The first episode of Japan Sinks: 2020, The Beginning of the End, has won the Annecy International Animated Film Festival’s Jury Award for a TV Series. The episode was nominated in April.
The award marks director Masaaki Yuasa’s second win at Annecy, with 2017’s Lu over the Wall previously scoring the top award for the feature film category. Yuasa previously received nominations for the 2019 movie Ride Your Wave and the 2013 short Kick-Heart.
Japan Sinks: 2020 debuted on Netflix in July 2020 and is produced by Science Saru, with the staff including Toshio Yoshitaka as scriptwriter, Naoya Wada as character designer, Akai Fumihisa and Ito Hiromichi as art directors, Toshikazu Hisano as photography director, and Kensuke Ushio as music composer. The series is based on the 1973 disaster novel Japan Sinks by Sakyo Komatsu.
Netflix describes the series as:
After catastrophic earthquakes devastate Japan, one family’s resolve is tested on a journey of survival through the sinking archipelago.
In her review of Japan Sinks: 2020, Anime Trending’s Gracie wrote, “Thinking about the strengths of the first two episodes and the last half of the final episode only reasserts that the series had the huge potential to leave an impact, and itâs disappointing that it was unable to accomplish that successfully. In conclusion, while Japan Sinks might just be entertaining enough to kill some time, it is not a series that is ultimately worth investing your emotions into.”
Source: Annecy Festival Twitter
