Hopefully, this is the first of many major awards for Your Name. in North America!
Yesterday, entertainment news site Deadline reported that Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name. (Kimi no Na wa.) won the 2016 Los Angeles Film Critics Award for Best Animated Film. The feature squared off against the Disney’s Zootopia and Moana, as well as Kubo and the Two Strings and Studio Ghibli co-production The Red Turtle.
The Red Turtle won runner-up this year.
Last year’s LAFCA win for Best Animated Film went to Pixar’s Inside Out, which went on to win the same at the Academy Awards.
Your Name. is an original film from Makoto Shinkai (5 Centimeters per Second, Children Who Chase Lost Voices),who directed the feature at CoMix Wave Films. Shinkai also penned the script, while Masayoshi Tanaka (anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day, High School of the Dead) provided character designs. Masashi Ando (Spirited Away, Paprika) served as animation director on the project.
The film made its global theatrical début on July 3, at Anime Expo. Funimation announced that they licensed the movie at the convention.
Funimation is in the middle of an Oscar qualifying theatrical run for Your Name. The film, which was submitted for consideration, is running at Los Angeles’s Laemmle Music Hall through December 8.
Earlier today, Toho confirmed that Your Name. passed 20 billion yen in Japanese box office revenues, becoming the second highest-grossing anime film of all time for the region.
Source: Deadline, Funimation (Press Release)
