American Anime Awards: Room to Improve
Posted on February 26th, 2007 by calaggie in Commentary, NewsUPDATE (3/2/07 6:30PM PST): I posted some corrections regarding the streaming issue and gave some impressions after watching it.
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I was watching the Oscars last night and thought of the American Anime Awards that were awarded the night before on Saturday at New York Comic-Con. While I am glad that the presentation is more tasteful than other genre-based award shows like the Spike Video Game Awards, I have four suggestions on how to improve the AAA’s (the Anidubs?) for next year.
Suggestion 1: Limit the Eligibility Period
The seemingly only criteria for eligibility is that an anime or manga must be available in the US during the previous year (e.g. 2006). This means that an anime could be nominated in multiple years if it gets a thinpack release in a different calendar year than its debut on the US market. This multi-year nomination problem also affects manga because something like Fruits Basket (the winner for best manga) with more than 10 volumes will likely have its volumes released over a number of years. In an interview with ANN, Milton Griepp from ICv2 was asked about this. Below are both the question and Griepp’s response:
Why are there so many anime series on the ballot that have been available for years? Is the ceremony celebrating the entire history of anime in America or are these awards for series released or broadcast in 2006?
The awards are to celebrate the best anime in America in 2006, as selected by fans. In order to be eligible, the anime had to be available on TV, in theaters, or on DVD during that period. Again, this method was chosen to make the process as open and inclusive as possible; rather than making an arbitrary distinction based on whether an anime was first seen during 2006, the nominators and voters will decide what’s best from everything that was available last year.
It did seem to me that some of the nominations were reaching too far back in an attempt to recognize everything from before last year. For example, Johnny Yong Bosch was nominated for Best Actor in a Comedy for doing the redub of Akira for Geneon’s initial DVD release in 2001. The movie was originally released in the US by Orion on VHS in 1989 and the film’s Signature Series release was back in 2004 so I don’t know why it should be eligible except for the “if it’s on the shelf” justification. (Note: The classification of Akira as a comedy was likely due to nominations being submitted and tallied during the holiday season so it’ll probably get better in future years when the process is smoothed out.)
Now that they’ve gotten it out of their system for the initial awards process, hopefully next year’s nominees will be based on works released in the 2007 calendar year. FMA won five awards this year and FLCL got two so they have had their due and should not be on next year’s ballot in order to let in some new blood.
Suggestion 2: More Categories
Even though there were twelve categories, there were a couple of others that I feel should be included next year. The first addition would be best soundtrack, inspired by the Academy’s award for Best Original Score. Adding this category would not only recognize the Japanese composers, but also acknowledge that BGM can make an anime better or worse much more than a single theme song can. It would also introduce fans to composers who are not named Kajiura or Kanno, such as Taku Iwasaki, Shinkichi Mitsumune, and Yoshihisa Hirano.
The second suggestion, Best OEL Manga, is not as clearcut as the first in terms of implementation because, according to the organizers, “anime and manga are defined, for purposes of this award, as animation or comics, respectively, originally produced in Japan”. Thus OEL manga would instantly be disqualified under that current definition. It could be amended in the future but I doubt it.
Other possible but more shaky suggestions I came up with include Best Character Design (hmm, might be too subjective) and Best Yaoi Manga (don’t know if they would want to toe the line with this…)
Suggestion 3: Limit One Citiation Per Nomination
The indefinite article ‘a’ in the phrase “Best Actor in a Comedy” indicates that a singular work is being refered to when it is uttered. Unbeholden to grammatical procotol, two people (Liam O’Brien and Luci Christian) had three different series next to their names in their respective comedy categories and two others (Crispin Freeman and Johnny Yong Bosch) had each had three listed in the Best Actor nominations.
Suggestion 4: Widen Reach of Video Broadcast
Not everybody has digital cable and I doubt many people sat at their computers to watch IGN’s live stream of the ceremony. The whole thing will air on March 23rd on Anime Network but I wish that video were more accessible to fans. Put it up online either for download or streaming after the first TV broadcast. Heck, it might even be feasible to do that THIS year. Luckily, that date falls during spring break so I’ll have a chance to watch it and maybe type out a review. Now I just have to figure out how to capture video from the DVR…
Anything I missed? Have a better nickname for the AAA’s? Those of you outside the US, do you even care?
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i would highly appreciate if they did widen the broadcast so that it could be a way to promote more people into watching anime or reading it so that it can become more popular than it is now so that we veterans of anime can get more stuff licensed or fansubbed for us to enjoy
Good suggestions. I also think that there should be a limit to how many categories one particular series should win (let’s say no more than 2). I’m not saying that FMA didn’t deserve to win all those categories…it’s a masterpiece of a series no doubt, but I think other series’ deserve a chance too. Maybe if they added more categories and more possible nominees. I think a more variety of winners would portray the anime genre in general as diverse as it truly is, in the eyes of the American public.
Does the “whatever was on TV” apply to repeats too? And LOL @ Akira being comedy.
kent: interesting chain of logic…
Yumeka: While more categories would increase the total amount of series nominated, I hope that the pool is not diluted with useless categories and also that too mediocre titles may be included leading to weak competition. I’m somewhat reluctant to second your category limit proposal but I do agree with the principle behind it.
kacpy: Yes, I believe it does include repeats because the episodes, albeit old, are still being broadcast. So I guess Big O is technically eligible since it plays at 5am Saturday nights/Sunday mornings on Adult Swim and seems to be in print. But I think that something that old is unlikely to be nominated in future years.
Bah, so they can keep awarding the same shows… haha.
My personal recommendation to them is to figure out a way to get the initial slew of nominations that ISN’T going to the marketing/PR departments of all the anime companies in the US. That doesn’t get you the best, that gets you the best-selling.