Media Arts Festival Awards were announced this week. The big winners this time around included Hosoda's newest hit film Summer Wars, which won the Grand Prize in the Animation Division. The only other big anime title to win an award was Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, which was one of the winners in the Excellence Prize category for animation. There were plenty of noteworthy names in the Jury Recommended Works in Long Animation category, including Canaan, ToraDora, Nodame Cantabile: Paris, Eden of the East, & Xam'd.

In terms of manga, the mature story Vinland Saga won the Grand Prize in the Manga Division. A few other well-known manga titles won the Excellence Prize, including Children of the Sea (available for free in the US from Sig Ikki) & Hyouge Mono.

& finally in the Entertainment Division, the Naruto: Narutimate Storm video game for the PS3 won one of the Excellence Prizes. Meanwhile, the controversial Hetalia anime web series was one of the Jury Recommended Works in the self-produced/web manga section.

Source: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-12-03/summer-wars-vinland-saga-win-media-arts-awards

In honor of Afro Samurai: Resurrection being nominated for a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program (one hour or more), Spike TV is rebroadcasting entire movie late Friday night on the 11th at 1am (Eastern/Pacific). This will be the first time the network has re-aired the movie since its original debut. The winner of the award will then be announced the next day during the Creative Arts Awards. "Resurrection" has already previously won the Primetime Emmy for Art Director Shigemi Ikeda for Outstanding individual Achievement in Animation.

In somewhat related news, the CW4Kids will be airing the Kirby anime movie "Fright to the Finish" this Saturday morning in its entirety, beginning at 9am. Two totally different target demographics here, but at least we're getting two anime movies on regular TV within the span of 12 hours.

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The 14th annual Kobe Anime Awards were announced this past week in Japan. For the past two years, Code Geass won the award for best television series. But with that series no longer on the air, it was finally time for a new series to take the crown.

The winner for best theatrical film was definitely an odd & unusual choice, considering it isn't a Japanese anime at all. The reason the comity chose a western film for the prize was because they said no Japanese film matched this year's winner in "sheer enjoyment." Check out all the winners below:

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G4 & X-Play held their annual G-Phoria video games awards show, where viewers vote on the best games & other such categories from the past year. So which game got the king title of Game of the Year? Well you can check out the video above, or check out the complete results below to find out that & more:

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The winners for the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation 2009 Awards were revealed this weekend at Anime Expo. Personally I disagree with many of the choices made this year. It seems fan favorites won over superior talent for a lot of the categories. See for yourself below:

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The Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation has announced the finalists for their 2009 anime awards ceremony, with the winners being revealed during Anime Expo this summer. This American awards event is voted on by the fans, with voting being done online at their official website. Make sure to check out last year's winners, then see who's running this year below:

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Time magazine has released their annual issue of who they think the 100 most influential people in the world are today. & as they've been doing for the past few years, they also put on an Internet poll on their website asking the people to vote for who they think the world's most influential person is. & 2009's winner? Moot, the founder of 4Chan.

Moot, aka Christopher Poole, was voted by the people to get the #1 spot. he received close to 17 million votes, more than the other top 10 people combined. & although Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao received more votes, Moot's 90% average rating put him far ahead of anyone else on the list. Now of course I'm sure every single b-tard out there rallied to get their leader to the top spot, but the very fact that Moot has created such a loyal & powerful community is testament to his greatness. According to the Time's article:

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For the second time, a shop in Akihabara has conducted a favorite ass/pantsu election for the girls of "Strike Witches." Sanya V Litvyak won the first time around. Interestingly enough, she's one of the only girls that actually has her panties covered most of the time. Granted they're covered with black tights & not pants or anything, but it's still covered.

For this second election, the results were surprisingly very different. Eila Ilmatar Juutilainen & Gertrud Barkhorn both tied for first place this time around. Interestingly again, Eila is also one of the only other girls that has her pantsu covered. Previous winner Sanya wound up in fourth place this time around. Francesca Lucchini, my personal favorite, dropped from second place to sixth. & Yoshika Miyafuji, who came in last place among the 11 main girls last time, jumped up to the #5 spot now. Pretty weird stuff. The entire listings below:

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Lately, Nickelodeon Magazine has been showing a weird new interest inm Japanese manga. First in the latest issue, they have a toon gossip column with a "news story" about Bart Simpson going out with Sakura Haruno. Apparently they started going out after Lisa Simpson & Naruto Uzumaki broke up. Huh?!

Adding to that, the children's mag recently held their first ever Nickelodeon Magazine Comics Awards. There were a couple different manga nominees in the running including "Naruto" for Favorite Graphic Novel, as well as Kakashi Hatake for Best Hair in Comics. Sadly they lost. But there was a Favorite Manga Series category as well. The winner there was Viz's Pokemon Adventure manga, which managed to beat out Naruto, One Piece, Fruits Basket, & Kingdom Hearts II. Figures that the most kiddish title would win.

Sources: http://www.japanator.com/elephant/post.phtml?pk=9532
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-03-27/pokemon-wins-nickelodeon-mag-favorite-manga-award

It's time once again to announce the winners of Japan's Seiyuu Awards! Now in its third year, this time a new award category was added- the Overseas Fans' Choice Awards, where international anime fans were able to vote for their favorite Japanese voice actor. The first winner of that award was Jun Fukuyama, who won Best Lead Actor in the Awards' first year. The Best Lead Actor this year was Hiroshi Kamiya, who actually won Best Supporting Actor last year. Likewise goes to the wonderful Rie Kugimiya, who won Best lead Actress this year after winning Best Supporting Actress last year. See the full list of winners below:

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If you weren't watching the Academy Awards last night, then you missed out on Japan winning a few Oscars. Most notably is Kunio Kato's "La Maison en Petits Cubes" (French for "House of Small Cubes") winning the award for Best Animated Short Film. The 12-minute short work, which you can see in its entirety above, may sound French & feel French, but rest assured it was made in Japan by Japanese guy. Thus it is considered anime, marking it the second anime to ever win an Oscar after Hayao Miyazaki's big win for "Spirited Away" back in 2003.

As for the main Best Animated Feature Film of the Year award, that of course went to Disney-Pixar's "Wall-E." Moving away from animation though, Yojiro Takita's live-action "Departures" won the award for Best Foreign Language Film. This is the first time Japan won the award in this category, though it did win similar awards prior to the category's creation in 1956. See both Japanese directors give thanks for their shiny new Oscars below:

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The Emmy Awards were held this week here in America. But who cares about that! It's not about anime, after all. So let's turn our attention towards Japan, which held it's own little awards program this week- the 13th annual Animation Kobe Awards. & just like last year's winners, Code Geass comes out on top, while the Rebuild of Evangelion movie & the creator of Denno Coil also are very notable winners this time around. The full list of winners below:

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G4 & X-Play held their annual G-Phoria video games awards show, where viewers vote on the best games & other such categories from the past year. So which game got the king title of Game of the Year? Well you can check out the video above, or check out the complete results below to find out that & more:

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Meant to post this awhile back, but it slipped my mind. During Anime Expo, there was a special awards ceremony to honor the industry called the SPJA Awards. The truly interesting thing about these awards is that they honored those on both sides of the industry, so both Japanese creators & seiyuu as well as American dubbers & voice actors were recognized. Check out the complete list of winners below:

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Yay, even more Japanese awards! This time around it's the second annual Seiyuu Awards, where the industry votes on the best voice actors in anime. The top spots went to Mamoru Miyano for best male seiyuu & Aya Hirano for best female seiyuu. You may remember our coverage of the first awards ceremony last year that Hirano won the award for best newcomer at that time for her role as Haruhi Suzumiya. But without further ado, this year's awards go to:

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