You know, I poke fun at the Crunchyroll anime awards a lot. I really do but, sometimes me picking fun at it is just me hiding thinly veiled resentment. It’s one of those things that I just–it annoys me. I’m sure those of our followers know that we host our own anime awards and have participated in the WordPress anime awards in the past, and while I’m not saying those are superior–the logic behind them is quite different. With these indie-style anime awards, there’s a focus on a celebration of anime as much as possible. They try to highlight the great many, and especially new, series that premier over the course of a year. At the end of the day, our You Can’t Know Awards are just an opinion we have, but we just want to mention all the great anime we’ve seen throughout the year. It’s more like shoutouts and highlights, which is why we make it so comprehensive. But that’s our train of thought. Most awards aren’t like that. And Crunchyroll is no different than most awards. Which is why I have a problem with it.
See, I’m sure you’re familiar with the past few years of anime awards, and I’m sure you’re aware of the complaints that Crunchyroll has historically gotten. That complaint? That they tend to nominate the same, extremely limited, anime each year. So some years you’ll see anime like Demon Slayer dominate or Attack on Titan, or whatever big anime they own the rights to. Some people have problems with the fact they only nominate anime they license, but honestly, I don’t mind it as much. After all, it’s the Crunchyroll anime awards so of course it’s only highlighting shows they picked up. But I do agree that they should not let anime dominate the categories. I don’t want to go see the list of winners and just see one or two anime for everything. It’s like, why do I need to be told repeatedly how good a single anime is? Winning one or two categories? Sure. That’s fine. Sweeping it? Eh, not exactly exciting. I more often than not wonder why I’m looking through the awards (or in the case this year, watching it).
But hey, I still watch Crunchyroll awards in hopes it will change. Spoiler alert: it did not. Despite some fun changes to the anime awards, such as the inclusion of some of my fave streamers Valkyrae and Sykkuno as award announcers, the overall awards felt lackluster to me. The ceremony? Looked beautiful, fun, and elegant. The winners? Meh. While it was exciting to see Cyberpunk win Anime of the Year and Lycoris Recoil win best original anime (which we will say is actually a pretty damn good but still controversial choice), the rest of the awards was SO disappointing. Pretty much every category went to either Spy x Family, Attack on Titan, or Demon Slayer. Listen, I know that the awards are voted on by the masses, but do they really need to nominate the same damn shows in each category? They could limit the nominations at the least. But no. No they do not. It’s very annoying.
I will say also that even though yes, One Piece probably does deserve the best continuing series…it also almost feels like a cop-out? Like I get it. Everyone loves One Piece, it had an epic latest season, and a lot of good comes out of it. But also…it’s been going for like twenty years? We all know it’s beloved already. It’s been beloved. I just wish that it focused on something that was newer and had gotten a 2nd or 3rd season not like…I don’t even know how many seasons of One Piece there are. Part of me wishes Crunchyroll did two anime awards, or created categories to distinguish brand new anime vs. anime that have been running and been popular. With that addition and the cap on nominations, I think the Crunchyroll awards could be a little less BS every year. But then again, that’s just my opinion and my own rant. To each their own though. And at least we got to see Syk and Rae dressed all fancy-like!
Stay weebtastic,
xoxo
Luna
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