Forum - View topicPersonal 2016 Anime Awards
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15470 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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End of 2016, and I am posting my sequel of the last few years posts where I encourage of awards to anime, aspects of anime, characters, or really anything you want. The awards can be positive, negative, all too specific, or just strange, what matters is that is something you felt noticeable from the anime of 2016. I will post some first.
Biggest subversion of a genre: Re:Zero -Starting Life in Another World- Re:Zero is actually my top anime of the year, and part of that is how it took the genre of trapped in another world, specifically fantasy, video game like, and by an otaku, and turned it on its head. The genre is thought of as rife as just being self-insert protagonists, where it is just an escapist fantasy. Re:Zero that by making the protagonist quite flawed not inherently powerful, an in circumstances you really would not want to escape into, where the main character has the problems you would actually expect, and pretty much torturous experiences that would break someone. There are a number of ways it subverted genre as well like the idea of being the hero means the heroine owes their love, and other things that could only be done in making things the worst possible circumstance, and it was fantastic. Best terrible main heroine: Aqua (Konosuba) Aqua is a goddess, and with that comes ideas of Belldandy, Hestia, or other ideas of perfect magical girlfriend characters, but Aqua is different because she is quite simply a terrible person. Mean, selfish, arrogant, lazy, greedy, tactless, dumb, a drunk, shameless, terrible with money, and yet also prone to embarrassingly lose all dignity. Aqua is a terrible person that the main character says that after spending time with her cannot even get excited from her, and it is kind of awesome, that she lacks all the kind of fake perfectness common for her role and yet somehow has heart, because they kind of make do with being imperfect. Laziest protagonist : Tanaka-kun (Tanaka-kun is Always Listless) Aqua is lazy, but there was one character this year who probably owns the title of laziest anime character in general, that he makes sleeping in class an art form, becomes practically an accessory for his friend carrying him around, and really his whole life is about how to make life the easiest. Sakamoto-kun was on around the same time, but Tanaka is the night to his day, that his entire show perfectly captures his low energy take on life. Most difficult to follow from everyone speaking too fast: Occult;Nine I am not automatically against being a bit off kilter, the monogatari series noticeably has similar traits and I quite like it, but Occult;Nine is plain hard to follow with every character talking like they have to rush through their lines, often expressing rather complex ideas. Best Yuri Robot Pairing: Nene and Clarion (Pandora in the Crimsons Shells) A pretty specific award, but really I want to take this chance to recommend this under the radar retro style anime. It is very girl meets girl, but I would not say that it is pandering in the yuri way, instead it has a very interesting take on the relationship of two people who border the line between human and machine, well that is from one being a Cyborg while the other is an android. What was really cool was how this series kept a lot of extra discussion just under the narrative that you could read into. But still fun couple. Biggest earworm: Timothy Rap (Anne Happy) Ti ti Timo timo… Annge Happy brings in a random tune with the mascot that gets stuck in their heads, and really does. Made it stuck in my head, and as soon as I remembered it started again. |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23786 |
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Cool thread, DuskyPredator. I'm going out soon so I don't have time right now to do my full slate, but I'll start off with this brief taste:
Best Character with Breasts Twice the Size of Your Head: Ryo-tas (Occultic;Nine) I can sort of imagine the conversation that must have taken place between the character designer and the producers. Producers: Okay, so Ryo-tas tits need to be yuuuuge. Character Designer: *makes quick sketch* Like this? P: Bigger. CD: Like this? P: Bigger! CD: How about this? P: BIGGER!!! CD: EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH?!? Anyway, it was all I could do not to fall prostrate in worshipful contemplation every time those Orbs of Magnificence graced my screen. |
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Raftina
 Posts: 3282 |
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Best theme song power up: "Axia", Macross Delta, episode 10
For a franchise that weaponized songs from the beginning and explicitly showed them having magical effect on enemies, it took a surprisingly long time for the singers to use their songs to power up their allies. Freya took most of the spotlight of the Macross singers' newfound magical girl powers, so it was an unusual treat to the subdued older sister type among the group, Kaname, singing for Messer. It was fitting for the occasion--a song full longing for the pilot spoiler[who is flying his last mission before being reassigned away to a teaching position]--, a refreshing break from the more pepped up but more impersonal songs the group typically sings. The action matched the song rather well, being somehow slightly subdued rather than frantic, despite the adrenaline filled action on the screen, thanks to the rivalry between Messer and Keith. The ending fits nicely: the music abruptly stops spoiler[when Messer dies], not surprising considering Kaname is consistently depicted as a less potent singer compared to Freya and Mikumo.
Most of the images I have seen for Is It Wrong to Pick up Girls in a Dungeon make Hestia seem like someone with severe dysfunctional problems like Mashiro from Sakurasou or Ikaros from Heaven's Lost Property. Granted, that is still better than Aqua, but far from perfect. I guess that impression is wrong? On Aqua's dysfunctional side of goddesses, there are Nagi from Kannagi and Momiji from Binbogami ga. Actually, Aqua reminds me a lot of Nagi, and the blue hair does not help. |
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louis6578
 Posts: 1862 |
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Best Gary Stu in 2016 (And anime in general) goes to Sakamoto from Sakamoto Desu Ga (Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto.). He's great and if you don't like him or his show, it's because you're jealous of him.
Best villain to hero turn: Koro-sensei. Nuff' said. His backstory is probably the most understandable evil to good guy turn I've seen in an anime. |
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zawa113
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Seeing as how I don't really watch a lot of new anime that comes out on any given year (I like to wait for the dust to settle and watch the "winners", lol), my list will be short.
Best series: Re:Zero-I had a tough time choosing between this and my runner up, they were both addicting as hell, after all. But I do like how Re:Zero subverted its genre a lot harder and how quickly I went from hating Rem to having her be obvious best girl. And I definitely liked how it frequently skipped the OP and/or ED to add more show in, I haven't seen a show do that regularly since literally Legend of the Galactic Heroes (it's the only other show I can think of that does just do it for the first and last episode, but most episodes skip at least one), and someone figured out that it added about two eps more worth of material to the show. I think it needs to wait for the light novels to have more material, but I can't imagine it simply never getting another season ever. Runner-up: Yuri!!! on Ice-This one is still fresher in my mind. I don't normally watch new shows within a week of them ending, but I made an exception here since the internet blew up with love for it every damn week. As someone who isn't big into sports, I definitely appreciate it fitting 4 competitions into 12 eps, when a lot of sports series seem to want to take a full 26 eps for any given competition. And we still got the breather ep, ep 10, which was probably the most memorable of the show, although the finale still delivered. I still can't tell the difference between most of those spins though (only the Axel, since it's the only one you go into facing forward). In the meantime though, I'll continue to watch Steven Universe, the only other series that doesn't treat homosexuality as some shiny and unusual thing. Best new release of an old show: Giant Gorg-Thank you, Discotek! You've actually released a lot of solid old anime this year (including Dororo, but Dororo loses out here for having ungodly slow pacing issues, I actually watch it at 1.4x and it looks mostly normal), but I'm going with Giant Gorg. I remember Mike Toole gushing about it on an old column of his and it's been on my radar ever since. I can only suspect that him doing frequent work for them may have resulted in this series coming out over here (I'm just assuming he had something to do with it). But it's definitely a hidden gem of 80s mecha and adventure series, so I'm really glad it came over, even though it probably hasn't sold very well (it's niche of a niche, after all). I'm also excited because next year, we'll totally be getting Chargeman Ken on DVD, and I can only hope it's all as bad as that one ep (Dynamite in the Brain). Discotek still continues to be my favorite R1 company, by a mile at that. Best OP: Yuri on Ice- History Maker-it's not the flashiest in terms of visuals, but Saya Yamamoto seems to understand that sometimes, less is more. The song is just too perfect, it's relaxing, but sucks you in, and the animation isn't super detailed on character designs, but it's smooth like butter. US animated movie of the year: Zootopia-hmmm, ok, I haven't actually seen Moana, but I gotta say, I do love Zootopia. Even with ignoring how it deals with species as racial and in universe racial issues that everyone praised about, as a mystery, it set everything up really well and the two leads had good chemistry. As long as you don't think too hard about how rabbits (and other small critters) should've overrun the planet with population booms long ago. And my god, everything just looked so damn plush and like you could just reach out and pet it!!! Unfortunately, I could not give it to Kubo as I was really hoping to. Kubo was just way too aimless with its plot and made it hard for the audience to connect or care most of the time, beauty though it was. After Paranorman and Boxtrolls, I was expecting a lot more out of Kubo. Also, we finally got Iron Giant on Bluray this year! There were even two new scenes in it, and they actually fit in naturally, so that made me happy. No matter how hilariously cheesy the movie is being at times, it just always makes me smile so damn big, I just adore that movie! And it can be bought for about $10, on bluray, so it's a genuine steal. US animated show: Steven Universe-so this has been going on for a while, but it definitely picked up some of the seriousness this year. The plot got thicker, the characters got deeper, it explored more themes, it's everything the past Steven U has been, only it's been even better this year. The only real complaint is its bizarre airing schedule that no one can figure out. At least it returns next month, woohoo! US animated runner up: Gravity Falls-that's right, GF ended earlier this year, I can totally include it! It does get bumped down to runner up due to only having two eps or something air this year though. Each ep was worth the wait though, and I'm glad that Disney X-D seems to play it pretty often as when I'm channel flipping and see it, I go "ooh, sure!", no matter what episode it is because the show literally has no bad episodes. And my god, the comedy is just amazing! I cannot wait to see what Alex Hirsch is going to be doing for Fox, but they'd better not Firefly it. The "Where is it?" Award: Samurai Jack: Season Five-I thought this was coming out during the summer or something? Now there's rumors of March? I dunno, I just want it! Runner up: Rick & Morty season three-no new eps aired this year, so I can't include it in my animated series category, but yeah, we all need season 3. It's been over a year since the season 2 cliffhanger, after all. Unlike SJ though, we do get some bones dropped for us from R&M, like the Georgia trial video, and they did just do an animatic online a few days ago. Unlike SJ, [adult swim] airs old eps every sunday, and I'm always game for that. Cat of the year: Butters-my precious little kitty, she wins this award every year, so this i hardly a surprise. She and her hoomin, we're just so tight, man! |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18200 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Yeah, you're way, way, way off here. Hestia actually swings to the opposite extreme in that she's expressive almost to the point of obnoxiousness at times. She's much closer in personality to the stereotypical Hyper Lovesick Girl you commonly see in anime romcoms. As for the awards, since the Anime in America piece I've been doing for years isn't going off this year because of changes in the Best of 2016 project, here is a personal award that I might have actually used: Worst First Kiss: Haruhiko in Myriad Colors Phantom World episode 12 If you've seen the scene then this one is self-explanatory. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23786 |
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The "DAAAAAAAWWWW-IN" Award: Tie - Nemurin & Tama (Magical Girl Raising Project)
Awarded to the characters that most make you go "DAAAAAAAWWW!!!" because of all the adorability. Nemurin is a dreamy NEET in real life whose magical power is to enter people's dreams. She uses this ability to cure nightmares. Very sweetly voiced by Yumiri Hanamori. Tama is a kind girl who unfortunately falls in with the wrong crowd. Her cuteness is, of course, enhanced by her big, dog-paw gloves. Asuki Nishi did a great job of making her sound cute, too. The Male Character You Most Want to Punch in the Face until his Bones Begin to Break Award: Subaru Natsuki (Re:ZERO -Starting Life In Another World-) There were three elements that came together to make Subaru seem like fingernails running down a chalkboard for me: 1) His character design - I know he was supposed to have effed up looking eyes since that's a bit of a running gag, but his face really bugged me. 2) His seiyuu (Yūsuke Kobayashi) - whenever Subaru was called upon to emote, especially when crying, was just ghastly. Ugh. There was an episode where was trying to hide his "pain" behind a falsely cheerful facade and kept on saying, "Emilia-TAN!" at the end of his sentences that made me want to put my foot through the TV screen. 3) His character - he just bugged me a lot of the time. The best parts were when he repeatedly spoiler[died.] If only the entire series could have been about him spoiler[dying painfully] every five seconds, I would have found it much more enjoyable. The Somebody Went to Take a Huge Poop and a Show Came Out Award: Bloodivores This show gets a 0 out of 10 for absolutely any category you want to evaluate, including, no doubt, production accounting. I think interviews for staff went something like this: Q: Do you suck at what you do? I mean, really, really, really suck at it? A: Yes, I suck so very much. And every day I manage to suck more than I did the day before. Q: Congratulations, you're hired! The only way this show could have sucked worse than it did is if it had been called Snotivores. |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16935 |
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Could've been called Trumptivores. |
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Cam0
 Posts: 4888 |
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Opening and ending themes are always a big deal to me. Good ops and eds make me motivated to watch the show. For me the music is more important than the visuals, but cool visuals are still very important.
Best opening: Uh, crap. Erased, I think? Erased's opening was the first one that came to mind, but D.Gray-man Hollow also had a really great opening. I chose Erased because I find it more interesting visual wise, D.Gray-man Hollow is pretty standard when it comes to visuals. This Art Club Has a Problem's opening gets an honourable mention from me. I really like the cast pointing upward while the lyrics go "Starting now! Starting now!" and "Jumping up! Jumping up!". No doubt I'm forgetting some great openings at the moment. Best ending: I'm thinking Macross Delta's 2nd ending. I don't know anything about musical instruments, but I really like that wind instrument in it. I think it's some kinda brass instrument? Maybe. Honourable mentions could go to Yuri!!! on Ice, Magical Girl Raising Project and Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle. I like Magical Girl Raising Project's and Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle's endings music wise, but the visuals aren't all that impressive. Yuri!!! on Ice's ending is really cool. We get to see pics that are supposedly taken by the characters and then shared on social media. That's just somehow kinda cool. I guess sharing pics on social media just fits these characters. And I'm again probably forgetting some good endings that I'd consider here, but it happens. |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15470 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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But despite that, their dysfunction kind of adds a cute charm in a moe effect, and magical girlfriend trope does not have to have a perfect character. With Bell he is totally devoted to Hestia, he can see how good she is, she tries to meet those expectations, and that is probably why she is popular with the audience. Alternatively you could call Momiji just doing her job as a bad luck god, and Nagi is not outright destructive, but Aqua really causes problems, and it is outright manipulation when she tries to cover it up. Her relationship with Kazuma is odd in that there seems to absolutely no romantic love there, he can’t muster it after seeing the full spectrum of her character, but it also means that they are friends without any of the “Because he likes her” sort of thing. Aqua is strangely relatable because sometimes as humans we can be petty, selfish and stupid. Best Opening: Re:Zero and Bubuki Buranki season 2 Actually surprising tough to pick one, this year also had the ones from Mob Psycho, Kiznaiver and and Yuri on Ice, but I think that these are the two that most connect to me. Re:Zero’s first OP is just… big, it did not even show every episode, the distortion effects and all the little bits hidden in, the tune, and how it goes in a loop, it just stood out to me. And Bubuki Buranki’s second season OP, the tune gets stuck in my head, but more than that it is awesome, for what it expresses in the show I would say that there was not enough time to focus on the aspects expressed by the OP Best Ending: Konosuba I can’t even say what it is, but the calming song, that I would not quite say that it quite clashes, but really feels to round out the rest of the show. Where the rest of the show is action and humour, the ED is all about enjoying the little things, and the calm. For a show that can be called being a bit mean spirited with its characters for comedy’s sake, it just feels like the perfect cherry to any episode of it. |
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st_owly
 Posts: 5234 Location: Edinburgh, Scotland |
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I really liked that song too. It was just so calming and always made me smile. Given that I normally skip EDs unless I really really like them, this one is pretty special. |
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Cam0
Posts: 4888 |
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I also really like Konosuba's ending. Gladly listened to it every episode. I forgot to mention Re:zero's 1st ending. It's somehow a bit melancholic and eerie. It fits the tone of the show.
Most surprising character death: Magical Girl Raising Project. Obviously big spoilers inbound so beaware. spoiler[It's when Tama surprisingly kills Cranberry in an extremely awesome and gory manner. For someone I considered one of the main villains to be killed so abruptly was very surprising for me. A character, I was surprised got as far as she did, to kill her was also very surprising. It was so sudden and violent, like "Oh? What's thi- *BOOM*". Usually characters like Cranberry have enough plot armour to not get killed suddenly even if they let their guard down, but not in MGRP. You let your guard down around superpowered magical girls, you get f***ed up.] |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4084 |
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The I Can't Believe This Is a Thing that Happened and Promptly Got Ignored award goes to Bakuon!!, a show I myself skipped the season it aired and most of the next. What I thought was a K-on! clone- partly the name, partly the cast and partly because that was its intention- turned out to be the most absurd comedy of the year.
Motorcycle club captain Raimu Kawasaki always wears the helmet like The Stig and rides- or is, really, check the name- the Lime green Kawasaki. Did I mention she's immortal or something? Each of the girls has an arbitrary favorite Japanese motorcycle- Hane is Honda because she talked to it which is normal for this kind of series but only here, the bike talks back and considerably- which they defend to death and honor except Jesus Christ who rides a Harley. Because, Christ, Harley Davidson. Match made in Heaven, right. Also, Hane gave Jesus gas and got the Holy Grail in return because that's a thing that happened... but only in this series. One of my top five of the year, definitely needs more love. Winner of This Would Be Really Something Special If It Was Directed By Junichi Sato award this year is Flying Witch which is like Aria but with less cats and even less romance. I mean, really, none at all, in fact the only way the cast could be any more asexual would be if they were all girls in a strict no yuri setting. The guy in Notaharem lives in a small town and we have to buy the fact that 1) That none of the girls around him are his type and 2) He really only thinks about farming. Really. Even Tenchi thought about it. There's no Most Unnecessary Sequel winner this year as it's all pretty much a draw but we do have a Most Unnecessary Waste of Character winner with Dagashi Kashi's Hotaru Shidare. Who doesn't want candy when she's around? But she's not selling... or buying... she's just kind of there, I guess? Telling Kokonotsu things he should already know? Her personality and design would make an ensemble show in any genre work but in this show, she's just used to tell Japanese candy propaganda. Imagine Hamlet created just to sell antidepressants and you start to see the problem here. |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4471 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Unlike Tenchi Masaki, who is the main character of his respective franchise (excluding anything Pretty Sammy-related... or GXP... or whatever that War on Geminar thing was... well, you know what I mean), Kei Kuramoto is really only a side character in Flying Witch. Even if Flying Witch originated in a shounen magazine (Kodansha's Bessatsu Shounen Magazine), it's a manga centered on the female characters and it's even written by a woman, Chihiro Ishizuka, and it seems meant to appeal to readers of all genders. I don't want to downplay Kei's importance to the series, since the manga does appear in a shounen magazine and Kei is somewhat of an audience-identification character for male readers, and Kei's agricultural knowledge is invaluable to Makoto's training, but the focus is clearly on the female characters and I get the idea that Chihiro Ishizuka wants to tell a story where magic mixes with the mundane in spectacular northern Honshu natural vistas and she doesn't want to muddy up the story with romantic plotlines. (Also, Kei is related to Makoto and Akane, so I think he thinks of them as family rather than potential love interests.) I think one or two of the chapters mention that Kei has other friends besides Nao in high school but they aren't really shown because they're not relevant to the story. |
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Galap
Moderator
 Posts: 2354 |
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Best Series: Flip Flappers. One of the strangest anime I've ever seen, and that is a very good thing. Beautiful animation, interesting and engaging story and setting. Really like how it looks like a weird fairytale, however, under the surface...
Beautiful, but stupid: Mob Psycho 100. Unlike Flip Flappers, Mob falls into the trap of having really great animation but being dumb. I watched the first 2 episodes, and decided I couldn't take it. Maybe I'll come back to the dub, since then I won't have to divert attention away from the animation to pay attention to the stupid story (I actually watched it with the subs off so I wouldn't be distracted and I didn't give a damn about the story anyway, but that was a bit much even for me). Biggest derailing (pun intended): Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress. We're having this nice zombie story with cool animation and interesting characters, and then the whole thing comes to a crashing halt with the introduction of the character Biba. |
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