Crunchyroll Posts Nominees for Anime Awards 2024: Fans Are Unhappy Once Again

Summary:

• Crunchyroll hosts Anime Awards every year, and each time, fans find reasons to complain.
• The rules that make anime eligible are convoluted and make no sense to those unfamiliar with the ceremony.
• A few very popular series seem to dominate the awards.
• Anime that clearly deserve nominations in some categories were not nominated for them for no apparent reason.
• The “popularity contest” notion is mostly true — and that’s very much on purpose, as it brings Crunchyroll more money.

Crunchyroll’s Anime Awards might be the most important award ceremony for otaku every year. While nowhere near in prestige to official awards like Oscar and Emmy, they are focused on anime alone. This means they attract the attention of Western investors — and, of course, are a heated topic of debates for anime fans all around the world.

Every single year since 2017, Crunchyroll hosted these awards annually. However, it has become a trend in recent years to complain about them. Every year, fans are generally not happy with the selection of anime nominated for the awards — and the upcoming ceremony is no exception.

Weird and arbitrary rules

One thing that fans can’t get over is the way the series are selected. Logically, Anime Awards 2024 would include anime from the year 2023. Except that’s not really the case: the eligible series have to have aired from Fall 2022 to Summer 2023. This makes the awards extra confusing to those unfamiliar with the rules.

This becomes even more bizarre when you realize that one of the series nominated for many categories is Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2, which went on to finish in Fall 2023. Moreover, the Shibuya Incident Arc, the main part of Season 2, didn’t even start until the very last weeks of Summer 2023.

This inclusion seems somewhat arbitrary to many — especially to viewers that expect Jujutsu Kaisen to win most of these nominations. Questions of its eligibility for the next year also arise, with some people even joking that it’s going to win every award possible for two years in a row.

Nominations are largely dominated by the same shows

Another thing that makes many fans not take the awards seriously is how limited the selection of anime actually is. Every year, the awards essentially feel like a “popularity contest” which places series that are hyped over those that are not — regardless of their actual quality.

This year, it feels even worse than it was before. Six series seem to dominate the nominations: Chainsaw Man, Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Oshi no Ko, Bocchi the Rock! and Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin).

These shows were all obviously very relevant during the past year. However, what makes the awards so disappointing is the fact that every category has only 6 nominations. With almost all of them (save for original anime — all of these are adaptations) featuring multiple anime from the aforementioned list, many fans are wondering what the point of the awards is at all.

A lot of bizarre inclusions and exclusions

A lot of otaku are upset about their favorite anime being excluded from categories they would normally expect them to be in. Heavenly Delusion (Tengoku Daimakyou), for example, is not nominated for either art direction or animation.

Onimai: I'm Now Your Sister! (Oniichan wa Oshimai!), arguably one of the best-animated shows of 2023, is not nominated for anything at all. These exclusions make fans wonder how the nominations were even decided.

Expectedly, no anime series that were not released on Crunchyroll made their way in. With most of the big hits of the year being available there, this seems like a non-issue. However, this only extends to TV and ONA series — and movie nominations raise some questions as well.

One of the “best film” category nominations is The First Slam Dunk. While the franchise is iconic and definitely deserves a mention, many fans had no way to watch the movie in the first place: it hasn’t had a Blu-Ray release yet and isn’t available on streaming. Obviously, many countries didn’t receive any screenings.

Some of the bigger series are snubbed as well

The “popularity contest” and “shounen awards” labels attributed to Crunchyroll Anime Awards definitely aren’t just baseless criticisms. It feels like the awards focus on the circular discussion of the same couple of popular anime — to the detriment of other fandoms.

Even big hits like Hell's Paradise (Jigokuraku) and Vinland Saga (Season 2 of which aired in 2023) have far fewer nominations than fans wanted. While they can still win their awards in some categories, they will ultimately have less attention dedicated to them than expected, so fans are preemptively disappointed.

Hell's Paradise isn’t even among the nominations for the biggest award, “Anime of the Year” — which feels like a travesty. Some fans joked that the only reason Vinland Saga was nominated for that is because the finale of Attack on Titan was a special and not a full season. The fans’ bets on the Anime of the Year title are split between Chainsaw Man and JJK S2, it seems.

Not much can actually be done

Anime Awards are obviously designed to make money — which is the goal of any business. Crunchyroll is not an exception. It’s obvious they will nominate anime that are popular — that simply brings more attention and, in turn, revenue.

Moreover, if something unpopular won “Anime of the Year”, there would be even more complaints. It’s impossible to appease the entire audience, so the enfranchised fans and those with more unusual tastes will obviously feel left out.

Yes, Crunchyroll Anime Awards could be improved a lot. The selection could have been much better, and the rules could have been less convoluted and arbitrary. It’s kind of hard to make them anything other than a popularity contest, though.

After all, if something is popular with the general public, it probably will be popular with the judges as well. There are no doubts there are many anime that deserve to be at least nominated, but ultimately, something mainstream will probably win, and that’s perfectly fine.

Source: www.crunchyroll.com