When Popularity Goes Too Far

The “I have no awards” meme is funny, and I will not hear anything to the contrary.

Think the anime awards drama is finally dying down, but holy hell the outcry was the loudest it’s ever been this year. I don’t remember any of the other years having this much outrage, although I get why. For some reason, the 2024 awards was the most popular the ceremony has ever been, and apparently a lot of people weren’t clued in with the last seven awards that that thing was a popularity contest. Don’t understand how that’s physically possible at this point. It should have been super obvious by the 2022 awards when Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Demon Slayer won all the awards.

That year in particular I remember because of how laughably bad the circumstances were to give those three the dubs. JJK was finishing up it’s first season around the beginning of that year while Attack on Titan had just started it’s final season. Afterwards, we got a wealth of unique anime throughout the year from Odd Taxi to Sonny Boy to 86 to Mushoku Tensei to Vivy to Tokyo Revengers to…there were a lot, okay? Six months of freedom from those two big shonen so that more unique anime could shine, Demon Slayer was prepped to come back. But before it did, it released a TV cut of the Mugen Train movie just so you could get up to speed. When the year ended and awards season was upon us, people assumed that since JJK technically won AOTY in the previous year, Demon Slayer only aired material we’ve already seen on the big screen, and the My Hero hype died with the fifth season, we’d be getting a clean slate with Attack on Titan being the only veteran.

Oh how wrong they were. Not only did JJK and Demon Slayer qualify due to technicalities, but they were nominated for almost everything. And if you went to any comment section where people were open about sharing votes, you’d see that everyone was voting for Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Demon Slayer. All those unique anime that aired in the seasons they weren’t on? Tokyo Revengers being the new big hit while Mushoku Tensei had a strong cult following? Didn’t exist. The only anime people cared about were the two that aired in the beginning of the year and a recap that aired at the end of the year. Nothing worth watching aired in-between.

And I laughed hard. I laughed at how Crunchyroll’s current voting system could no longer contain the popularity of these big shonen to the point that the judge vote didn’t even matter anymore, because those three had grown far beyond what we were used to in terms of big anime. Some people blame Covid for the increase. I don’t know if that’s necessarily true, but the point is that you really should have known by then that not only are these awards based on popularity, there is nothing Crunchyroll can do to stop that without completely changing their voting system. And they have no reason to do so because as I said before, this awards show is the most popular it’s ever been with so many people loving these results. I mean they voted for them.

I don’t know if the judge-to-audience vote ratio has changed from the old 70/30 split since that awards ceremony because Crunchyroll stopped revealing that information in their rules. Honestly it wouldn’t surprise me if they did away with the judge vote entirely and everything was decided by audience vote, because it sure looks like that’s the case these days. It really astounds me how many people still think that the judges hold most of the vote power. They really don’t. If they did, the results would have been different years ago.

By the way, why is it that whenever I see complaints about Jujutsu Kaisen’s sweep, over 90% of the complaints are from Vinland Saga fans? There’s the occasional fan of something else which honestly comes off as even more pathetic, especially when it’s a Chainsaw Man, Demon Slayer, or Attack on Titan fan who complains. What, were the five voice actor awards not enough for the CSM fandom? Or the numerous awards that Demon Slayer and Attack on Titan won in the past suddenly invalid? But generally, you will see much of the hatred coming from the Vinland Saga fandom, and dear lord they are insufferable. Nowhere near as bad as the JJK fandom, but that’s because the JJK fandom includes girls who will literally bleed for Gojo. And of course all the spoilers they do.

Let me make something clear that I never really stated when I summarized the individual wins: I thought Jujutsu Kaisen S2 deserved to win Anime of the Year. I thought every single one of the nominations deserved to win, although I would have been really confused if Demon Slayer had won for this year when it couldn’t win last year. I don’t think all of the awards Jujutsu Kaisen got went to the right anime, but that’s normal when something sweeps that many awards compared to the competition. Plus Crunchyroll failed to make it clear how we were supposed to vote on JJK. I’ve seen some of the judges state that they didn’t know what they were nominating for either and it was just easier to believe that they were doing the entirety of S2.

I think every other award with maybe the exception of Horimiya’s win (I didn’t watch Missing Pieces, but a fucking DLC anime winning Best Romance? Something seems wrong with that) was well-deserved too. Can’t believe so many people got mad that Demon Slayer won Best Animation, let alone any awards, because for some reason that Swordsmith Village Arc is literally being treated like the Antichrist of Shonen. Anyone with a functioning brain would know that Demon Slayer is Gojo in that “Nah I’d win” meme.

The usual Demon Slayer awards sweep might be threatened by a not-so-well-received third season and some very out-of-place CGI creatures. But would Demon Slayer lose? Of course not! It’s always going to win Best Animation because it’s always at the top with that whether it be the fight scenes or the downtime scenes.

Also, you know Demon Slayer is going to stay popular forever when people keep dragging it for the pettiest things. How many of you guys want to bet that if Demon Slayer had gotten completely shut out, those same people would have bragged that it’s no longer relevant? I saw complaints that it should have deserved to win 0 awards instead of Vinland Saga even though the awards it won were categories that Vinland Saga was never nominated for and never even excelled at to begin with. Same with Spy x Family. Of course it was going to win “Must Protect”. That was literally the “Anya” award from it’s very conception.

Think the only other award I saw that was decently contested was Luffy winning Best Main Character, mainly because Thorfinn was nominated for that. Incidentally, I did notice that Mob Psycho 100 was barely talked about in the recent awards show compared to the others, which just goes to show how weak the Mob fandom has gotten over the years that they didn’t contest too hard that Mob should have won that category. But yeah, that was always going to be an uphill because Luffy is one of the most iconic anime characters ever. He’s one of my personal favorites. Of course I’m going to vote for him over Thorfinn.

When you get down to it, the huge Jujutsu Kaisen fandom is happy with the awards (except when it comes to Best Animation because they’re greedy motherfuckers) and they outnumber the Vinland Saga fandom, so these awards are ultimately a success. A lot of people aren’t happy about that, but have you seen Anime Corner’s awards? There was a bunch of backlash when Bungo Stray Dogs won Anime of the Year while Jujutsu Kaisen couldn’t even get in the top five. Basically, you’re going to get backlash no matter what in a popularity contest because it really is just a bunch of huge fandoms fighting each other.

But to sum things up: these awards have been and always will be popularity contests. I don’t see how you don’t know this by now. Only the popular stuff stands a chance, and unfortunately to the haters, Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen are the most popular anime around right now. And it wasn’t always that way. Demon Slayer popped off late into the first season and Jujutsu Kaisen popped off a little late into the manga. They used to be nobodies just like your favorite underrated anime, and now they’re not. What’s stopping your favorite anime from doing the same (obviously it’s luck, but luck doesn’t give everything a fair chance)?

I can already predict what the next big nominations are going to be for next year. Obviously, Attack on Titan, Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, One Piece, and Spy x Family are coming back. Frieren and Solo Leveling are pretty much locked in due to their popularity. Kaiju No. 8 might be huge given all the pre-hype that’s gone into it. I don’t know about Tower of God S2, and there’s probably a Bocchi-level surprise that could show up at any time. Dandadan won’t come out in time to qualify. Mashle will get nominated for it’s viral opening, but not so much anything else.

Oh what about all the popular isekai like Slime, Mushoku Tensei, and Konosuba? As well as Spice and Wolf coming back? Fuck ’em. They suck anyways. Although Spice and Wolf might win Best Romance over Dangers in My Heart…

By the way, check out those Youtube videos I put on here. They’re great and I totally didn’t write a bunch of nothing solely to promote them lol.