The Tokyo Anime Award Festival is the anime equivalent to the Academy Awards, with different categories to celebrate the best anime shows and movies of the year.
This year the awards ran a fan vote on its official website, and asked fans to choose the best 100 anime of 2016. There were over 500 titles listed in the shows that were aired in 2016, from those 100 chosen from the original poll fans were then again asked to choose the best overall title of 2016. Fans could vote once per day for their favorite anime, and the poll received about 257,000 votes, which was exponentially more than last year.
The poll ended last Thursday, and on Wednesday it was announced by organizers that Yuri!!! on Ice was the fan favorite of 2016. Yuri received 41,439 votes, beating out the second place Joker Game by over 3,000 votes.
This is not surprising as the show has had a huge online fan following and presence, winning other online polls such as Crunchyroll's anime of the year. The Tokyo Anime Award Festival will be held in Tokyo from March 10-13. To celebrate winning the fan poll, a special screening of the first three episodes of Yuri!!! on Ice will be shown during the event.
If you are unfamiliar with Yuri!!! on Ice, you should definitely go and watch the first season. It is currently available to stream on Crunchyroll, and the plot is described as the following,
"Yuri Katsuki carried the hope of all Japan on his shoulders in the Figure Skating Grand Prix, but suffered a crushing defeat in the finals. He returned to his hometown in Kyushu and hid away in his family's home, half wanting to continue skating and half wanting to retire. That was when the five-time consecutive world champion, Viktor Nikiforov, suddenly showed up with his teammate, Yuri Plisetsky, a young skater starting to surpass his seniors. And so the two Yuris and the Russian champion Viktor set out to compete in a Grand Prix like none the world has ever seen!"
The full top 20 list was also revealed on the official website, and you may be surprised with what shows made the list.
Click start slide show to see if your favorites from 2016 made the list:
