Results of American Anime Awards

I know I’m a bit late on reporting this, but I still want to post my thoughts and opinions. After finding out the winners of the first American Anime Awards, I can say that I was a bit pleased, but I can also see room for improvement…

First of all, I’m sure many of you know that Full Metal Alchemist blew away much of the competition by winning 5 of the categories. I’m not saying it didn’t deserve this glory…it’s a masterpiece of a series and definitely one of the best to have come out in many years. But winning 5 out of just 12 categories? FMA is great, but I think other series’ deserved a chance to shine too. Which leads to my first suggestion of a limit to how many categories one series can win (with 12 categories, let’s say no more than 2). I think a more variety of winners would portray the anime genre in general as diverse as it truly is, to the American public. Of course, this only happened because FMA was listed in so many of the categories. This now leads to another suggestion of mine…more possible nominees per category.

When I first looked at the nominees on the original voting ballot, I just couldn’t (and still can’t) understand how they were determined. I thought it would only be series’ and movies that came out in the past year, 2006, but when I saw names like Akira, Ranma, and Kenshin on the list, I guess that wasn’t the case. So if age of a series isn’t a factor, what is? Why weren’t immensely popular shows like Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop put in the Best Short Series category, while a lesser known series like Gravitation was? And how were those few anime theme songs picked out of the hundreds that have been released? I don’t understand it all, but I really think a lot of fans would have been more impressed if more series’ were picked as nominees. I’m not saying all possible series’ should be listed, but c’mon, out of all the hundreds of anime theme songs, short series’, voice actors, manga, etc., to only narrow it down to a few (seemingly random) nominees on the voting ballot just doesn’t seem like they were that serious about the whole thing.

Another less important suggestion is to maybe have more categories. I think categories based on genre would’ve been cool, such as Best Mecha, Best Shounen, Best Shoujo, etc,. Also, since nominees were obviously not based on just 2006 releases and seemed to include any series that’s ever been released in America, why not have year-based categories such as Best Series of the 1990s, Best of 2002, etc,.

Well, I’m sure I’m not the only fan who has these kinds of suggestions. But this is only the first American Anime Awards, so hopefully the people who put the whole thing together are open to suggestions from fans, and will improve on it next year. Also, it seems a lot of people are a confused as to what the point is of the American Anime Awards…why are Americans holding an awards ceremony for Japanese shows? Well, I guess the whole purpose is to celebrate the fact that these titles have become so popular outside of Japan…that there’s something special about them that makes Americans want to give them an award. I know there are videos of the awards ceremony out there, and I thought I would watch it, but I sort of changed my mind. I’ve already seen some screencaps from the ceremony and I know who the winners are, so I don’t really see the point in spending an hour watching it. I think another thing that made the awards seem a bit strange is the fact that the actual Japanese creators of FMA and the other winners, weren’t present at the ceremony to accept the award. As I said, I didn’t actually watch the ceremony so I don’t if there were any Japanese creators there or not, but from what I heard, you had Americans accepting awards for something that they didn’t create…well, maybe in a few years if the American Anime Awards becomes more of a hit, the Japanese creators might take it seriously too and actual come to the ceremony.

Well, in conclusion, though this first year seemed a bit one-sided, I think the American Anime Awards has potential in the future. But in order to showcase the variety of different anime that’s out there, I definitely think a more variety of winners, nominees and categories is needed. Hopefully fan opinions on this year’s awards will help make next year’s better ^_^