TAAF Closed but Noitamina Results Are In
Every year, the Tokyo Anime Award Festival allows fans to vote for anime that the fans loved from October to September of the previous year. Following the voting, the second weekend of March broadcasts the votes. This year, the Tokyo Anime Award Festival Executive Committee and The Association of Japanese Animations has canceled the festivities during March 13-16, 2020 (makes sense, cannot blame them for taking caution to cordon the COVID-19 or Coronavirus from spreading).
However, it is not all despair. The poll results for fans to vote for their favorite Noitamina anime from 2005 and onward have been announced. Before the results are revealed, not everyone knows what Noitamina is, exactly. Noitamina or “Animation” spelled backward refers to the block on the Fuji TV network in which anime could be shown either on Thursday late nights or early Friday mornings. Most anime in this block were half-hour episodes from 2005 until 2010, the timeslot doubled and eventually, anime from that block were eligible to be streamed sooner in North America.
The Noitamina block helped bring anime of great notoriety, including Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day, Guilty Crown, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, Your Lie in April, and The Promised Neverland, to name a few of the many, onto television. Without further ado, here are the results of the fans’ favorite anime aired on this block in increments of five years.
2005-2009 Mononoke
It started off as a spin-off series based on Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales in 2006. The Medicine Seller immediately draws the attention of everyone in town because a merchant is not allowed to carry a sword, only samurai class citizens could. The Medicine Seller is sharp enough to use his knowledge of the supernatural to vanquish the mononoke (spirits still lingering in the real world). The spirit’s Katachi (shape), Makoto (truth) and Kotowari (reasoning) are understood before the sword can be employed to exorcise the demons Not even Toei could have predicted that this unlikely hero’s antics would overtake the original series.
(Source: Toei Animation)
2010-2014: Psycho-Pass
The Sibyl System has taken over modern policing in the 22nd century in Japan. Each citizen’s mental state is examined for criminal intent. Crime should be completely extinct then? WRONG. This Psycho-Pass detection by Enforcers and Inspectors has gotten out of hand, however, and the very crimes they sought to prevent have resurfaced. With the law being taken into the hands of the corrupt officials, Akane Tsunemori’s passion for honest justice leads her to find others that hope to redefine values society has forgotten. It is no wonder that this series has even gotten a reboot and several movies.
(Source: Production I.G)
2014-2019: Banana Fish
Banana Fish takes place in the 1980’s in New York City with Aslan Jade Callenreese, also known as Ash Lynx running his own gang at just 17 years old. Dino Golzine, the infamous mafia godfather who raised Ash during his time on the streets, still attains a hold on Ash’s life. Ash chances upon “Banana Fish” (the same two words that messed his brother up real bad after returning from Iraq) and investigation into this unknown substance sends all of Dino’s men after Ash. As he tries to sever the chains of his former life, the demons he has worked to repress have caught up with him and Eiji Okamura, a photographer from Japan, gets mixed up in the underworldly activities, too.
(Source: MAPPA)
The anime that won in this category of favorite noitaminA anime since 2005 would have been screened at the festival, but nowadays, there are a ton of resources that would enable access to watching these shows and many more. If you would like to check out the line-up of anime currently airing or set to air, check out the https://noitamina.tv/ site.
Let us know in the comments section which is your favorite anime from the NoitaminA block.