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Kyoto Animation Awards Takes Year Off, Will Return in 2018

The official website for anime studio Kyoto Animation (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Sound! Euphonium, A Silent Voice) announced on Friday that it will not hold the ninth annual Kyoto Animation Awards this year. The program will return in 2018 for the 10th annual awards. The staff explained that it is taking the time to improve the awards, and the 10th annual awards will be a "new start."

Kyoto Animation announced the award program in 2009 and offered 300,000-yen (about US$3,600 at the time) grand prizes and 100,000-yen honorable mention prizes in novel, manga, and scenario (script treatment) categories. The awards added the "Animation DO Special Award" in 2015. In the first year, the rules noted that popular winning entries were to have had a chance at being animated by Kyoto Animation, but the rules for the second year did not mention this possibility.

The only work that has won a grand prize in any of the three categories was the Violet Evergarden novel in 2014. Kyoto Animation is currently producing an anime adaptation of Violet Evergarden.

Previous honorable mention recipients in the contest's history have been animated despite not winning the grand prize. The honorable mention works that have been animated include Chū-2 Byō Demo Koi ga Shitai!, Free! (originally known as High Speed!), and Kyōkai no Kanata. Kyoto Animation's imprint also published O-Yashiki to Coppelia by 1st Kyoto Animation Award honorable mention recipient Mutsuki Ichinose, and later his novelization of Kyoto Animation's Tamako Market anime.

The staff announced the results of its eighth annual awards in May. Hiroshi Yūki's Nijūseiki Denki Mokuroku (20th Century Electricity Catalog) received an honorable mention in the full-length novel category. The studio awarded no grand prizes, and no Animation DO Special Award prizes in the full-length novel category, and no grand prizes, Animation DO Special Award prizes, and honorable mentions in the short novel category.