So What’s Winning In The 2024 Crunchyroll Awards?

Or the fifth edition of the Attack on Titan/Demon Slayer/Jujutsu Kaisen awards.

Well the Anime Awards are back again. And as usual, people on social media are getting mad over nothing because they haven’t accepted at this point that these are popularity contests you should not take seriously, nor have they accepted that you really shouldn’t judge how an anime is received based on Twitter/X. Or Facebook. Or Reddit. Or Anime Trending/Corner. Because at the end of the day, they only cover a small fraction of anime fandom. And IRL, anime fandom has millions of Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen fans who will sweep these awards until they end.

Spoiler alert, but not really: yeah those two are dominating the awards again. And I absolutely love it. I’ve said this many times, but the only reason I enjoy the Anime Awards in the first place is because I love seeing the monopoly that Attack on Titan, Demon Slayer, and Jujutsu Kaisen have on Western anime fandom to the point that it makes everyone outside those circles mad. The reason I’ll take that over diverse awards, which are fucking impossible to achieve outside of fanpolls honestly as the Emmys have recently shown with Beef, Succession, and The Bear winning everything, is because I find online anime fandom to be the most annoying thing in existence. There’s an annoying level of elitism and insecurity similar to the Spiderman fandom when the newest game won nothing at the Game Awards, and they overuse the words “mid” and “peak” to the point that using those words automatically means your opinion doesn’t matter.

You don’t have to accept it the same way I wasn’t in support of isekai dominating the anime charts, but you can’t deny that the gap between shonen and everything else is fucking huge and growing wider every year. We’re sort of hitting a ceiling in that regards to be fair given how a lot of newer shonen are failing to blow up, and the newest big hit, Solo Leveling, is not a shonen. It shares a lot of the same fandom, but it’s a power fantasy that has more in common with isekai.

But enough about that. Let’s get on with the awards where I go through each category, give my opinion on what I picked and what I think is going to win, and maybe talk about the category itself. You know, just like everyone else doing videos or write-ups on these awards. I’m not going in any particular order, but I’ll save Anime of the Year for last and I’ll group the similar categories together.

Best Original Anime

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Gundam Witch From Mercury

Who Do I Want To Win: Honestly don’t care

I do appreciate this category’s existence because so many of the popular anime these days are based on manga, light novels, and such, and it’s so hard to stand out when you don’t have a pre-existing fanbase for your show these days. Just wish that the original anime this year had been, I dunno, good? And not movies. Not that I liked Lycoris Recoil last year, but I understand why it was such a standout show on it’s own merits.

And I do understand Witch From Mercury to an extent, so if it wins this (which it most likely will because it’s been the critical darling on a lot of the big nerd sites and none of the other anime have any real popularity to them, so Gundam not exactly being big outside of Japan won’t hurt it’s chances here), I wouldn’t be surprised. But I would be disappointed. Not just because Witch From Mercury was a mess, but I’m so sick of Sunrise/Bandai Namco and their horrid combination of anime cliches and serious mecha storytelling. It was old by the time Geass did it. Now it’s just an ancient fossil we really need to keep buried at this point.

But to be fair, these other choices aren’t great either. Akiba Maid War is pretty much every yakuza story ever, just with maids because “funny”. Buddy Daddies honestly has an okay chance of winning, but I wasn’t a big fan of that one either. The action scenes looked awful and the tone was all over the place, which made it hard to get involved with the story of two badasses with generic dark pasts warming up to a little kid. Only thing kinda surprising was the evil mother genuinely wanting to turn around near the end, only for the power of plot to put a stop to that. Wasn’t interested in watching Birdie Wing, but I did hear it wasn’t as good as Season 1. Do It Yourself is good for slice of life fans and ignored by everyone else. I didn’t watch Marginal Service, but I’ve heard a lot of people laugh at how it got one nomination over My Hero Academia’s and Blue Lock’s zero noms because Marginal Service is apparently a “worst anime of the year” contender.

So I’m honestly voting for Gundam on this since it’s the most respectable out of this selection. It did have good production for those mecha fights. Just need to ignore how shit that story was.

Best Character Design

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Jujutsu Kaisen

Who Do I Want To Win: Oshi no Ko Hell’s Paradise

This is honestly one of the most subjective awards I’ve ever seen, because it really comes down to preference regarding what you want from a character design standpoint. Is it the characters you’re most likely to cosplay? Is it something that looks different from the traditional anime look? Does JJK S2 have great character designs because of how much it changed from the first season while still looking distinct? I dunno, but honestly nobody cares about this award because it always goes to either Demon Slayer or Jujutsu Kaisen regardless of who gets nominated.

Why? because this is one of those technical awards. And literally no one in the general audience gives a fuck about the technical awards other than seeing their favorite show on there and thus voting for it. They probably cared a bit more when Jojo used to be the defining example of character design. But Jojo has not been able to keep up with the popularity of it’s colleagues as of late.

Edit: Actually now that I think about it, Hell’s Paradise was the anime with all those standout character designs that ended up getting killed off in order to “increase the tension”. So if there was any award that the anime deserves to win, it’s this one. I do like Oshi no Ko’s designs because Mengo simp and all that, but I’m going to edit my choice the next day I can vote.

Best Animation

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Either Demon Slayer or Jujutsu Kaisen

Who Do I Want To Win: Demon Slayer

Traditionally, this award would go to Demon Slayer because it’s the anime that’s most well-known for animation and it always fucking wins. However, given the less positive reception of Swordsmith Village compared to previous entries, plus the CG fish, I could see it losing this year. Jujutsu Kaisen’s animation was really good this year too, minus the production issues that happened in the latter half. But I don’t think the latter half was nominated for this year, so it winning this would be pretty valid in my opinion. Surprised Heavenly Delusion wasn’t nominated for this category to be honest given it’s in the other technicals. Mob Psycho 100 looks good in motion, but if you pause the show, it doesn’t look nearly as interesting. I really love Trigun Stampede’s animation but we know it’s not winning. Chainsaw Man’s is mostly good, but it does have noticeable dips. Attack on Titan’s is good too, but I’d say it’s second worst out of these six with only Chainsaw Man being worse than it.

Anyways, I’m voting Demon Slayer even though it always wins this (yes I know it lost this to Mob Psycho 100 in the 2020 awards) because I just want to keep the meme going. Plus I know Jujutsu Kaisen is going to dominate this awards show this year so I’m going to put my support behind Demon Slayer on the categories it at least has a chance of winning since I prefer the two to sweep together rather than just one of them sweeping everything.

Best New Series

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Chainsaw Man

Who Do I Want To Win: Oshi no Ko

On paper, this is a really good category. Due to how prevalent the big shonen tend to be every awards ceremony to the point that people are very vocal about getting sick of them, this category is a good way to reward something besides the umpteenth part to Attack on Titan. In practice though? Whenever a new popular shonen is nominated, the other series will not win, even if they are more critically acclaimed for understandable reasons.

So in that regard, there’s no chance anything is beating Chainsaw Man this year because it is far more well-known than every other non-sequel show on here. Oshi no Ko is popular and has a lot of nominations, but it’s not as big as Chainsaw Man. Same with Bocchi. Hell’s Paradise and Zom 100 are less popular than those two. And Heavenly Delusion is not winning a single award from Crunchyroll in general.

Best Continuing Series

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: One Piece

Who Do I Want To Win: One Piece

Just give this award to One Piece and spare us any preconceptions that anything else has a chance of winning this category. Not even going to bother going into detail with this one. Nothing beats One Piece when it comes to being an ongoing series, especially since One Piece has gotten so popular this year to the point that it’s now being represented in the Macy’s Day Parade. I know people complain about this category because in theory it’s just giving a free award to the established shonen. But in practice, it’s just a free award for One Piece exclusively.

Best Art Direction

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Jujutsu Kaisen

Who Do I Want To Win: Don’t care

I really have no idea who thought this would be a good category to add to the anime awards. I don’t know if Crunchyroll has decided to change the vote distribution between judges and the public as of late (I doubt it personally), but if the public has a decent amount of say in what can win in this year’s show, then this is just a free award for Jujutsu Kaisen right here. Because who the fuck in the general audience knows what art direction is? Who actually thinks about lighting, set design, and all that in anime apart from when it’s noticeably bad? I don’t even know what I’d want to win in this category because I really don’t care much about art direction other than it not being shit.

Of these nominees, Zom 100 is what comes to mind first when I think of art direction because of how it colors the blood and such to represent Akira’s mood. But my problem with that is that that’s only part of the show. Plus we know Zom 100 isn’t winning, so fuck it.

Best Cinematography

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Jujutsu Kaisen

Who Do I Want To Win: Chainsaw Man

Again, I don’t know why you’re letting this be a popularity vote. Most anime fans don’t know what cinematography is. I don’t even think most of the voters in the r/anime and Anime Trending awards know what all those technical awards are. They just saw Bocchi on those categories, remembered how good it looked, and voted for it. And I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going to happen here too, except with Jujutsu Kaisen because, well, it’s Jujutsu Kaisen.

I do actually care about cinematography to an extent, so in that regard, I’d say Chainsaw Man would be my pick for this category. But I don’t think it’s beating either Attack on Titan or Jujutsu Kaisen. Honestly though, I love the cinematography for all of these shows. If any of them win, I wouldn’t mind.

Best Score

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Not sure

Who Do I Want To Win: Suzume

Said this many times in the past, but I generally don’t care for anime soundtracks. I’ll simp over a video game soundtrack any day of the week, but I can’t even remember how the music sounds in Made in Abyss, let alone any of the tunes from Jujutsu Kaisen. I do recall some of the background music in Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer, but my problem with those is that they’re just the same scores as previous seasons. Ghibli movies and anything helmed by Makoto Shinkai are exceptions, so obviously Suzume and the Radwimps would get my pick. Music anime like Bocchi would normally have the advantage too, but I don’t remenber any of the songs from Bocchi the Rock let alone like them. I do think Star T Rain from Oshi no Ko is okay, but I don’t know what the rest of the soundtrack even sounds like (edit: actually I just remembered Mother & Children, the music that played during the climax of the first episode. That was actually really good).

That said, Bocchi has a high shot of winning due to being a music anime. And the big shonen also have a high chance of winning because they’re the big shonen (especially Attack on Titan). Suzume and Oshi no Ko are definitely not winning this. Being a movie tends to put you at a disadvantage.

Best Film

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Suzume

Who Do I Want To Win: Suzume

I’ve never really been in support of the best film category because of how anime films are distributed outside of Japan. The big names will get showings within a few months, and even those will be limited. Whereas something like the new Digimon movie will only get one special screening and that’s it. As such, this is even more of a popularity contest than the other categories. And given that Suzume is far more popular and critically acclaimed than everything else on here, plus it’s the only movie on here to have a decent amount of nominations in other categories, I think we all know who’s winning this. Not that Suzume doesn’t deserve the award, but this competition is just not even close.

Like let’s look at these other nominees closely. A lot of people have seen the Black Clover movie and I could see that winning in a year that doesn’t have Suzume in it given how popular Shonen Jump films tend to be. There aren’t a lot of people who would say it’s a great film given that it’s non-canon fanservice like the My Hero movies, but because this movie gave Black Clover the animation the fandom felt like it deserved, that alone justifies it’s existence. Kaguya-sama First Kiss is a good sequel with legendary comedy bits and it definitely got watched a lot, but not to the level of “fourth highest grossing Japanese movie of all-time”. Most people didn’t know there was a new Psycho-Pass movie, so that’s out (it was decent, but not best movie material).

Blue Giant I’ll bet most people didn’t know until they saw it on here, plus it literally got fansubbed the day these awards came out. I saw it and it’s pretty good with some phenomenal-looking jazz scenes as long as you don’t mind the obvious CG and slow frame rate during certain sections. The final jazz scene in particular is a work of art. It was pretty obvious the movie was cramming a lot of the manga into a two-hour film, but I think it did a decent job. Easily my second favorite anime movie from this selection.

And finally there’s The First Slam Dunk. If this was Japan, that movie would have a much better chance of winning given it’s actually the fifth highest grossing Japanese movie of all-time behind Suzume and caused the manga to be a top ten seller last year after being dormant for so long. But the US didn’t really care much about this film and it had such a limited show, so that’s everything crushed by Suzume. For the record, I’m not a huge Slam Dunk fan, so I only found the movie to be decent. Great basketball and cinematography. Drama was pretty standard in my opinion.

So yeah, Suzume is winning this. And it deserves it because it’s an amazing movie.

Best Director

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: No idea, but it’s definitely not going to be Oshi no Ko or Heavenly Delusion.

Who Do I Want To Win: Ryu Nakayama

I guess if we’re adding more technical categories to the awards, then we might as well continue to let the public vote for this as well. This isn’t exactly a new complaint, but I might as well say it anyways: the problem with best director as a category is that nobody but hardcore anime fans care about directors. And even then, it’s not always incredibly obvious how much a director actually contributes to a project. While Chainsaw Man’s main director is obviously a big reason why it looks so Western compared to most anime, I don’t actually know how much he contributed to said style. Same with Jujutsu Kaisen’s new director. I can see how different it is from the first season, but I don’t know how much Gosho contributed. Keiichiro Saito I actually do know by name due to being in the director chair for both Bocchi and Frieren, and he clearly contributed a lot to both shows. The other three I’m not even going to pretend to care about.

In the end, I’m going to have to go for Ryu Nakayama. Because Chainsaw Man looking like a Western prestige TV show in anime form is a major reason why I really liked the show. I know Japan didn’t enjoy that style, but they also enjoyed the new Gundam, so fuck them. Don’t worry Bocchi fans. Keiichiro Saito will most likely be back next year.

Best Main Character

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Eren or Luffy

Who Do I Want To Win: Luffy

Some people probably know that Luffy is one of my favorite anime/manga characters of all-time. Normally it’d be unfair to vote for someone who’s been around for so long on these awards, but Luffy has never gotten nominated before because of how hard it is to get into One Piece despite it’s immense popularity. And I could actually see Luffy winning because One Piece is more popular than everything here, including Attack on Titan.

Mob and Thorfinn honestly have the best character arcs of their shows this year, but the problem is that they’re much less popular than everyone else, including Bocchi, so I don’t think they’re winning. I don’t see Denji winning this either. So it’s most likely going to be between Eren and Luffy. Eren has won this award before and could so again, especially since the Attack on Titan fandom don’t care that they’re only voting for the first special where Eren didn’t have a lot of screen time. But Luffy’s popularity cannot be denied. It’s definitely going to between those two, but if anyone else wins, that’s fine with me. I think all of these MCs are good in their own way.

Best Supporting Character

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Satoru Gojo

Who Do I Want To Win: Kana Arima

I like how you can tell that we’re only voting for the first few episodes of Jujutsu Kaisen in this awards ceremony with this category, because both Gojo and Geto were nominated for this award, and Nanami was not despite blowing up in popularity with the new season. Granted, I don’t know why Gojo is in this category and not the main character one since he was the MC of Hidden Inventory. It’s basically Anya from Spy x Family all over again right down to all of us knowing he’s going to win because he’s one of the most popular modern anime characters.

Really want Kana to win, even though I prefer Akane from Oshi no Ko. But we all know Gojo is winning. Everyone else doesn’t matter. Next category.

“Must Protect At All Costs” Character

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Anya Forger or Bocchi

Who Do I Want To Win: Pochita (for the memes) or Anya

I think we just need to accept that this is the non-gendered replacement for “best boy” and “best girl” at this point. Which is fine with me because I really don’t care about waifu/husbando awards. I think gendered awards are dumb unless it’s something physical like sports or something. That said, I don’t really care about “protecting someone at all costs” and I don’t think a lot of anime fans do either. Not as meme-worthy.

Anyways, Anya and Bocchi are the most popular adorable characters so it’s safe to say the winner will be one of them. I do like how Pochita is there even though he only has a physical form for one episode, but he’s obviously not winning. Miri is also a cute kid, but Buddy Daddies isn’t popular enough to win. Boji couldn’t win last year. And Suletta is definitely not winning.

Best Opening Sequence

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Idol or Kickback. Could also see Where Our Blue Is winning

Who Do I Want To Win: Kickback

I don’t like anime openings as much as most people do, but I do appreciate a good one when I see it. And I think all six nominees are good visually, although I don’t like the songs to Heavenly Delusion and Zom 100 too much. Also not big into Where Our Blue Is. If Specialz was nominated, I’d be more conflicted since I’ve listened to that song so many times on my Spotify and love the dark visuals to it. But in the end I’d still give it to Kickback because of all the movie references that opening contains.

Idol is viral and a lot of people love that JJK opening, but Kickback is in a league of it’s own. Think it has over 100 million views on the official Youtube video right now and the Denji/Power dance is a huge meme in of itself.

Best Ending Sequence

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Akari or Hawatari Nioku Centi

Who Do I Want To Win: Mephisto

Like most people, I very rarely watch ending sequences more than once. I just want to end the episode and a lot of the times, the songs just do not appeal to me. I barely even remember most of them. Like does anyone remember any of the JJK endings that aren’t Lost in Paradise? I couldn’t hum Akari if you put a gun to my head.

The only two EDs I remember are Koi Kogare, which I actually never skipped because something about that Man With a Mission song spoke to me, and Mephisto, which is just the fucking coolest ED sequence even if you discount how much of a huge meme it is in Japan. I love Queen Bee’s singing. I love how the visuals depict Aqua’s dark self-destructive mindset. It’s an amazing sequence that I always sat through and I hope it wins.

That said, I do know that Chainsaw Man ending is really popular so I could see it winning. It has crazy visuals, but it’s metal music, so obviously I hate listening to it. And I could see Akari winning just because it’s Jujutsu Kaisen. They didn’t list the artists who sang each song this year so you can’t vote for your favorite big name upon instantly seeing them on the voting page. I guess that’s fair.

Best Anime Song

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Where Our Blue Is, Kickback, or Idol

Who Do I Want To Win: Idol

Jesus fucking christ, do we really need this category? This just the best OP awards again except without the visuals and it gives you an excuse to put a song from a movie on here. You didn’t even put any of the songs from the actual Bocchi show as a nominee. You just put the song from the OP. What the hell?

But yeah, same opinion as the best opening sequence list, although I like Idol more as a song so I’m more inclined for it to win this while Kickback wins best opening sequence.

Best Action

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Jujutsu Kaisen

Who Do I Want To Win: Jujutsu Kaisen

Historically, best action has always gone to whichever one of the big action series has had the best fight scenes because they’re obviously the main reason you watch them. Now that the “best fight scene” category has been killed off (thank god), it’s even easier to concentrate on which anime sells itself on the action than before. And I’m just going to ask right now: do you really see anything other than Jujutsu Kaisen winning this category? The show that literally has the reputation of being one of the most pure stylized action anime in existence? Even if you were voting on just the first half, the majority of the JJK fandom is going to ignore that, and the fight scenes in the first half were still good, if a little lacking in the choreography department.

On a side note, I do find it hilarious that this is the first category that Bleach finally shows up in. And it’s obviously going to lose because turns out watching over 300 episodes of an old anime that wasn’t very good is too high a bar for most people to clear. Not that that’ll stop the Bleach fandom from deluding themselves that Crunchyroll has a bias against them. Second cour wasn’t great, guys. You can’t just conveniently ignore it and focus only on the first cour.

Best Drama

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Either Attack on Titan or Vinland Saga

Who Do I Want To Win: Vinland Saga S2

Attack on Titan and Vinland Saga have a history of winning this award so it stands to reason that either of them could so again. Oshi no Ko got famous for it’s drama, but the issue with that one is that it only makes up around half the show. Heavenly Delusion has great dramatic episodes, but they’re few and far in-between. The other two aren’t even going to be considered so no point giving them attention.

Not really much to say about this category other than I think Vinland Saga had the best dramatic scenes of the year. It’s anime with drama in it. Moving on.

Best Slice of Life

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Bocchi the Rock

Who Do I Want To Win: Bocchi the Rock

Guess we’re bringing this category back now that slice-of-life has become prominent again. Or to be more accurate, to give Bocchi the Rock a free award. Because while all of them are acclaimed to an extent, none of them have the popularity and uniqueness that Bocchi has.

Which one of these were nominated for Anime of the Year? Bocchi. Which one of these has multiple nominations across all the different categories? Bocchi. Which of these anime do you see cosplayed at conventions? Maybe you’ll see the occasional Horimiya cosplay, but Bocchi definitely outnumbers it. And honestly, I think Bocchi deserves it. It’s the only slice-of-life in this awards ceremony that’s popular for a reason.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Frieren was nominated and won this award next year. I think anything Keiichiro Saito directs (unless he chooses to join in the shonen bandwagon) is destined to win this award because he’s just really good at making visually interesting slice-of-life shows.

Best Romance

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: I don’t know

Who Do I Want To Win: I don’t care

Surprised they didn’t nominate Kaguya-sama for this, but for some reason, the judges don’t like Kaguya-sama as much as the audience does. Which is why it tends to not get nominated for a lot, yet wins most of what it gets nominated for. Meanwhile Aka Akasaka’s other adaptation, Oshi no Ko, gets more nominations in one award ceremony than Kaguya-sama has gotten in three. Although I’m pretty sure Oshi no Ko isn’t going to win as much as Kaguya did in it’s first year alone.

Wait sorry, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, best romance. I don’t watch anime romances much because I don’t like their approach to telling love stories. I find their casts to be bloated. I find them to lack imagination. I don’t like how we have to wait 12-25 episodes just so they can hug or hold hands. People keep saying I should give Dangers in My Heart a shot, but I don’t want to watch a fucking middle school romance where they’ve grown close enough to hug at the end of the first season.

The only one of these I finished was My Love Story with Yamada-kun, which was generic as fuck. No chemistry between the two leads and horrible shojo cliches that made it impossible to take seriously. And I’ve tried all of these except Tomo-chan (which I only know through memes) and Horimiya (because I didn’t like the original series), but ended up dropping them because they couldn’t interest me. I did finish Angel Who Lives Next Door, but that was because I thought it was so obvious and awful with it’s wish-fulfillment fantasy that I kept watching just to see how blatant it would get. No surprise it didn’t get nominated because it had no staying power whatsoever.

If there was an anime about two people getting together, only to break apart because they weren’t compatible like in the live-action adaptation of Doona, I’d watch that. I like Urusei Yatsura because it focuses more on wacky humor than romance while having the occasional sweet reminder that Ataru does actually care for Lum. If Aka Akasaka or Mengo Yokoyari writes the original source, I’ll check it out. If it’s incredibly awful in a unique way, I’ll burn through it.

But a romance where two unlikely people just meet, build chemistry, and fall in love? Unless they actually fuck in it, I’m just not interested.

Best Fantasy

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Demon Slayer

Who Do I Want To Win: …Honestly Demon Slayer. Because these choices suck.

Okay, can we just rename “the best fantasy award” to “The Demon Slayer award” at this point? Because is any anime going to actually beat Demon Slayer in this category until Demon Slayer ends? Maybe if Attack on Titan and Jujutsu Kaisen were nominated, but Demon Slayer is literally the only juggernaut amongst this selection, as well as the only one I really like. Hell’s Paradise has okay popularity and I didn’t hate it, but the others are just horrible. Mushoku Tensei, in addition to never winning in these awards and me dropping the show after it leaned too much into being a hentai, suffered from a noticeable popularity drop with it’s new cour. Mashle isn’t very popular as well as being hit-and-miss. Ancient Magus Bride has practically no popularity left and I got so bored with the show that I didn’t even finish Cour 1. And nobody cared about the Ranking of Kings spin-off.

Best fantasy has always been an interesting category for better or worse because both shonen and isekai can qualify as fantasy when you get down to it. The former tends to fall under urban fantasy while the latter is more high/medieval fantasy. And given how shonen is so much more popular than isekai, when Attack on Titan, Demon Slayer, or Jujutsu Kaisen gets nominated for this category, they always win. And since only Demon Slayer was nominated this year, it’s pretty much guaranteed to win. I could see Frieren winning next year, but that’s a long ways off now isn’t it?

Best Comedy

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Bocchi the Rock

Who Do I Want To Win: Urusei Yatsura

I already know Urusei Yatsura isn’t winning this one, so I’m just going to vote for in solidarity. It’s literally the hardest I’ve laughed at an anime in ages, but it’s also the one that people didn’t watch or like much. Now as for the category itself, logic would indicate that the funniest nominee wins, but that’s not always the case. Like all the other genre categories, people will probably just vote for their favorite show and not necessarily take into consideration whether or not it made them laugh the hardest.

That said, we can easily cross off Buddy Daddies, Urusei Yatsura, and Mashle. Zom 100 is honestly not big enough either. So it’s between Spy x Family S1 Cour 2 or Bocchi the Rock. Spy x Family is still pretty popular so I could see it winning, but Bocchi does have a big fanbase too. It’s not as big as Spy x Family’s, but I noticed that despite still being almost as popular as Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen, Spy x Family doesn’t have as much staying power. It only got five or so nominations this year compared to when it dominated last year, whereas Jujutsu Kaisen would be absolutely everywhere if it came back for the same season in a subsequent awards show.

Best Voice Artist Performance: (Japanese)

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Yuki Kaji

Who Do I Want To Win: Don’t really care, but I voted Mayumi Tanaka because of how iconic Luffy’s voice is to me

How many times has Yuki Kaji been nominated for this award at this point? His Eren voice is amazing, but he’s like Faker in that when I see him as a best eSports athlete nomination, I know he’s going to win. And he shows up all the time. Leaving the Yuki Kaji complaint aside, oh dear lord this category is biased af this year. Every single one of these nominees are main characters from the popular shonen. Surprisingly, Demon Slayer is not on here even though I think Natsuki Hanae’s Tanjiro is one of the best Japanese voice acting I’ve heard from a shonen. Definitely better than Denji’s or Gojo’s.

But in the end, I voted for Luffy because of his iconic voice. I feel like if Yuki Kaji doesn’t win this for what feels like the third time now, it’s going to be Mayumi Tanaka. One Piece is so popular that it would dominate these awards if the judges actually watched it and voted it for more categories.

Best Voice Artist Performance: (English)

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Johnny Yong Bosch

Who Do I Want To Win: Johnny Yong Bosch or Austin Tindle

Because I watch whatever I see first, when I watch an English dub, it’s most likely going to be a Netflix one. And they mostly released their anime in the Fall season this year, so we’re going to have to wait for Scott Pilgrim and it’s stacked Hollywood cast to be nominated. I know who some of these voice actors are like Abby Trott, but unless there’s some funny meme line like “hey bitches and bros and non-binary hoes”, I can’t judge their individual performance for that character in particular. That said, I have seen some people complain that Nezuko was nominated because they don’t consider her grunts and such to be sufficient voice work, even though it is. There’s a lot of emotion that goes into Nezuko communicating with just sounds you know. Not that I actually listened to the dub version of Demon Slayer because like One Piece, I find the Japanese voices too iconic.

Anyways, out of these shows, I’ve only seen Trigun Stampede dubbed, and I’ve seen clips of the Bleach dub. Both nominees were pretty good in my opinion. Given the limited audience and the fact that Johnny Yong Bosch has big name and role recognition compared to everyone else, I’m assuming his Ichigo is going to win. I would have preferred his Vash role get nominated since I saw more of that, but Johnny’s Ichigo is iconic to those who grew up watching Bleach on Adult Swim. Plus this is like one of the only awards Bleach (and Trigun for that matter) got nominated for. So yeah, I’ll root for Johnny.

Best Voice Artist Performance: (Castilian, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic and Italian)

Obviously, I can’t vote on any of these for two big reasons. First one is that I don’t watch anime in any other language other than Japanese and English so I wouldn’t know how to vote for this. Second one is that these categories aren’t available in the US. You have to live in France to vote for Best French voice actor and so on and so forth. That said, I do want to talk about these categories because they are still important at the end of the day. But because so many people don’t watch anime in anything other than Japanese, these awards are seen as filler and thus if an anime wins in this category but no other category like Ranking of Kings did, people will say that show won nothing.

That said, they will care somewhat when the big shonen sweep these categories. Which they always do because as I said before, most people don’t watch anime in non-Japanese languages. And when they do, it’s probably going to be the popular shows unless one of the languages is a huge meme (which it never is aside from German dubs of, you guessed it, popular shonen).

Anime of the Year

Who Do I Want To Win: Jujutsu Kaisen (for the memes)

Who Do I Think Is Going To Win: Jujutsu Kaisen

Alright, we’ve got the nominees for Anime of the Year. Happy with all six nominations and especially that Gundam Witch From Mercury did not make it on here. I know there’s some controversy regarding Demon Slayer getting on, but honestly I’ve seen backlash for all of these choices so it’s not worth getting into right now. And no matter what got nominated, they have no chance against Vinland Saga or Jujutsu Kaisen this year. It’s like how Alan Wake II and Baldur’s Gate 3 were the obvious candidates for Game of the Year while the other four choices were basically filler.

Vinland Saga definitely has critical appeal and if the majority of the judges vote for it, it could win. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how incredibly unlikely that is. There are over a hundred judges and it’s really hard to get a consensus when you have that many. If you paid attention to the other categories closely, you’ll notice that Vinland Saga S2 got far less nominations than the other five nominees, and that’s fully on not enough of the judges liking or watching the show. So the judge/audience split ends up becoming an audience-only vote in practice a lot of the time, and we all know that in terms of pure audience numbers, Jujutsu Kaisen is winning.

It has recency bias. It has massive popularity. It has a ton of fangirls. And most people don’t know or care that only the summer portion of Season 2 is eligible this year and it’ll come back next year. I saw fucking Geoff Thew vote for JJK as his favorite. I know he’s not a judge anymore, but there are a lot of people who even knowing the big appeal of Farmland Saga will vote for Jujutsu Kaisen. And just to ensure the meme goes on for as long as possible, I’m going to vote for Jujutsu Kaisen as well. Even if I prefer Vinland Saga S2, I’d rather JJK win and piss the Vinland fandom off.

And now for extra salt, let’s look at the number of nominations these shows received:

So final verdict in terms of the nominations: it’s pretty much the same as previous years. The big shonen once again dominate the entire spread. Vinland Saga honestly got less than expected and Chainsaw Man got way more than expected. 25 fucking nominations? Was there a single category that didn’t have Chainsaw Man in it? I also like how Dr. Stone is only in the foreign voice actor awards this year and actually got more noms than Bleach. For Cour 1 too. The cour that people actually liked about New World isn’t until next year.

Oh, and just to clear something up: I don’t actually know if Jujutsu Kaisen S2 is going to be nominated next year, but there’s a high probability they’ll allow it to get nominated for two years in a row like they did with S1 given the cutoff period. And it honestly doesn’t matter either way because like I said, the JJK fandom will just vote for the entire season this year, and will do the same next year if need be. They don’t care. They’re the most annoying manga fandom right now for several goddamn reasons.

Anyways, I hope Oshi no Ko doesn’t get completely shut out, but that’s literally the only thing I care about with the results. I know Demon Slayer is guaranteed Best Fantasy so it definitely won’t be shut out this year. And I know Jujutsu Kaisen is going to sweep, so look forward to seeing that at the beginning of March. I hope these Attack on Titan/Jujutsu Kaisen/Demon Slayer awards go on until at least the next decade.