The Tokyo Anime Awards Festival (TAAF) announced the winners for both works and individuals on Thursday. The actual event will not be held until March, but the winners were announced in advance. The categories at the awards show are Animation of the Year (television and film), Best Original Work/Screenplay, Best Director, Best Animator, Best Background/Coloring/Visual, Best Sound/Performance, and an Anime Fan Award.
The Tokyo Anime Awards have been going on since 2002, when there were fewer categories to win prizes for. That first year in 2002, the winner of the Animation of the Year was Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away. Since 2014, the Animation of the Year award has been split into categories for television series and movies separately, and over the years other categories have been added as well.
For an anime to qualify for the TAAFs, it has to air within a select time frame for that year. For 2022, the anime had to air at least one episode between October 1st, 2021 and September 30th, 2022. Much like the Crunchyroll awards for this year, which eliminated some big titles like Bleach and Chainsaw Man from being able to compete this year due to when they began airing, and they will have to wait until next year to compete.
This year, the winners of the Animation of the Year award were Spy x Family in the television category, and One Piece Film Red in the movie category. The Best Original Work/Screenplay was given to Reiko Yoshida for her work in The Heike Story. The Best Director was Goro Taniguchi for One Piece Film Red, and the Best Animator was Yoshimichi Kameda for Mob Psycho 100. The Background/Coloring/Visual award was for Koji Eto for The Garden of Sinners, and the Sound/Performance award to Ado for One Piece Film Red. Finally, the Fan Award went to Mechamato with over 180,000 votes.
As two of the biggest sensations of the year, it comes as no surprise that Spy x Family and One Piece Film Red took home the biggest awards. There have been a lot of popular anime over the course of the last year, but few captured quite as many fans around the world as Spy x Family. At the same time, One Piece Film Red broke records at cinemas in Japan, and also found success overseas at international theaters, too.
Last year, the winners of the top awards were also predictable. The Animation of the Year Award for television series went to Jujutsu Kaisen, and for movies to EVANGELION:3.0+1.01 THRICE UPON A TIME. The Anime Fan Award went to IDOLiSH7 Third BEAT!, which was very popular in Japan specifically.
The Tokyo Anime Awards Festival will be held March 10 - March 13, 2023 in Ikebukuro, Tokyo.
Sources: AnimeNewsNetwork, Official Website