A Student Animator on the Crunchyroll Stage
The centerpiece of the winners' Los Angeles trip came on July 4, when Raiki Murao, the HAL Nagoya student behind the Crunchyroll Award-winning short Kono Machi to, Tomo ni (roughly "Together with This Town"), stepped onto Anime Expo's Crunchyroll stage alongside jury chair Yūichirō Hayashi (Attack on Titan: The Final Season, Dorohedoro). According to the announcement on PR TIMES, Murao told the crowd he had felt attendees' passion for anime firsthand, realizing that "there is no language barrier when it comes to anime."
It was a big room to say that in. Anime Expo is one of North America's largest anime conventions, and its 2025 edition drew a record 410,000-plus attendees from more than 65 countries. The winning shorts are already distributed through Crunchyroll to more than 200 countries and regions, so the stage talk put the films and their young creators directly in front of the overseas audience that can actually watch them.
Inside the Booth: Grand Prix Winner POLICE MEN and Friends
The Newcomer Creator Award booth screened the 2026 winning films throughout the convention, alongside exhibits introducing the award and its creators. AnimeJapan's costumed mascots, the AJ Brothers, dropped by for photos, and per the release, local student creators stopped in to say they wanted to enter the competition themselves.
On July 3, the booth hosted a talk show with all three invited teams, six students in total: Grand Prix winner Yui Hara (原優衣) of Kyoto Seika University, who made POLICE MEN with co-creator 辻中大翔 (likely Hiroto Tsujinaka); Murao with teammate 今井青空 (likely Sora Imai); and Katsuki Yokoyama (横山勝基) of HAL Osaka, who took both the Art Award and an AnimeJapan Special Award for Natsu no Omokage (roughly "Traces of Summer"), joined by 西村美月 (likely Mizuki Nishimura). The students walked attendees through how their films came together and what it took to produce them while still in school.
The full 2026 winners list spans five schools. Kyoto Seika University took three prizes: Hara's Grand Prix plus the Technical Award for Leow Yi Jing's Offbeat and the Direction Award for Wang Xinyue's Eiya no Requiem (roughly "Requiem for the Eternal Night"). Sho Hane of HAL Tokyo won the Character Award for Magokoro Musubi Gyutto Komeru Omoi, whose subtitle hides a rice-ball pun. Madoka Hadano of Tokyo Polytechnic University earned an AnimeJapan Special Award for Live in Red, with additional Special Awards going to POLICE MEN, Kono Machi to, Tomo ni, and Natsu no Omokage.
A Government-Backed Launchpad, One Year In
The Newcomer Creator Award is a short-anime competition for students, run by the AnimeJapan association and commissioned under a creator-development program funded by Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs through the Japan Arts Council. Crunchyroll is attached as a special partner, which explains both the named award and the streaming pipeline: winning this student competition now comes with worldwide distribution.
The award handed out its first prizes at AnimeJapan 2026 this spring. The parent event has run since 2014, hit its 13th edition this year, and draws more than 150,000 visitors from around 100 countries and regions.
Looking Ahead
Application guidelines and award categories for the Newcomer Creator Award 2027 are due around September 2026, with details posted to the award's official site. The 2027 ceremony is set for March 27 and 28, 2027, inside AnimeJapan 2027 at the INTEX Osaka convention center. That will be the festival's first Osaka edition, and the 2028 event stays in Osaka as well.
International fans don't have to wait for any of that: the 2026 winning shorts already stream through Crunchyroll in more than 200 countries and regions.