The 2020 ComicBook.com Golden Issue Award for Best Anime Film

The winner of our Comicbook.com Golden Issue Award for Best Anime Film, beat out some strong competition, from some highly-anticipated anime films that became big box office hits. The unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic seriously affected US fans' access to new anime; however, our winner in this category managed to deliver something that had fans all over the world standing up and cheering. The winner combined great anime filmmaking, with epic great superhero storytelling, with all the visual splendor and epic action that a feature offers fans.

And the winner of the 2020 ComicBook.com Golden Issue Award for Best Anime Film is...

My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising!

There's no doubt that My Hero Academia is one of the hottest manga/anime titles around at the moment, and Heroes Rising pretty much encapsulates everything fun and great about the series in one feature. It offers a thrilling superhero vs villain story, with some blockbuster action; it showcases the series core characters, while still letting the Class 1-A ensemble shine; and that climax with Izuku Midoriya and Bakugo powered-up and fighting together gave fans meme-worthy inspiration to get them through 2020.

Despite some timeline confusion for the anime fans, Heroes Rising offers a lot of very interesting and/or exciting advancements of the My Hero Academia's storyline. Whereas a lot of anime features feel like one-off adventures that don't truly matter to the core story, Heroes Rising gives My Hero Academia fans all the more reason to invest in where the series is headed next.

Comicbook.com anime reporter Nick Valdez had the following to say in his official review of My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising:

"My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising is a splendid display of heart, character, and heroism, a film capitalizing on years of storytelling that's stunningly animated with tons of care and attention to detail. It's a film you're going to wish you could see for the first time, every time, as it becomes the pinnacle for anime films to compare themselves to for years to come. It's an infinite source of 100% fun."

A third My Hero Academia movie has been confirmed for summer 2021, so the series will a shot at taking our 2021 Golden Issues Award for Best Anime Movie. However, competition in this category is only getting more fierce, as anime's skyrocketing popularity is quickly turning these feature films into blockbuster movie events.

Nominees:

• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - Mugen Train
• Japan Sinks
• My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising — WINNER
• Ride Your Wave
• Weathering with You