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INTEREST: Made in Abyss, My Hero Academia Win Big at Crunchyroll's Anime Awards

SolHerald wrote:

Don't worry Little Witch Academia, you're a winner in my heart.

I didn't expect it to win anything, but I wish it had won Best Animation. LWA was a weekly delight for my Sakuga-heart. MHA was nice looking, but it was no ASV or LWA. Or even Made in Abyss. Which should've had that nomination in the first place rather than MHA.

xchampion wrote:

I'm sorry but My Hero Academia deserved to win all of the awards it won. There wasn't a category that it didn't deserve to be nominated in either. There might be choices you enjoyed more but MHA didn't rob any of the other nominees of wins.

In the most respectful way possible, I just have to ask, did you watch every other nomination in every category that MHA was in? I ask because the vast majority of the time when I've seen someone say that MHA was the most deserving of all of these awards, they haven't watched very many other shows at all, and are simply outraged that other people would dare to vote for one of those other shows that they themselves have not even seen. I don't know if that's the case for you, and if you've seen all of the other nominees, cheers! But that's what I've witnessed pretty widely. MHA fans are shonen fans, and shonen fans aren't necessarily into much else.
I hate to make this some kind of elitist thing where you have to have the proper Otaku Cred in order to vote, but you kind of should with this kind of awards system. People who have only seen a handful of shows throughout the year probably shouldn't be voting for the best shows of the year. The judges having weighted votes already makes it obvious that that is important, naturally.

#861208 wrote:

These are really American tastes though. I just hope that American businesses just getting into anime will recognize how many different tastes there are in Japanese fandom... but if the people who have been in anime the longest (Crunchyroll) don't realize that, then it would be hard. (Though I get the sense FUNi is aware of it. Viz definitely isn't, though...)

Most of the shows you named as popular in Japan are male idol group shows, which at times have great animation, but suffer from awful story writing. For these shows the fact that they are advertising for merch and music is even more apparent than for other shows. It basically falls into the same category as battle-themed card game shows targeted at a younger audience. This makes these shows very unappealing outside of a very specific sub-segment of (predominantly) female fans. The same type of show exists for a male sub-segment, in the shape of the Love Live or Symphogear series, which are more popular outside of Japan than their all-male cast counterparts mentioned above though.

It really shows how much of a fad AOT was with how it got snubbed this year.

Oh but MHA defintely deserved all the awards it was nominated it and I watched most of its opponents except for Dragon maid. Sakugabooru the site which celebrates animation had multiple articles on its production and many many clips from the show were uploaded there weekly. In term of pure sakuga moments the only challengers MHA had were Apocrypha, LWA and BBB&B. And even beyond action, MHA had a lot of great dynamic fun animation for its class moments with lots of personality to everyone's movements. From Mina small clumsy moments, to Froppy very detailed Frog movements, Deku little awkward moments and Iida frantic hand gestures. The anime really brought these characters to life. The show had soooo sooooo many details. Saying it doesnt deserves any of it's nomination is very very close minded and show some kind of negative bias against the show status I think.

Also saying that people should never even be considered for these kind of community events sound like the worst thing a anime event based on fans could do. Elitism is the worst part of any fandom. Keep that as far away as possible from a public event like the Anime awards.

My point is that I hope the Western side of the anime industry will stop acting like their tastes are the only thing that exists. And that I can't believe someone would say "the biggest night in anime" about something that doesn't involve Japan.
They didn't say the biggest night in U.S. anime fandom, they said in anime.

(That reply is actually exactly what I'm talking about. "Oh, it's not action? Here, let me explain to you why it's not valid. You were mistaken, aren't you glad I corrected you?" There are bishounen and bishoujo series that are just empty moe, but there are also really good, quality stories that happen to have bishounen and/or bishoujo casts, and many of them happen to not involve fighting (though some do, like Code Geass and Fate - which is why those are almost as popular in the West as in Japan.) I get the feeling that some Westerners think that the world needs Devilman Crybaby to "save" us from Love Live, and that's... so stupid. The beautiful thing about anime is that it can hold both and not have a conflict between them. I feel like Westerners want to make a conflict there, like some fans feel threatened by people who like shows they don't like, and they feel the need to say your tastes aren't legitimate if you disagree with them. I'm not saying that doesn't exist in Japan, just that there are enough sub-niches for every taste.)

*not insulting Devilman Crybaby - it seems pretty good and I'm glad something from Okouchi is getting some respect, especially with Resurrection coming soon <3

Crunchyroll was pushing this as "the biggest night in anime" - which just seems so ridiculously ignorant, to say that about an American company's American awards show for Japanese media, completely cutting out the Japanese fandom.

Yes, I know, I read every single one of them. There were many other shows, like Made in Abyss, and Little Witch Academia, and Apocrypha, and Maid Dragon that also received the same treatment. I'm certainly not denying that it was a well produced show, but it's just slightly less economic and more passionate as a production than most shonen action shows are, not the best animated show of the year. I can count a solid dozen shows that had more personality in the animation, and, while I don't think it's a terrible problem, there is an obvious bias toward thinking action=good animation, obviously rendering things like Made in Abyss and A Silent Voice and Dragon maid with an even greater handicap.
I never said that the show didn't deserve any of its nominations, it deserved a good number of them, and I genuinely do think it was one of the best shows of the year. It was well animated, well written, has fun characters, a genuinely engaging story, and all of that. But this was a very strong year, and while many categories are subjective, I would say it pretty unequivocally did not deserve Best Animation.

What? I'm not sure I follow, but assuming you mean that you shouldn't have some sort of minimum credentials to vote, I think it depends on what you're going for. Is this supposed to be a genuine Awards show? Do they want it to have legitimacy for marketing purposes? Is it supposed to highlight the best content of the year? Then having a minimum level of credentials is completely reasonable.
If it is meant to be a community-fan event just-for-fun that confirms the already obvious most popular content of the year, sure, lets leave it as it is.
Considering that they are already weighting judge votes, and presenting it like this... I'm leaning toward them viewing this as more of an official Awards ceremony and less of a community-fan thing just for fun.