AnimeSuki 2010 Choice Awards Winners

[felix]

Originally Posted by james0246

should I add something to the title as well?

I feel that would be going overboard. Adding it to the first post and whatever info thread in the case of forums is sufficient.

[Blue-kun]

3) Should we have genre limits? Cross Game this year won for Romance, Drama, Sports/Game and almost won for Slice of Life, and while I certainly have respect for the fans I have to question why (and how) the show was split between so many genres (wasn't it also almost nominated for Action as well?) Realistically, we should only allow 2 distinct genre nominations per show (since, realistically, almost any show, given time, could have enough episodes to warrant an inclusion into all genre categories). More than anything, I dislike the prospect of a single title sweeping all the awards simply because it has elements of multiple genres and enough fans to push it through every category. (I admit that this rule would be very confining, which might not be in the spirit of the awards.)

I'm... not too sure how I feel about this. I mean, I see the merit of your suggestion and part of me wants to think it makes sense. But then, as you've said, it might be too confining -- If we're limiting what people can or cannot vote, it feels as if it's going beyond what the people organizing this should be doing. In Cross Game's case, at least, I'd say it had enough of all of those genres to make it worthy of taking the Romance, Drama and Sports awards. As for the "almost" got slice of life, someone did mention before, but slice of life as a whole is something that can fit into other categories easily, because it's a very broad category. (Also, I don't think Cross Game even got close of getting the required votes for the action category. If any nominations at all, haha).

That said though, I do agree that there has to be some sort of anti-bullshit thing, to avoid say, Arakawa being nominated for best Mystery/Horror. But overall, I think AnimeSuki users have been responsible enough to keep the choices realistically sane, so...

4) This one is for my fellow Moderators: Can we emphasize the Awards via an announcement? These are our own personalized awards, so why shouldn't the forum support them to the full extent by issuing a general announcement during the beginning of the nomination process?

This would be great, sometimes I do wonder if people take note of the award. Even though close to 90 voters is pretty good, with how many users we have I'd say this could probably get more attention with a little help from the staff!

As for the genres, I've been looking at what we have right now, and I can't think of many changes to do. Someone before mentioned the Slice of Life being something that doesn't has a very solid definition, since you could probably fit a slice of life show into countless other categories. I think that's correct, seeing as these shows usually have a romance or drama focus to them. Also the Worst Character category needs to be changed or simply axed, there's no way something where the "winner" ends up with as many votes as the abstained ones can go on.

Also! Going 180º spin here: Regarding the animation category, this is a bit "eh" to me. At first I was thinking that maybe we should have two categories, one for TV-series and another one for movies, but then it hit me that I still consider Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood to be much better animated than, say, Unlimited Blade Works. What I'm trying to say is, some people might look at animation and simply see how fluid it is, and if it has more in-between animation then it's automatically better (see: UBW). Personally, I'm not like that, I'm always going to value a lot more the work of the key animators, and how well he tackles the overall movements among other things. Not to mention style, too. If we have to pick between something that's really fluid but consists only of two guys exchanging sword blows at really "normal" angles and with not a lot else going on and something like this, I'd take the latter any day. In the end, maybe leaving Visuals/Animation as is is for the best. Most users probably don't care/know/are able to pinpoint the difference well enough, so it makes me think that it's alright to have it all coupled together and let people decide for themselves what exactly pleases them in animation, to avoid making it too confusing and scaring people away from the awards.

[felix]

Originally Posted by Blue-kun

But overall, I think AnimeSuki users have been responsible enough to keep the choices realistically sane, so...

Animesuki users seem to be just biased towards one overall category or another; inevitably this leads to some categories getting "popularity" pollution rather then valid entries. This is more evident in the nomination phase then the voting phase. We should have a poll with "what genre is your favorite?" (choices: Action, Comedy, Drama, Slice of Life, etc). I'm pretty sure we won't get the even distribution required to give the current system credibility.

[Haak]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

The category should be renamed to "Worst written character." It shouldn't include characters that you're supposed to hate.

------------------

My two suggestions are as follows.

1. Less Cateogories. action and adventure can be merged while making sci-fi and fantasty anothe rmerged cateogory. Cateogires F, G, H can all be one cateogory. can be merged. Extend Sport/Games to sports/games/hobbies. Combine OVA's and movies to anime shorts. Add in another category, Best Overall Anime (Includes everything and anything, simply the best). Add in the additional category of "best setting." Remove storyline category. "best storyline" doesn't really make all that much sense when compared with cateogires like best overall anime.
   
   Overall the choice awards would look something like this.
   
   
   Spoiler for For Space:

   
   -{A} Action/Adventure
   
   -{B} Fantasy/Science Fiction
   
   -{C} Mystery/Horror
   
   -{D} Comedy
   
   -{E} Romance/Slice of Life/Drama
   
   -{F} Fanservice
   
   -{G} Sports/Games/Hobbies
   
   -{H} Best Setting
   
   -{I} Visual/Animation
   
   -{J} Sound Track
   
   -{K} Animes Shorts (Movies/OVA's/etc.)
   
   -{L} Best Overall Anime
   
   -{M} Male Character
   
   -{N} Female Character
   
   -{O} Villain
   
   -{P} Worst Written Character (Could use a different name though)
   
   
   
   
2. In OP of AS choice awards, include precise descriptions of what each category means. So we know what we mean when we say something like "Best Setting. That way no one can complain that the categories lack a good definition."

I also think defining the Worst Character category as the worst written category is a good idea. Either that or scrap it alltogether. As predicted, there were a lot of abstained votes for this category but surprisingly other categories also had a high amount of abstained votes such as:
{I} Fanservice (there's nothing really that can be done about that. I whilst I don't think a show deserves an award for Fanservice, that is purely my perspective.)
{J} Sports/Games (renaming it to Sports/Games/Hobbies will probably remedy that)
{P} OVA (I'm not sure about combining it with movies but it seems like a good idea. i suppose it depends on what others think.)

I also agree that if we will change the amount of categories, then there should be less and not more. But just to be clear, whilst i don't mind trimming down the number, I'm actually fairly happy as it is. I think this number is just about right and i don't think a drastic reduction is needed purely for the sake of reduction. I think combining Slice and Life and Drama together is a good idea but I'm not sure about combining those with Romance.

And I'll definitely give clearer definitions on what each category is next time.

Originally Posted by james0246

3) Should we have genre limits? Cross Game this year won for Romance, Drama, Sports/Game and almost won for Slice of Life, and while I certainly have respect for the fans I have to question why (and how) the show was split between so many genres (wasn't it also almost nominated for Action as well?) Realistically, we should only allow 2 distinct genre nominations per show (since, realistically, almost any show, given time, could have enough episodes to warrant an inclusion into all genre categories). More than anything, I dislike the prospect of a single title sweeping all the awards simply because it has elements of multiple genres and enough fans to push it through every category. (I admit that this rule would be very confining, which might not be in the spirit of the awards.)

To be honest I have to agree with Blue-kun. You're right in that a single title winning because it has a lot of elements and lots of fans would be a problem, but I think limiting it would be confining. Bear in mind that Cross Game only won three of the genres. Does that mean the limit would be two genres? And how exactly do we impose this limit without severely affecting nominations? I'd feel a little uncomfortable about scrapping a significant amount of nominations for a category just because it has more in two other categories. And I think the voters are smarter than that. Fullmetal Alchemist won Action but fans were still smart enough to appreciate Katanagatari being a better Adventure/Fantasy. That came as a real surprise to me. I assumed that if one of those two won one category then they'd win the other.

And I counted the nominations for Action and i don't recall Cross Game coming up. Even if that sort of thing happened, only a few nutjobs would do it and the Nomination phase would be more than enough to cut that kind of crap (though admittedly The Bugged Game still got through...)

[james0246]

Just placed the awards with their respective winners...will probably cajigger them later to look a little better (and will eventually move the Announcements in the sub-forums to the various Overall Series Impression threads).

[felix]

@james. I'll make statement, let me know if it's true of false: "You don't use the daily view of the forum." May I suggest using just one announcement for the entire Anime Discussion category only.

[Zeroryoko1974]

I only watched one episode of Cross Game so I don't quite get the fuss over it (I personally saw the death of the girl as soon as she was introduced, laughed and dropped it after the first ep)

[Flower]

It is good to see the Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi movie getting as many accolades as it did!

[Zeroryoko1974]

It deserved the awards it got. It was so awesome, it almost redeemed Endless 8

[Reckoner]

Originally Posted by Haak

I also think defining the Worst Character category as the worst written category is a good idea. Either that or scrap it alltogether. As predicted, there were a lot of abstained votes for this category but surprisingly other categories also had a high amount of abstained votes such as:
{I} Fanservice (there's nothing really that can be done about that. I whilst I don't think a show deserves an award for Fanservice, that is purely my perspective.)
{J} Sports/Games (renaming it to Sports/Games/Hobbies will probably remedy that)
{P} OVA (I'm not sure about combining it with movies but it seems like a good idea. i suppose it depends on what others think.)

I also agree that if we will change the amount of categories, then there should be less and not more. But just to be clear, whilst i don't mind trimming down the number, I'm actually fairly happy as it is. I think this number is just about right and i don't think a drastic reduction is needed purely for the sake of reduction. I think combining Slice and Life and Drama together is a good idea but I'm not sure about combining those with Romance.

And I'll definitely give clearer definitions on what each category is next time.

I guess I am not as surprised as you because for {I}, fanservice tends to be offensive to many viewers, {J} up to this point has contained an extremely limited amount of anime, and {P} contains very little stuff as well.

OVA's don't really have a reason to have their own category when so little content is produced and thus nominations are far and few in between.

I think what we should aim for in the choice awards is to get almost every category as unique as possible, while still getting a good amount of participation in each category.

As for combining romance and slice of life and romance... Well, there are very few true dramas by anime standards out there. When people are thinking of dramatic in anime the most people come up with are things like Clannad, which usually also involves romance elements.

At the very least I'd like to see drama and slice of life combined. The definition of slice of life is much too cryptic anyways, and even if we try to lay a clear definition, we'll get a lot of people disagreeing.

[-Antares-]

I don't think combining Slice of Life with anything is a good idea. I feel like that'll just cause confusion/arguments, especially when shows considered "Slice of Life" vary so much. I don't think Chi's Sweet Home and Clannad belong in a Drama category together, which is something that could actually happen if you do that. Slice of Life just needs to be removed and people need to fit those shows into a better-defined category instead.

As for having one show dominating all categories... I think in the discussions about how to improve from last year, some system was determined where the genre category a show got the most votes in would stick to that category and be removed from the others. I don't really remember the specifics of that though, or why it wasn't done this time since the awards were started by the same person.

[jpwong]

I think there should be some control over category domination, but I also feel it should be reasonably loose in that respect. I don't like the idea of stifling a vote that's supposed to be user choice awards, but at the same time, something shouldn't be allowed to get chosen in every single major category available.

I think it's something that should be monitored, but maybe take a wait and see approach to see if it is an issue rather than try to write up rules that end up locking out series for all sorts of reasons that the voters disagree with. This year could be an anomaly in this respect.

For the categories that had large number of abstentions, perhaps it would be useful to permit a larger pool of nominated items into the list for voting. I know I personally abstained from a handful of categories simply because I hadn't see any of the shows for which the available choices were from.

I am in favour of keeping the total number of available categories limited to what we have right now, either by combining existing ones together or dropping ones to make room for any new ones. Too many categories I feel will lead to mayhem during the nomination period and may turn some people away if they see there's like 50 categories to fill out.

[Kotohono]

Originally Posted by jpwong

I think it's something that should be monitored, but maybe take a wait and see approach to see if it is an issue rather than try to write up rules that end up locking out series for all sorts of reasons that the voters disagree with. This year could be an anomaly in this respect.

Actually it happened worse last year due Kara no Kyoukai winning 5 awards, so I'd hardly say it's an anomaly to occur two years in a row.

[Xacual]

Originally Posted by kayos

Might I add for those that haven't seen some of the series, the Best Villain category consists of major spoilers.

I haven't fully watched "Durarara!!" yet.

Izaya is pretty much a villain from the second episode on, it's not a spoiler at all.

I don't vote in these usually but I think removing the slice of life category would be a bad idea since there are some shows like K-On which are pretty much just slice of life and nothing else.

[jpwong]

Originally Posted by Konakaga

Actually it happened worse last year due Kara no Kyoukai winning 5 awards, so I'd hardly say it's an anomaly to occur two years in a row.

I didn't see last year's results so I wasn't sure what happened. I didn't want to make an assumption on what had happened.

I guess the problem is, what do you then limit? Category? Major Category? Do you say if a show was nominated for best character or best overall that they're ineligible for all other categories? Do we limit to say 2 major, best overall for type and then any volume of minor categories such as best/worst characters? What would be considered a "sweep" of the awards since even under that scenario a show could come out with 5 or more awards.

I just don't want to turn the nomination period into some sort of shadow vote where people are strategically nominating shows they don't really care about in the hopes of pushing the show they want out of certain categories so that the category they want the show to be in comes up.

Ideally a group would determine before the nomination period what anime is eligible for nominations in a given category and then let the users go at it, it would still allow for a show to sweep the awards, but would permit a more controlled sweep. This would probably however involve way more work than it's worth.

[felix]

Originally Posted by jpwong

Ideally a group would determine before the nomination period what anime is eligible for nominations in a given category and then let the users go at it, it would still allow for a show to sweep the awards, but would permit a more controlled sweep. This would probably however involve way more work than it's worth.

Is that so. Ok, try doing it for cross game…

[Haak]

Originally Posted by Konakaga

Actually it happened worse last year due Kara no Kyoukai winning 5 awards, so I'd hardly say it's an anomaly to occur two years in a row.

That's not really worse since Cross Game won 5 awards aswell. And it's actually slightly better since Kara no Kyoukai only won two genres whilst Cross Game won three. If we're also going to put this limit to include Non-genre categories then I predict big problems.

The thing is, if there is a single anime that the majority believe to be the best in multiple genres then why shouldn't it go on to win those categories? Should we really deny it that just because some believe the reasons behind such votes to be more cynical than that?

Also, about the Move/Ova thing, I feel it's neccessary to take into account that it actually used to be 'Shorts' the first time but the guy hosting the awards changed the rules in 2008:

Originally Posted by Kyomi

-{N} OVA (Because sometimes(more like often) you can't compare to a movie production, ova has it's own category this year)

[felix]

Originally Posted by Haak

The thing is, if there is a single anime that the majority believe to be the best in multiple genres then why shouldn't it go on to win those categories?

I am neutral when it comes to miscellaneous categories such as favorite character, however I ask you, don't we have a reason why we consider some things genres!? I'm perfectly fine with sub-genre being compatible, but genre should be exclusive. It's either a Romantic Drama with humor, or a Comedy with romantic elements; not both. How can a show be Slice of Life and a Drama simultaneously? The only way I see it happening is if you take "slice of life" as a theme and not a genre (as in "everything under the sun theme"); in other words people acting stupid for the sake of hyping their favorite, and I feel there's no problem in ignoring this nonsense. Same applies, more or less, to other genre combinations.

Each genre award should cater to the fans of the genre. If you were a fan of Romantic Drama and a washy Comedy won the award, or vice versa, how would you feel about it?

[Haak]

Well I say genres but we don't really know what those categories mean when saying "Action" or "Comedy". Theme is probably the better word and i wouldn't mind defining the categories as such. Genre debates are almost impossible to resolve.

Also, I would usually define a romance drama with comedy as a Romcom...

[felix]

Themes are…cheap. Personally I feel it would degrade the contest; I'd rather just have themes and genre split so both sides are satisfied. In other words any show could win the 'romance' theme, but no show will ever win both the Romcom and Romance genres (or implicitly the overarching genres: Drama and Comedy). As I mentioned earlier I'm only against the "bullshit situations," not shows winning multiple (unrelated) categories.