The Crunchyroll Anime Awards have been happening every year since 2016. A group of twenty diverse judges nominate 6 anime from the past year for every category, and announce the winners for each. The nominees are voted on for each category, with 70% of the vote coming from the judges, and 30% from the public. The winners are usually announced in January or February of the new year. The Anime Awards are the biggest awards ceremony for anime in the English-speaking world.
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For 2022, a few categories in the Crunchyroll Anime Awards have been changed. The categories of Best Girl, Best Boy, Best Fight Scene, and Best Antagonist have been removed. They have been replaced with a lot of new categories, which are Best Anime Song, Best Continuing Series, Best Original Anime, Best Main Character, Best Supporting Character, Best New Series, “Must Protect At All Costs” Character, Special Achievement Award, and Presenter’s Choice. Returning from previous years are Anime of the Year, Best Animation, Best Character Design, Best Comedy, Best Director, Best Fantasy, Best Film, Best Romance, and Best Score.
While most of the categories are easy to understand, two of the new ones are more ambiguous. The Presenter’s Choice will be an award presented by a special guest, and can be given to a person, studio, or company that they deem to be an “honored contributor” to the anime world. The Special Achievement Award will give “legendary status” to a contributor to the anime world, and will be selected by an industry panel.
Public voting for the Crunchyroll Anime Awards will open online on January 19th, 2023, and close on January 26th. Eligible anime for this year’s awards must have aired at least one episode between November 2021 and September 2022 in Japan. This means that anime from the Fall 2022 season are not eligible this year, but will be next year instead.
The awards ceremony itself will be broadcasted on Crunchyroll’s social media accounts, and will include creators and musicians as part of the show. More details regarding who exactly have not been announced yet, but will likely be announced closer to the awards ceremony. The ceremony will take place in Japan for the first time, hosted by Sally Amaki and Jon Kabira.
Last year, more than 16.9 million votes were cast in the Crunchyroll Anime Awards from fans. In the end, the most coveted award of Best Anime went to Attack on Titan Final Season Part 1. We will have to wait to see the list of nominees this year before we can start making predictions for 2022, though!
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The Crunchyroll Anime Awards will be hosted in the Grand Prince Hotel New Takanawa in Shinagawa, Tokyo on March 4, 2023.
Source: AnimeNewsNetwork
