The Crunchyroll Anime Awards Dilemma (Take 2)

Here we are people. Another year, another Crunchyroll Anime Awards event, and another post from me about it. They honestly did hear some of the reactions and criticisms of last year’s Yuri on Ice debacle, but here we are with a new round of complaints. Instead of these awards being called “the Yuri on Ice” awards, this year we face the “My Hero Academia Awards”. Oh no, a popular show gets voted for by a bunch of people and takes a bunch of categories. What a shock. Oh no. The most predictable thing ever happened and the anime awards and the community are ruined forever. Again. Nah, get over yourselves people. These anime awards did more good for this community then most of you probably realize.

Let’s talk about My Hero Academia first. Just like many of you, I am honestly not surprised that it won a lot. Thinking this one over, how is My Hero Academia bad in anyway? It has a great story, great characters, great animation, amazing animation, and I can keep going. Its also very incredibly accessible too. So many other shows have some sort of niche focus to them, but My Hero Academia is very general audience material. That means more people watched it with leads to more people voting for it. Seeing it win seven awards is something that I am ok with. Why? Partially because I like it a lot, but partially because people voted for this show. That’s so different from many other sorts of award shows. In case you were wondering, I am not upset about Yuri on Ice winning a lot of the awards from last year either just because I thought it was ok. Part of that reason is because that is the first time Crunchyroll has attempted something like this and because Yuri on Ice spoke to a majority of the anime watching audience in 2016 then other anime. That’s perfectly fine. I don’t think that a proper balance of having one show not taking a majority of awards is ever going to happen, because there is always going to be that one show that speaks to a larger audience more than others. It’s just a fact of life.

The Crunchyroll Anime Awards are so different from other award shows. Especially from something like the Oscars were an academy of detached people choose movies that go into each category. The Crunchyroll Awards are about the people and that’s why they got people to vote for awards and why there were hosts around measure twitch polls while the event was happening. Once again for the people in the back, The Crunchyroll Anime Awards are about the people. A community of different types of anime fans voted for the anime they want in an awards show. It’s crazy that Crunchyroll is doing this in the first place, so I am glad it seems to be working out for them on some level. I’m sure we will see nothing but improvements during the third annual awards and beyond.

So since the Anime Awards are about the people, then what did this second round do? Well, it connected the community as a whole together. Not only were anime fans at the award show, but some famous voice actors, Crunchyroll work members, and online content creators as well. All of these people are anime fans. You got to psychically see all of these people right in front of you. There is no hiding of faces here. Doing this seems like Crunchyroll’s form of business at the forefront. Anime content for anime fans by anime fans. The anime awards here are just an extension of this concept. I may not be one of those people who bothers with watching awards shows in general, but I will definitely see myself watching more Crunchyroll’s awards in the future. Just make sure the last part of the Olympics are not airing on tv at the same time…

So with all that said, how would I improve the Crunchyroll Anime Awards for next year? Well, besides some technical aspects that are better discussed on an article from Anime Insiders, I would change the rules for the categories a bit. For starters, only have one series per category. My Hero Academia having two characters or shots at certain categories was completely unfair. Completely agree with that. The other suggestion is breaking apart the Best Anime of the Year award. Either don’t do it and stick with anime categories or break Anime Series of the Year into two categories: Best New Anime Series of the Year and Best Sequel Series of the Year. That way, each series that airs gets a shot as winning something. Other then those two things, everything that happened this time around seemed fair to me. It’s only Crunchyroll’s second attempt at this. Leave them some lee way to improve. Looking back at this article, I think my view point has changed a lot since writing about the anime awards last year.