The 24th Japan Movie Critics Awards announced its list of winners on Saturday. The winners honored films from the 2014 calendar year. Toei Animation and Seiji Mizushima 's Expelled from Paradise film won the Best Animation of the Year Award.

Additionally, Hiromasa Yonebayashi won the Best Animation Directors Award for directing When Marnie Was There . Planner and producer Michihiko Umezawa and producer Shuji Abe won the Animation Lifetime Achievement Award.

For the first time this year the ceremony handed out a Best Voice Actor Award and a Special Award within the animation category. Kouichi Yamadera won the Best Voice Actor Award, and Production I.G 's Giovanni's Island film won the Special Award for "displaying the true essence of hand-drawn animation."

Previous winners of Best Animation of the Year include: The Tale of Princess Kaguya , Wolf Children , and the Detective Conan series. Previous winners of the Best Animation Directors Awards include Isao Takahata and Hideaki Anno . Previous Animation Lifetime Achievement Award winners include: editor Toshihiko Kojima , sound engineer Katsumi Itō , Studio Pierrot founder Yūji Nunokawa , color design artist Michiyo Yasuda , editor Masashi Furukawa , and Toei Animation .

Japan started hosting the awards in 1992 after seeing many other countries host similar awards. Before 2010 the awards did not include animation-specific categories. Frequent Studio Ghibli composer Joe Hisaishi won the Best Movie Music Artist Award in 2009.

Source: animeanime.biz