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NEWS: No Winners Announced for 6th Kyoto Animation Awards

this is a scam, they stole Free! and made mass money, but we won't get you the gran prize money. "Even though we can't come up better idea for anime, but we still think your idea is horrible. We can only copy from others, we have no writer, but your idea is still bad. "


'Good artists copy; great artists steal' Steve Jobs

But it's been shown that the entries aren't crap when KyoAni is willing to spend a shitton of money on adapting them into anime, ones that were only given runner up or honorable mention prizes at best.

Essentially your positing that their way of thinking is: "YOUR WORK IS SHIT, now let's blow 150+k an episode on adapting this pile of shit that clearly does not deserve our prestigious 'We Are Better Than This' award." This would demonstrate that at least a few of the entries for the previous weren't crap, right? So why didn't those authors get the grand prize for their year?

It seems like they get the best of all worlds by only giving out the lesser prizes the majority of the years. They get the IP to the work, they make it seem like people can win, and they don't have to award the biggest pot of money.

It seems like they get the best of all worlds by only giving out the lesser prizes the majority of the years. They get the IP to the work, they make it seem like people can win, and they don't have to award the biggest pot of money.

People screaming SCAM when a contest doesn't award a grand prize winner? If all entries are crap then I sure would do the same. If you're looking for quality works why would you be encouraging sub standard crap.

There's a reason why there's an honorable mention. That's the "consolation" prize you guys are asking for.

Again put aside that notion of "IT"S ALL HUGE SCAM" for a second.

I think I've mentioned it before, but there are a lot, and I mean a LOT, of screenwriting contests that are really disguised means of getting ideas from contestants, and I only enter screenwriting contests that say, in the rules, that any stories submitted will belong to me and me alone. Hollywood is a shark tank for this sort of thing, and many aspiring screenwriters get wrecked who are too naïve to not guard their scripts from other screenwriters. Or executives. Or producers. Or directors.

If Kyoto Animation doesn't have such clauses, or at least its double-opposite (that it will not produce any material that's too close to a non-winning entry, which is a much riskier thing to do), and Japanese copyright law is anything like American copyright law in terms of intellectual property, then it can set itself up for lawsuits, especially of honorable mention winners continue to not get paid (or otherwise compensated) for getting adapted.

An easy way to re-organize this contest is to award winners, give them prizes of some sort, and state that even they might not necessarily get their stories adapted. Thus, you have the best of both worlds: People can enter in hopes of getting that prize, and Kyoto Animation can adapt whatever they feel like.

The other thing was that nothing was given out to the honorable mention category. Hence, that, too, is pointless if it's not used for anything.

In any case, even if your contest rules state that they will not adapt anything that doesn't get at least an honorary mention, and every submitted story belong to the person who wrote it (or at least submitted it), I would rather enter a different contest that guarantees winners. At least there, I can feel like I'm not doing something pointless. You cannot forget that contests like these are under competition too, and it's a basic strategy to try for the low-hanging fruit.

Maybe it's a difference in values between Japan and the west. After all, The Incredibles had a mention from the main character of how culture continues to find ways "to celebrate mediocrity." The backlash was so harsh that Brad Bird made Ratatouille partially as an apology.

aiem wrote:

Again put aside that notion of "IT"S ALL HUGE SCAM" for a second.

Any contest that keeps the rights of the artist's creations and doesn't award them anything, and then creates anime works of those creations is a scam.

They have made 3 adaptations of Honorable mentions. By this time, IF indeed they didn't pay them anything LIKE you are implying then those authors are downright stupid for letting this go. Nothing has happened so far so I guess we can say they've come to terms with this?

I get the feeling that the one who pointed out the guidelines got ignored on purpose. If indeed they follow the guidelines, they certainly would follow that part of the part where it says that royalties are given whenever merchandises are made.