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Interview: Milton Griepp and the American Anime Awards

This could have been a chance to recognize real artistic merit though. When Boys Don't Cry won all the accolades it did, it brought in a whole new audience that would never have seen it.. It did so well because it was good. Not because it was a blockbuster that had all the dollars behind it.

If the Oscars were to parallel these awards, the best picture race would be between Mission Impossible 3 and the Over the Hedge movie. Popular doesn't mean great.

Can a series be popular and good? Of course it can. But popularity shouldn't be the only criteria that this thing is judged by. Or by company submissions. I'm not so sure the company execs who run ADV and Bandai are the best judges of what should be heralded in this way. They know how to pick a hot show that will sell a butt load of copies, but should it be left up to them to pick the artisitic highlights of 2006?

Which couldn't happen here anyway, because appanrently you can vote for anything that's ever come out ever.

I'm putting my votes behind Astro Boy. Or maybe Steam Boat Willy.

I do like to see at least one category for best seiyuu. However, the award show is called "American" Anime Awards, so they only include English dub VAs. As far as having "VAs, producers, directors, Company CEOs, translators, writers and ADR people" doing the voting is that they will likely only vote for the series that they worked on (in the case of CEOs they will only vote for series their company published). That's probably even worse than having the fans doing the voting.

If the goal of this is for the industry to promote their wares, there are evidently some kinks to work out in the proccess, as I'm sure everyone recognizes. If that's the goal for something like this, it's fine. How many industries don't do something like that?

If something was put together to judge what was produced in North America, great... best voice acting work, best translation, best packaging, ect... These are certainly endeavors worth recognizing.

If the idea is judge artist merit, or assign some sort of "best" superlative, I think its a flawed idea for a North American audience to judge.

First, it's probably a flawed idea for anyone to judge. Anime is a pop medium, which mean we all quickly get excited about works and in most cases, we quickly move on. There are plenty of works that keep everyone's attention, but plenty more that flare up and burn out. Before ADV released Shadow Skill TV, how many remembered the '97 OAV release that everyone talked about 9 years ago? How often is the CG Appleseed release spoken about now?

Secondly, when works are taken out the original context, how do you begin to judge them? Hakugei Legend of Moby Dick, Castle of Cagliostro, and Basilisk all had 2006 North American releases. What criteria do you use to weigh works from radically different epochs of an art.

The first half of the nomination list is broken, but a good start. The second half short changes our ability to evaluate anime by steering the discussion down the wrong path.

The Eisner awards might have it right when they restrict it to a "Best U.S. edition of foreign material"

*copied&pasted from the other thread*

I wonder who the heck nominated Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children as an Anime Feature? It's a Realistic CG film based off a video game. Not really anime.

I was very glad to see the questions posed to those behind the American Anime Awards. When I first heard of the awards a while ago, I had mixed feelings of it, as to whether it would be a genuine Academy-esque voting event or a fan-based "popularity" contest. Judging by all of the categories and submissions, the AAA staff may have had good intentions and ideas, but the event as a whole is a poor mess. It was difficult to understand whether the actors are to be judged on the series they were noted with or on their talents alone, or if "Eureka Seven" is a better theme song than "Lonely in Gorgeous." Additionally, the series given should have been limited to only those that were first released in the past year (2006). Inexcuseable(sp) typos (considering the supposed levity of these awards) aside, all of the choices should have been narrowed down to only a set number ("7" is acceptable), chosen by industry people in an Acedemy-style manner to ensure a level of fairness and quality.

This brings me to some of the mentions of Naruto, BLEACH, and others as examples of shows that should be honored. Honestly, while Naruto has gotten better (watching via U.S. broadcast) and the latter has proven to be an interesting series, I would not be so quick, personally, to put them on the ballot nor would I ever consider FMA or any of Satoshi Kon's work. Despite the popularity behind all of them, I don't think they are deserving of awards over other shows that aren't as popular but are superior to them. This all goes back to the whole "popularity contest" concern. I don't agree with them and they don't agree with me, so what is there stopping this as a whole from being one sided?

The AAAs are a good step in the right direction, but they are stumbling quite a bit in doing so.

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Forum - View topicInterview: Milton Griepp and the American Anime Awards

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Interview: Milton Griepp and the American Anime Awards