AniTAY’s Predictions for the 2023 Crunchyroll Anime Awards

Since 2017, many have tolerated and others have glorified the Crunchyroll Anime Awards. Love or hate it, it’s undeniably one of the biggest anime award shows outside of Japan. I’m not a huge fan of awards shows myself; panels of expert judges usually miss good movies, shows or whatever they are giving awards to. At the same time, awards shows entirely open to the public are a simple popular vote contest. It’s understandable though, as few people have time to watch more than a handful of shows each season or even a year. Crunchyroll’s Anime Awards fall somewhere in the middle. The selected judges submit up to five eligible candidates for each category. The six most mentioned end up as nominees with public voting.

A quick reminder of how the eligibility works for Crunchyroll Anime Awards:

• Are considered an animated series
• Primary production occurred in Japan
• One episode aired on television or online in Japan between November 2021 and September 2022 at least in part
• At least one episode had its initial legal distribution outside of Japan between November 2021 and September 2022

Do you still wonder where all the great shows from the Fall 2022 season are? Look forward to next year’s anime awards.

Now, the official voting has ended. Announcement of the winner is still far in the future (March 4th, 2023). The only thing left for us is to speculate what will win and discuss those shows we want to win. That gave me an idea to create a poll among our community with exactly these two questions. Eleven authors, myself included, picked for each (22!) category a show they think will win and who they want to win.

With all the votes counted, we have a lot of things to go through, so let’s start. I couldn’t wish for a better starting point than Anime of the Year. It’s a show which set the standard for anime over the last year.

This is the one category where the biggest active fanbase wins. You can look at the numbers Demon Slayer did in the cinema, and it’s no surprise that many picked it as the anime that will win. On the other hand, nobody seemed to like it enough to select it as their pick. That privilege fell onto SPY x FAMILY with a one-vote lead. It’s a series with a big following, so it has a chance!

Next we have the Best Original Anime — entirely a unique creation; not adapted from any source material.

Clearly Lycoris Recoil leads in both votes and is a favorite with 82% average score on AniList as well. Although wouldn’t it be funny if mafia golf BIRDIE WING stole the award?

One of the biggest advantages anime (and its source material) has over traditional live action media is a complete creative freedom. Would you be, outside of an anime, able to imagine Nezuko with her bamboo muzzle standing next to Inosuke (both from Demon Slayer) without cringing? The category for the Best Character Design celebrates that.

There are many characters recognisable only by their silhouette. For some, their visage tells you their backstory without requiring a singular word. No one should be surprised that the two biggest shows on the list lead towards victory. Images of these show’s characters are all over the internet. They are unmistakable, and some even identifiable by people not watching anime. For that reason I’m shocked by the lack of votes for Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.

It wouldn’t be an anime without, well, an animation. Ergo, the Best Animation award is something that we cannot skip.

This is without a doubt the anticipated result. Time and time again ufotable proved to us that they are playing the top league. Despite my general dislike for CGI, I was able to finish and enjoy the GOD EATER anime they made back in 2015. That is not a small feat.

There are a plethora of new anime series coming out each season. Some are swiftly forgotten, but others instantly become phenomena among the fans. The Best New Series award celebrates these shows.

I haven’t seen SPY x FAMILY yet. Even then, I could not escape it while browsing social media that season. We’d be foolish not considering it as a winner. On the other hand, I’m pleased to see some love shown to Call of the Night and My Dress-Up Darling. Both are excellent shows to the point of me hunting down the manga to read.

If you have an award for a new series, it wouldn’t be fair to skip the one for the Best Continuing Series.

The biggest struggle ongoing series have is to retain viewers. It’s easy to lose interest in an average series and not give the sequel a chance. An excellent show is even at higher risk for not living up to the hype. We’ve seen how the internet reacted to the quality drop of The Seven Deadly Sins when studio DEEN took over. All taken in consideration, the top two picks are no-brainers. Both will be with us in the foreseeable future.

I cannot comment much about the impressive lead of Made in Abyss. Our one and only DoctorKev described this series as a “jolly kid’s adventure into the heart of darkness, a sweet and cute descent into the depths of bodily mutilation and dripping viscera”. With two small kids at home, that’s not something I’m overly inclined to watch. But the sequel seems like it was a hit.

For now, let’s skip a few categories and jump right into the Best Film.

I have zero to say about any of these. Where I come from, we get no anime movies on the big screen. Not even the most successful movies like Your Name.

The skipped categories were the Best Opening Sequence, the Best Ending Sequence and the Best Score. I wanted all of these tied together with the last musical one for the Best Anime Song.

Although I’m part of the despicable camp of opening and ending sequence skippers, I wouldn’t be able to imagine anime without it. It’s great to have something to get you in the mood for what’s to come in the beginning and say farewell at the end. Not seeing the opening “Daten” from Call of the Night makes me sad, but Ya Boy Kongming!’s “Chikichiki Banban” saves the day. It has such early 2000s vibes, bringing back summer camp’s disco memories, I have to smile every time I hear it. At least Call of the Night’s “Yofukashi no Uta” is nominated in the ending sequence category.

Continuing with the musical awards, the Best Score I’d say is the most prestigious of the bunch. You can have a banger opening and a tear-jerking ending sequence, but this category celebrates the music across the whole series. Ya Boy Kongming! is kind of a wild card among the other shows — no wonder it didn’t gain any votes from us. Hiroyuki Sawano is a legend among the composers, but I hope Kevin Penkin isn’t too far behind him. He was able to prove himself in the first Made in Abyss, so they brought him back for the sequel. He also worked on both seasons of Shield Hero, and made music for the Tower of God which was the best part of the show.

Out of all four musical awards, the Best Anime Song is the one I’m least interested in, especially when half of the nominees are repeats from previous awards. For that reason, I can merely believe my fellow authors are right and “My Nonfiction” from Kaguya-sama: Love is War secures it. I can dream, can’t I?

While the animation, story, and music are worth getting awards for, it’s all for nothing if it doesn’t have good direction. If music isn’t at the perfect timing with the animation, if the story doesn’t correspond with the tone of the show, it’s a failure even if the individual elements are top level. This is why we have the award for the Best Director.

Based on the number of other nominations each of these shows got, together with the general audience reception, either of these shows could make the cut. In the case of this category, I believe that in the end it comes down to the number of fans voting.

Despite all the effort, I feel like most of the people won’t remember the director’s name by the end of the second episode if they looked it up at all in the first place. What people remember are the notable characters they encounter on a weekly basis. The Best Main Character celebrates those characters. It doesn’t matter if the main character is a hero or villain, they become the identity of the show and everybody will be connecting the show with them.

I don’t think Attack on Titan’s Eren Jaeger needs any introduction. There are many more memorable characters in that show, but whether you like him or not, he simply is the face of the show. I’m pleasantly surprised by my fellow authors’ two main picks, Marin and Bojji. I’d be awesome if either of them won, but that’s only something I can dream about.

Based on the nominations and our expectations, I’ll simply have to tie both next two awards together, one for the Best Supporting Character and the other for the “Must Protect at all Costs” Character.

I’d like to speak about each of the categories and their importance separately, but Anya’s dominance is simply preventing me from doing so. Never say never and the unexpected can happen, but I’d flip my table if it actually did (and I’d be strong enough).

Although there are still few awards left to be discussed, we are slowly approaching the finish line. Best Action starts the group of genre categories, so let’s explore it together.

Yet again it feels like Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure was robbed of any vote — at least from our side. On one hand, it feels wrong, but if you have to compete in the same category as Demon Slayer and Attack on Titan, there’s little you can do.

For the second genre we have the Best Comedy. This is the one I feel like it’s most subjective. What one can find funny, others won’t or even consider the joke offensive.

In this category for what we think will win, I’d rather for Kaguya-sama: Love is War to take the win over SPY x FAMILY as it has numerous nominations in other categories, but it all depends on the dedication of each series fanbase.

Generally, most of the action or comedy shows are easily digestible, but, at least in my case, they don’t leave a lasting aftertaste. As soon as they are done, they are mostly forgotten. They are incomparable to the Best Dramas, that even after years still linger in the back of my mind.

For me as a seasonal anime watcher it’s painful to get through a good drama show. Most of the time I cannot wait for the next episode, so I start putting it off. That results in me having the whole series at the end of season to binge watch or leave in my plan-to-watch list for later. That being said, if I manage to push through a drama show with all the tension and build up over the season, they have a higher chance of sticking in my head. Something similar happened with Dance Dance Danseur. I’ve been to several ballets in my life, so I got to know it’s not for me. Despite all of that, after watching the series, it got me thinking it might not be so bad.

Speaking about being bad, I watch an awful lot of new fantasy / isekai shows every season. I was wondering which of them would end up with the nomination for the Best Fantasy.

At first, I was surprised to see only two shows I’ve watched on the list, but really, I should expect it. Most of the shows I’m watching are generic and average at best, with occasional hidden gems amidst all the dirt. I’d say the most questionable nominee is Overlord IV. Not only the production quality took a great hit in the third season, but the writing as well. The fourth season was a slight improvement, but it’s like going from shit to mud — better, but not by much. There were few more, in my opinion, better shows that were eligible for the nomination like Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? IV or Ascendance of a Bookworm Season 3.

Finally, with the Best Romance award, we’re closing the block of genre awards.

In this category, there is nothing much to be said. We guess that Kaguya-sama will win it, which is understandable, but we’re not so secretly hoping that Marin from My Dress-Up Darling grasped the hearts of fellow anime fans, weebs and otakus for her to push through the finish line first. It’d feel right with either of the shows winning this award.

With all of the other awards out of the way, we’re finally arriving at the homestretch. The last pair of the awards are for the Best Voice Artist Performance either in Japanese or English.

Both categories are difficult for me to tackle. The reason for the VA performance in English is simple. I’m a subtitle type of guy. For me, listening to other languages than Japanese while watching the anime feels weird, so I almost never watch dubbed anime. It’s different for the VA performances in Japanese. For the most part, I tie the VA’s voice to the character they represent. That brings a level of difficulty in distinguishing the quality of the performance from the quality of the character itself. I wonder if that’s a general problem or something only I struggle with.

Phew. That was all the nominations. While I was preparing for and thinking about this article, I could not notice that several shows are present at almost every nomination. That made me do a small table of all the nominations and the results can be seen below.

Only five series have breached the line of 10+ nominations. I’m not surprised to see Attack on Titan, Demon Slayer or SPY x FAMILY there. These series are big on their own with a huge following so at least one of them was bound to be in almost every category. The only ones they are missing from are: Best Original Anime (all have a source material), Best Film (Demon Slayer’s movie was released in 2020), Best Romance (neither of them is romance anime). For the other two remaining shows, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners hit the anime community all at once with its Netflix release only as studio trigger shows can, while Ranking of Kings took me off guard. I disregarded the series based on the initial impression of the aesthetics as a kids show, but hearing nothing but praise from my fellow authors, I guess I need to give it a shot someday.

Finally, this brings us to the end of this piece. The only thing left to do is wait for about a month. If you are following anime on Twitter or Youtube, you’ll definitely know when they drop the results as it’ll stir the community and people will have many things to say. I myself might return to this topic — not for commenting on winners or losers, but to see who was right or wrong while voting for this article.

Peace!

You’re reading AniTAY, a reader-run blog whose writers love everything anime related. To join in on the fun, check out our website, visit our official subreddit, follow us on Twitter, or give us a like on our Facebook page. This article was brought to you by Stínolez — gamer, anime lover & so-called writer. Check my other stuff here or follow me on Twitter. As always, I’m thankful to Luigi for editing this piece, check his stuff here.