Sword of the Stranger was nominated for the Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Animated Feature Film.

Internationally, La Maison en Petits Cubes won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film and Le Cristal d'Annecy at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. Ponyo also won the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year the other nominees were Doraemon: Nobita and the Green Giant Legend 2008, The Sky Crawlers, Detective Conan: Full Score of Fear and One Piece - The Movie: Episode of Chopper Plus: Bloom in the Winter, Miracle Sakura. Animation studio 8-Bit was founded in September.Īt the Mainichi Film Awards, The Sky Crawlers won the Animation Film Award and Ponyo won the Ōfuji Noburō Award. In this year, 288 anime television programs were produced and home video sales of anime DVDs, Blu-ray Discs and HD DVDs in Japan were worth 77.9 billion yen.