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SinisterOracle
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Joined: 13 May 2023
Posts: 858
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2026 10:26 am |
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| Quote: | | It's a marketing gimmick to brand anime as an entire medium with the Crunchyroll logo. |
That’s exactly what it boils down to. It’s also a popularity contest for overwhelming primarily shonen anime. Nothing more. I’d never take it seriously, nor would I ever waste my time watching it unless drastic changes were first made.
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Beatdigga
Joined: 26 Oct 2003
Posts: 5145
Location: New York
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2026 11:22 am |
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Rule of thumb is unless your award show is judged solely by a third party like the institutional awards are, there’s always going to be some self promotion and other advertising. It’s just more obvious with something like this or the Game Awards than the Oscars, because the latter has institutional history and dare I say, snobbery that gives it credibility.
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TJ_Kat
Joined: 11 Jan 2007
Posts: 880
Location: Saskatoon, Canada
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2026 12:23 pm |
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I've honestly never taken these awards seriously specifically because of how skewed they are towards Crunchyroll. Even ignoring whether the judging favours Crunchyroll or not, the fact that you have to be a Crunchyroll subscriber to vote means there is an undeniable bias towards Crunchyroll shows and that it really is the Crunchyroll Anime Awards, not the Crunchyroll Anime Awards.
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Wilco499
Joined: 15 May 2022
Posts: 21
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2026 12:45 pm |
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| Quote: | | Approximately 65 per cent of The Game Awards' audience is estimated to be between the ages of 13 and 34. The Crunchyroll Anime Awards, whose audience demographic skews even younger, with an estimated 8 per cent falling into that same 13-to-34 bracket, is operating in the same “white-hot” territory. |
I assume 80 per cent.
but anyways, it is interesting to see how the game awards I think are taken far more seriously by their respective industry with even some CEOs crashing out over outcomes (e.g. Game Science) while the anime industry as you wrote in your column, gets polite eye-rolling from the industry. They have somewhat similar formats (Fan vote mixed with jury, and large amount of awards), and are of a similar age, yet they have different trajectories with their respective industries.
One could say that the Game awards industry is more "Western" but that doesn't hold up to scrutiny with the Game Science CEO thing from a couple years back. So I'm guessing it is more due to one of the fixes you proposed in the article. That is the Anime Awards are hosted and made by Crunchyroll and not some third party when it really should be. Like why would you announce your new anime project during the Anime Awards unless you are working with Crunchyroll. If the Sony wants (and that is the big question) these awards to be taken seriously that is the most important change, and I feel the advertisement dollars will make up for the loss of control.
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Greed1914
Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 5352
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2026 12:55 pm |
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At least for Sony, the numbers seem to matter more than the credibility. This year, some of the anime youtubers I watch were sponsored by Crunchyroll specifically to promote awards voting. It stands out considering that Crunchyroll does not otherwise sponsor them.
The dynamic between game publishers and the Game Awards where the funding comes from all those ad spots wouldn't work for the Crunchyroll Awards unless it spun off from the company. TGA has no skin in it when it comes to where/how a game is sold. It just collects the ad spend and shows the trailers. Nobody with a deal for another streaming platform is going to plug their show on a direct competitor. Production committees also aren't going to spend ad money somewhere that may or may not be the one that buys the rights. Considering how licensing deals have tanked because someone said they were in talks, I could see the committees not wanting to do anything that could be taken as an implication of a deal until it was done.
The part about moving to Japan to host the awards, but then dropping Japanese language support kind of says it all. Crunchyroll would like for this to be THE awards show for anime, but if it can't separate it out from its own streaming service, that is not going to happen.
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Glordit
Joined: 11 Sep 2020
Posts: 1184
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2026 1:29 pm |
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| SinisterOracle wrote: | | Quote: | | It's a marketing gimmick to brand anime as an entire medium with the Crunchyroll logo. |
That’s exactly what it boils down to. It’s also a popularity contest for overwhelming primarily shonen anime. Nothing more. I’d never take it seriously, nor would I ever waste my time watching it unless drastic changes were first made. |
Even if it was a free-for-all vote for you 10 best anime of the year, the battle shonen or hyper popular returning show would still win. That's just the reality of statistics.
I'd at least take it more seriously if they split everything into genre's and had winners there, instead of letting them spill over into each other.
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Rogerdgls
Joined: 22 Jun 2024
Posts: 12
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2026 2:14 pm |
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Been watching anime for 15 years and jw wth is Crunchyroll anyways? Heard that name a couple times but never bothered to look into it lol.
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Aerdra
Joined: 02 Feb 2022
Posts: 554
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2026 2:45 pm |
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I see no need for centralized award ceremonies, for anime or anything else. They exist to give a platform to a small number of critics over the opinion of everyone else. If they all would fade into obscurity in the age of the internet, that would be natural.
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Top Gun
Joined: 28 Sep 2007
Posts: 5293
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2026 3:08 pm |
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| Rogerdgls wrote: | | Been watching anime for 15 years and jw wth is Crunchyroll anyways? Heard that name a couple times but never bothered to look into it lol. |
Crunchyroll started out as an illegal anime streaming site with a dumb name, got venture capitalists to dump money into it to become a legal streaming site, got really big, got bought out by Sony who already owned Funimation, and then had said dumb name replace Funimation's branding. Now they represent a nigh-monopoly in the US and just about everything wrong with the modern domestic anime landscape.
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harminia
Joined: 24 Aug 2015
Posts: 2220
Location: australia
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2026 6:09 pm |
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The polite eye-rolling is definitely the vibe. Heck, even some impolite eye-rolling.
I've voted in a couple of the years but I don't think I ever watched the ceremony (part of that may be because of time difference though!), except for maybe one tiny bit?
The initial nominations are pretty much always just the popular shows anyway, so the more niche (but great) stuff I watch never gets a nomination, or if I'm lucky maybe gets one nomination somewhere where it will be completely ignored by everyone.
So it's kind of like, why bother? The big name shounen or token flavour-of-the-week series will get the awards. Anya will win best girl or must protect or whatever. I don't watch the big name shows (or many shows at all these days) so it's not relevant to me.
Also, I don't know e-celebrities so I don't really care if whatsername from Twitch is on stage.
I'm clearly not the right audience for this but I feel like a lot of people around my age probably feel a similar sense of weariness regarding it.
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garfield15
Joined: 06 Apr 2009
Posts: 1557
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Posted: Wed May 06, 2026 4:53 am |
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| Quote: | | I keep seeing people call it "the Oscars of anime," |
I have literally never seen anybody call it this.
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