Forum - View topic2025 ANN Readers' Choice Awards
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Flared
 Posts: 117 Location: United Kingdom |
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Infinity Castle not even being in the top 3 for the movie category is a surprise.
Not that I am complaining since the Dragon Maid movie was second 
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IronWish
 Posts: 245 Location: Ukraine |
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ApocaHotel FTW! It winning reader's choice award doesn't fully alleviate generational blunder of it not being present in ANN's editorial top 10, but I'm still glad it might put at least some fresh eyes on my AOTY.
Is there some future manga context I'm not aware of as an anime only, or is it one of the "progressive jenga" situations, where to improve freedom of self-determination and self-expression we force fictional characters into neat little boxes based purely on what we feel they should be based on their looks? |
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Saeryen
 Posts: 1168 |
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Disappointed but not surprised that none of my picks won. In my honest opinion, Princession Orchestra at least deserved to be in the top 3 of most underrated. It’s really excellent.
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kgw
 Posts: 1543 Location: Spain, EU |
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As the one who nominated Clevatess for the 'non-binary role', I'm pleased that ANN readers agreed! I had a lot of fun watching Clevatess trying to understand how human beings 'work'.
I also nominated Clevatess for 'Best Villain' — shouldn't it be 'Worst Villain'? — because killing the heroes and the main character (she got better), and destroying the capital city with all its defenders, doesn't make anyone 'the good guy'. It is just, there were even worse people in the series. Last edited by kgw on Mon Jan 12, 2026 12:01 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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IronWish
Posts: 245 Location: Ukraine |
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Well, yeah, there is "underrated" as in "if you deep enough into anime to vote for something at ANN, you've most certainly seen someone praising it to high heavens, but this show doesn't have mass appeal" and then there is UNDERRATED as in "barely anyone here has watched it, most have never heard of it, and out of people who've watched it half didn't vibe with it, but it's really, really great". And shows from the second group can't really win any kind of vote-based contest. But if I were to make my most UNDERRATED list of 2025, top 3 would be Maebachi Witches, Princession Orchestra and See You Tomorrow at the Food Court. |
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FilthyCasual
Posts: 2722 |
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Tatsuya Katou got robbed for his stellar work on Dr. Stone. The unearthly horror of the petrification themes is unrivaled, let alone the grand adventure evoked by the rest of the soundtrack.
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MiniMarps
 Posts: 187 |
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This occurred to me during the nomination process, and I’m reminded of it again now, but isn’t a fan poll for “most underrated” sort of a self-defeating endeavor? The more people call something underrated, the less underrated it becomes. By definition, the most-popular answer cannot be the correct answer.
I'm not suggesting the category should be done away with going forward (because it can be a fun talking point), but perhaps it would benefit from stricter/clearer guidelines? I remember it being left vague during the nomination process, which invited quite the mixed bag of picks, in terms of how highly or lowly rated they were in the first place. I'm not bashing Apocalypse Hotel -- that isn't what this is about -- but it has an arithmetic mean rating of 8 on this site, which is a higher rating than most anime I watched in 2025, and higher than some of my all-time favorites. I get that this is relative, to an extent, but I definitely would not consider that underrated at all, personally. |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 3003 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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"Underrated" doesn't literally mean that it's rated lower than it should be on a numerical value. It means that it's quality is in direct contrast to how many people know of it. Saying "By definition, the most-popular answer cannot be the correct answer" sounds clever, but by that same logic then that means that nothing is truly underrated, because the term "underrated" is then contradictory. Something had to be appreciated in some fashion in order to be underrated, and all the "most popular" pick for "Most Underrated" means is that it's the title that the voters wish other people would check out more (& isn't one of the big name popular titles) than anything else. It's the "most popular of the least popular", more or less. Otherwise the "Most Underrated", from the most literal definition, would simply be the anime that no one cared about at all, i.e. not the most popular & not even the most hated, simply the most... existent. I guess one could try to argue that the category could have been titled something like "Most Underappreciated", or maybe even "The Best of the Rest" (which I literally just thought up, but I actually think sounds kind of neat), but "Most Underrated" is something that grabs people's attention more than the others. |
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Saeryen
Posts: 1168 |
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Rather than a judgement in morality, I took “Best Villain” to mean how engaging the character is in any way. How sinister they are, how sympathetic they are, how complex they are, how fun to watch they are - several things that make a villain engaging. In my mind there are two main types of villains: the ones who we hate as characters but love as villains because they make the overall show work well, and the ones who are complex and possibly sympathetic who make us think a bit about morality and what drives people to villainy. |
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ZelosZoidberg
 Posts: 1072 |
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Wow none of my picks won. Closest was Movie (Dragon Maid). Am I out of touch?...Nah I just like certain things better. The Children aren't wrong.
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Nipasu
 Posts: 181 |
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You mean "No, it's the children who are wrong." 
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harminia
 Posts: 2221 Location: australia |
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My friends and I discussed this very idea during voting period and decided that that means Aquarion is the actual most underrated anime since (last I checked at least) it was at the bottom. |
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MiniMarps
Posts: 187 |
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Lol. I'm not suggesting the entire concept of "underrated" is paradoxical; I'm just suggesting that perhaps an open-ended fan poll isn't the most sensible way to go about determining it. Perhaps next year they should make it so that shows above a certain threshold on this site's ratings can't qualify, or something? Because the way it was, you could've theoretically nominated the highest-rated anime of 2025, and it probably would've gotten a lot of votes, simply because there would have been a lot voters who considered it their favorite among the nominees. This didn't happen, thankfully, but that it theoretically could have kind of makes it a moot point imo. |
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 3270 Location: Email for assistance only |
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There's a review process for nominees in that category for that exact reason, so it'd have to slip past a human before it got to the voting phase. There's some very light oversight of nominees to ensure something like Demon Slayer doesn't get nominated for "Underrated."
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MiniMarps
Posts: 187 |
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Ah, I see. I stand firmly by my original point though, to be clear: there ought to be strict and explicit guidelines regarding what is and isn't lowly-rated enough to be considered "underrated." Personally, I may have nominated something other than what I did, if I'd have realized shows as highly-rated as Apocalypse Hotel were eligible. |
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