[Nomination Phase] AnimeSuki Choice Awards 2014

[Dawnstorm]

Originally Posted by Pellissier

This is fine and I particularly agree with scrapping the supporting characters category (it's often troublesome to tell apart main characters from non main anyway). But if a seiyuu category is created, it should be splitted in two and comprehend both Female Seiyuu and Male Seiyuu, as those are entirely different works/worlds. Sorry if this needs one more "D" category.

It wouldn't need an additional category, if we were to scrap the antagonist category. Antoganist was an important category, as long as we separated main characters from supporting characters. But if we just have one big "best character" category, that sort of already includes antagonists. It's not a bad category; it's just no longer as warranted as it was.

I'm fine with keeping a single-gender category for seiyuu, mostly because there are usually only a few standout performances anyway. (They wouldn't stand out if there were more.) But I can also see why people would want to separate the category by gender.

Basically, I'm for scrapping the antagonist category, if we unite main and support cast, and I'm neutral on whether we should have one siyuu category per gender.

[felix]

Originally Posted by Dawnstorm

It wouldn't need an additional category, if we were to scrap the antagonist category. Antoganist was an important category, as long as we separated main characters from supporting characters. But if we just have one big "best character" category, that sort of already includes antagonists. It's not a bad category; it's just no longer as warranted as it was.

It's unfortunately not that simple with that one. Antagonists can make or break a series. Series with good ones are series with strong narrative conflict, and if you look at the results it's pretty accurate. I do actually look at it for that.

We will consider it of course.

[Dawnstorm]

Originally Posted by felix

It's unfortunately not that simple with that one. Antagonists can make or break a series. Series with good ones are series with strong narrative conflict, and if you look at the results it's pretty accurate. I do actually look at it for that.

We will consider it of course.

Don't worry about me, though. I'm fine with the category. I just brought it up as a method to free up a spot for gender-divided seiyuu awards, which I'm neutral on in the first place. This basically means: unless you need a tie-breaker, ignore my vote.

[cleo]

Originally Posted by Pellissier

I understand but you need to make sure that all series can be voted. For example, in 2014 where could a series like Gokukoku no Brynhildr be placed? It was pure horror and mystery, I put the vote in the sci-fi category but it was far stretched.

In 2015, we already have candidates for mystery/horror from the winter season, namely Ansatsu Kyoshitsu and Death Parade, plus the carryover Kiseijuu: Sei no Kakuritsu. It will be hard to place them with the current categories.

Last year's Kuroshitsuji: Book of circus and this year's Tokyo Ghoul are other examples. If I had to pick a category it would probably be Drama. But comparing a horror-series with, say, Kaguya-hime is quite impossible, so I'm all in favor for a horror category as well. I don't see the need for the additional mystery part though.

[Archon_Wing]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

IIRC, one of the issues that came up when we discussed having a Best Seiyu award is that there was a fear that it would, well, turn into the HanaKana award.

That given HanaKana's level of popularity, especially on this site, that she'd win the award year-after-year-after-year and that it would start to seem really silly and pointless after awhile.


The above being said, it might be good to add a category like this to add some new life into the AS Choice Awards. I'd even be fine with adding it without axing something to make room for it.

So here's a couple of ideas that I'm going to post publicly, since maybe it's time to open up these discussions a bit more to the wider AS community.

1) "Best Seiyu", like the Oscars' "Best Actor", would have to be based on a specific role/acting performance. So, for example, I would have nominated Eri Kitamura for her performance as Sayaka Miki back in 2011. I couldn't just nominate "Eri Kitamura", I'd have to tie the nomination to a specific anime role.

2) Perhaps we should have a rule that the same seiyu can't win the award in consecutive years, or in X number of consecutive years (you win it twice in back-to-back years, you're out for the following year).

Well, Kanahana is popular but does not seem as ubiquitous as before. I would not mind a Saori Hayami award though, lol.

But yea, tie it to series performance.

[IceHism]

Instead of horror, why don't we use thriller? Thriller can encompass both horror and mystery while horror cannot.

[Kotohono]

Originally Posted by IceHism

Instead of horror, why don't we use thriller? Thriller can encompass both horror and mystery while horror cannot.

I would personally support a thriller choice more than mystery or horror. So agreed.

[Pellissier]

Originally Posted by IceHism

Instead of horror, why don't we use thriller? Thriller can encompass both horror and mystery while horror cannot.

I'm also fine with Thriller. It should include quite a few series that with this year's categories wouldn't have a legit home.

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by IceHism

Instead of horror, why don't we use thriller? Thriller can encompass both horror and mystery while horror cannot.

It also references a great Michael Jackson album. So I'm also cool with changing "horror" to "thriller".

[Sheba]

It's hard to draw the line between a main and side character in shows with ensemble cast like Love Live or Log Horizon.

[Kanon]

Shit, I missed the nomination phase again. So much disappointment in the nominees, particularly with best comedy and best OP, where my top picks, Tonari no Seki-kun and Tokyo Ghoul didn't make it (worst part is that I could have actually helped them). And Chisaki instead of Miuna in best female lead, what the hell? Incidentally, I'm surprised Nagi no Asukara is doing so well. I guess I'm not the only one who really liked that show despite its flaws.

Glad to see Ping Pong doing well. I had no idea whether it was popular over here, I don't recall the thread having a lot of posts.

On the other hand, no Gochuumon wa usagi desu ka in slice of life ;_;. Granted, there was a lot of competition this year.

[felix]

Originally Posted by IceHism

Instead of horror, why don't we use thriller? Thriller can encompass both horror and mystery while horror cannot.

Sounds like a good compromise to me.

[Dextro]

Thriller sounds nice to me as well. I was going to suggest having SciFi merge into the Fantasy category since that's what the Hugo Awards do but anime in particular has so many shows in those genres that it would become kind of a catch all category in the end so nevermind

[SeijiSensei]

For me, if there's ever a decision about which categories to axe, I'd vote for the genre-based ones.

My concern has to do with the "OP/ED" category, especially with it being limited to three nominees. A regular one-cour anime has at least two songs, an OP and and ED, and it might have insert songs as well. A two-cour show often has a second OP and ED. Thus many shows generate four potential competitors, and often as many as half-a-dozen or more. Trying to pick just three nominees from such a profusion of choices is very difficult. If the song category remains as it does now, I'd suggest five as a more reasonable number of nominees. I'd also like to see insert songs be eligible. "Before My Body is Dry" is a hallmark song from 2014, but it's not eligible because it's neither an OP nor an ED.

Originally Posted by felix

OP/ED are just not different enough to warrant two categories; nobody really seems to care too much for them (they don't generate too much buzz with voters) aside from when there's talk about tacking them out. One of the main objectives of the awards is to help people find series they missed.

I'm willing to accept one category if we get more nomination slots and insert songs become eligible. I'll just say that I, for one, do care about the OP/ED award, and even more the OST award. Music is an important part of anime and deserves to be taken seriously when awards are considered.

[felix]

Honestly my gut feeling is telling me all categories should probably just carry over a few more shows to voting; or the requirements to go to voting should maybe be different.

I mean I don't think we ever did any math or observations/tests on what exactly is ideal carry-over. 4 much like the point based voting system is just default we've used since long before we were even the ones organizing it—which means its probably been pulled out of thin air; since the contest was very ad hoc in the early years. Again, I'm not quite 100% sure since running this for years kind of means keeping track of everything a bit problematic.

If anyone in the community has any insights on what might be a strong mathematical system on how many should carry over that would help.

For the record I personally don't consider replacing one random number with another larger random number to be a "solution" so please don't spam random numbers.

[cleo]

Originally Posted by IceHism

Instead of horror, why don't we use thriller? Thriller can encompass both horror and mystery while horror cannot.

Agreed, good suggestion.

[Haak]

Originally Posted by felix

For the record I personally don't consider replacing one random number with another larger random number to be a "solution" so please don't spam random numbers.

Well I was gonna say five, but if you insist... XP

[felix]

Okey I think I remember now the reasoning for 4. Essentially it has to do with a ad hoc primitive way of ensuring the voting phase votes don't get split too much. Obviously it would actually need to be 2 to actually do that but, well, nobody wants that now do we, so somehow it was 4. Good news: if we switch to instant run-off voting next year for voting (as was originally intended we do for this year; but didn't make the cut) we don't have to worry about that. Instant run-off voting can take 100 entries, people can vote however many they want and it won't matter, the end result is ensured to be either someone getting 50%+1 or (be it very very unlikely) a tie.

tl;dr if we stick with the current voting system for the voting phase, it's bad to have more then 4 (having 4 is already not great statistically), if we switch to instant runoff voting we can have however many you want and the result will still be strong.

Adhoc Poll
The question now is:
Given a list of X series, that you have to pick a subset of Y series from (where Y is any number you want between 0 and X)
And that you then have to order those Y series by which you like more (best being first, least being last)
At what value of X is that tedious/annoying/notfun?

-

Personally I would say 11; just because 10 coincides with things like "top 10" that people might have already thought about in other contexts.
Thinking past top 10 is a bit too hard, assuming worst case where I like everything then top 10 is where I would draw the line of "easy & fun"

[Triple_R]

I strongly disagree with felix on the nominee cutoff issue.

I think much more than 4 would render the nomination process almost entirely pointless, especially for the genre categories. I think that knowing that the solid majority of nominees don't make the cut inspires people to take part in the nomination process, and can even motivate people to get any friends with similar anime likes/tastes to take part (the latter I definitely don't see happening with a freaking 10 nominees per category getting through).

I also think that 4 (or 5 at most) is a nice number to pick from, and that much more than that would make voting extra cumbersome, having much the same effect as having an overabundance of total award categories.


Personally, I think we should just stick to 4, even if we do go to runoff voting next year. 4 seems to work perfectly well, in my opinion.

[Haak]

Well just to warn you guys, if the average number of nominees exceeds five per category then I'm probably gonna need even more help picking the pictures.