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The Oofuji Noburou Award (大藤信郎賞) is an animation award given at the Mainichi Film Awards. It is named after Japanese animator Noburou Oofuji.

Following the death of Noburou Oofuji in 1961, Mainichi established a new award in his honor to recognize animation excellence. A specialist in silhouette animation, Oofuji was one of the earliest Japanese animators to gain international recognition.

With the growth of the animation industry in Japan, the award in the 1980s came to be dominated by big budget studio productions, over the work of the independent animators for whose efforts it was originally established. To address this concern, the Animation Grand Award was established to reward large scale cinematic animation, enabling the Oofuji award to focus on shorter pieces again.

(Source: Wikipedia)