Let's talk about the Crunchyroll Anime Awards 2017

Well, last year I came back to blogging due to the Crunchyroll Anime Awards and then talked about the Oscars. This year, it's the opposite way around.

Anyway, I still needed to vent a little on this because the awards have been improved in comparison to last year, but there's still room left for further improvement. Let me explain...

The Crunchyroll Anime Awards 2017 - The Good, the bad & the ugly

Updated categories are both better and worse

First up, I'm glad Crunchyroll reorganized the voting categories. The awards look less like they were done by a random youtuber. Though they're still hit and miss.

The following are gone:

• Best Fight Scene
• Most Heartwarming Scene
• Best Couple

The following were added:

• Best Continuing Series - Nice addition, though the execution could be better
• Best Manga - Good!
• Best movie - Very good!
• Best (use of) CGI - Good!
• Best Score - Very good!
• Best Slice of Life series - Not good. Honestly this is a superfluous category! All of the nominees fit either in Comedy or Drama categories!

Note: While most of the manga from Best Manga are not from this year, the first volume of every nominee was released in English for the first time in 2017. The page could've used that asterisk, tbh.

The following categories are still missing (read: missed opportunities)

• Best Voice actor/actress in Japanese and in English DUB: Come on, Crunchyroll, get to it! I said this last year as well!
• Best Direction: no-brainer, right? I mean it's a default category in most tv/movie awards shows.
• Best Character Design: An underrated category. Animation is not only the animation, it's the overall character design as well.
• Best Short series: Anime of 10 minutes or below deserve some love!
• Best Original / Adapted story: It's a default category in movie award shows, so why not here? Yes, it's a difficult category because you would need to have knowledge of both the source material as well as the adaptation. But still...
• Best NEW series / Best Sequel: The Best continuing series is a good new addition, but I feel the choices in this category are a mixed bag (to say it nicely). I feel that a split of series in new/sequel/continuing series would generally improve this and would give a proper spotlight to all kinds of series.

About the Judges

While it does surprise me that 6 of the 7 judges of last year don't reprise their role (too much salt/backlash last year?), I'm kind of neutral on the choices this year. I don't know any of them personally, but CR has listed their credits and well... they're legit (no, really).

And while I do like that there are more judges than last year... 10 vs 7 is still not that much better. Not to mention the total lack of Anitubers now that Arcada/Glass Reflection hasn't returned as a judge. Why not ask the advice of somebody like SuperEyePatchWolf, UnderTheScope or even Digibro (just to name a few)? Heck, people like Geoff/Mother's Basement would've been a perfect judge when it comes to music, OPs and EDs - That IS his Youtube schtick!

On a side-note: Praise goes to those who deserve it. I love the addition of separate judges specifically for the best manga award. Good decision!

Weird and confusing voting method

Yeah, let's just say it out loud: The new website is not that good, the previous one was better. Yes, the new one does look more like a professional awards show website and less like a fan-site. But looks aren't everything, you know.

The first time I went to the new awards website, I was utterly confused. I saw the Crunchyroll promo that you could start voting, but the first three categories I clicked on were disabled with no information on when voting would become active. I honestly thought they f**ked up.

It wasn't until later I figured out that they split up the voting over a period of multiple weeks, with each period only allowing you to vote for a small group of categories. This in a clear attempt to trigger people's engagement multiple times and keep themselves trending for a longer period of time. (*sigh* I hate cheap marketing ploys like this)

But it was clear that this decision was made late in the game, because the website was not created to support this voting method. As I said, the categories you could actually vote for in the first week were not properly highlighted nor sorted. And there was no clear message on how the voting worked (unless you read multiple posts and ads from CR). And the black site color did NOT help any of this.

But I must be honest. Checking back on the site this week will show you proper fixes. The site has been cleaned up, categories have been clearly divided and proper dates on what you can vote for when have been added. Too bad this had to happen weeks after release (*sigh*). At least they listened to the initial feedback.

But in order to prevent this kind of backlash, here are a few tips for future improvements:

• A: Don't make the site background black. Using black backgrounds is cool when you're an edgy tween, but that's the only advantage it has. In reality black makes site layout harder. Layout and graphic mistakes are easier to spot, mixing in other colors can quickly look real ugly real fast and highlighting attempts are easily overlooked.
• B: The split time periods: Don't do this. It's a cheap marketing trick to stay trending on social media, but you can do this differently. IF you still want to use this method, open the categories in a cascade form like this year but close all categories together at the end date. This way the unlock will still trigger new topics, but nobody will be frustrated that you can't vote anymore for other categories.
• C: Make it visually stand out on which categories you can already vote and on which you cannot. It will only create frustration if you click on a category, only to find out voting still isn't available and you should come back "on a later date". Oh, and on that...
• D: All necessary information should be visible on the main page. Your voting site should NOT need several blog posts or news articles for explanation on how to vote, especially if that information is on a different website all together. If it does need extra explanation on another site, you're doing something wrong!

My votes

I'll try to keep this as short as possible. I'll probably film a vlog to go into more detail.

• Best Action: My Hero Academia
• Best Drama: While real difficult to choose between Rakugo Shinju, March comes in like a Lion & Made in Abyss, I ended up choosing for March comes in like a Lion. The series needs some love!
• Best Comedy: There is no question here: KonoSuba Season 2!
• Best Slice of Life: Redundant category, but from these nominees: Sakura Quest
• Best Continuing series: Questionable choices, since some are sequel and others are actually continuing series. Best sequel is March comes in like a lion (which I voted for), but best actual ongoing series form this list would be Dragon Ball Super.
• Best Girl: The girls from My Hero Academia honestly deserve a best girl category by themselves (lol). But if you make me choose between Ochako & Tsuyu, my vote goes to Ochako (with Tsuyu a VERY close second).
• Best Boy: Kazuma without a doubt. And err... Fafnir? Really? Why?
• Best hero: I was originally going to vote for Deku. But after hearing Geoff's arguments on why Nanachi deserves the win in this category, I changed my mind. Thus: Nanachi.
• Best Villain: Stain. While Tanya is a masterful villain (or anti-hero depending on your point of view), it's Stain that stood out so much he outshined every other villain of the entire series.
• Best Manga: I'm not going to vote for this, since I haven't read most of the titles and thus cannot give an honest answer.
• Best OP: Winter 2017 had the best OPs of the entire year, though my favorite did not make the list (my vote would've gone to Fhána - Blue Sky Rhapsody from Ms Kobayashi's Dragon Maid. So from the choices available, I'm going to pick One III Notes with Shadow & Truth (from ACCA)
• Best ED: Again my choice is not on the list (the ED from Saga of Tanya the Evil: Aoi Yuuki - Los! Los! Los!). But after taking some time and missing the deadline for the category (hence my frustration) I finally listened to all nominees and would've chosen Chorogonzu - Ishukan Communication from Ms. Kobayashi's Dragon Maid.
• Best Film: A Silent Voice, with In This Corner of the World a close second.
• Best (use of) CG: Important category, considering how often this gets f**ked up in anime series. One series did NOT f**k up at all and that is Land of the Lustrous.
• Best Score: My heart bleeds because I have to choose between two great scores (ACCA and Made in Abyss). But in the end I have to go for Made in Abyss, because it elevated an already great anime into even greater heights.
• Best Animation: How is it fair that movie-level animation is compared to tv-level animation? I refused to vote for A Silent Voice because of this. My vote went to the best animation in a TV-series: March comes in like a Lion. See my review for a more detailed explanation.
• Anime of the Year: No best Yuri-on-Ice of the year? Good! With the awards starting a little later and no late fall anime that took the internet by storm, all anime now have a fair chance. My vote goes to the only anime that actually succeeded in making me cry... multiple times: Made in Abyss. Don't let this cutesy art fool you, this anime starts of "light", but gets drenched in darkness the further you go into the series. I was genuinely sad that the last episode ended (even if it was extra long), because I wanted more.

Afterword

As I said, I'll try to make a vlog for a more detailed explanation (try, no promises). But these are my choices for the Anime Awards.

Until next time, V out.