The awards that Yuri!!! on Ice won at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards — Best Boy, Best Animation, Most Heartwarming Scene, Best Couple, Best Opening and Best Ending. [Full results on this Crunchyroll Forums post — Photos from Crunchyroll]
What I (and hopefully others) think is wrong over this Crunchyroll Anime Awards brouhaha?
The winners of the Crunchyroll Anime Awards been announced, and the world is raging over the fact that majority of the awards went to the recently-concluded Yuri!!! on Ice.
For a bit of a context, Crunchyroll announced the awards last December 2016, opened the voting to the public early this month, released the results a few days ago and the rest was history (cue that orchestral Dean Fujioka track).
They are yet to officially award these titles on January 28, but even Crunchyroll’s Victoria Holden herself also reacted over the results, saying that another nominee series Mob Psycho 100 was “robbed.”
Let’s look closely at the structure — we have a very cool set of panelists (like Lauren) who as far as I understood have chosen the nominees based on what Crunchyroll’s 2016 library of anime titles has; and after the panel has selected its nominees, the tables are turned over to the people to decide which/who is the best.
One concern in the Awards is the choices — it’s limited to a few titles, unlike what Anime Trending does in its annual awards which includes all titles from that year (definitely tedious, but I really appreciate their efforts).
Yuri!!! on Ice’s hounding majority can be well justified — it aired during the Fall 2016 season, it broke gender conventions in anime which made an impact to the community at large, studio MAPPA animated it without any CG, and it has great LSS-inducing tracks (“HISTORY MAKER” and “YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE”. I repeat, it just recently aired.
The last concern is that when these things are mixed into one concoction, the results are inevitable and there will be a rift between the community, with the ones against the series being as vocal as the fans of Yuri!!! On Ice.
Even YouTubers such as Gigguk (based gigguk) and Joey the Anime Man (and more) are reacting through their videos posted days after the results.
Considering these things said, was the effect of the Anime Awards caused by the series’ impact to the community, or was it because of the fact that it was aired just recently?
Maybe both; but what I can tell you is this: The series is really liked by a majority, and that Crunchyroll can take into consideration other examples of such awards like Anime Trending who has experienced these kinds of things twice — to note, they have a “Best Fandom” category in their upcoming annual awards to recognize the the most well-behaved fandom who participated in their activity.
While I’m not promoting Anime Trending; or bashing Crunchyroll’s Anime Awards too much, there are just some things that out of our control and we just have to accept that these things happen so we can calmly, gradually move forward from this. That should be enough for my rant.