Voting for Crunchyroll’s The Anime Awards 2021 is now open. Last years Anime Awards’ featured a tightly contested waifu…ahem, Best Girl category. Raphtalia (The Rising of The Shield Hero) won in the end, but it was by far the hardest choice in the bunch of categories. This years Awards is proving a little less difficult in some ways, but more difficult in others. Lets go over some of my favorite choices for this year.
BEST PROTAGONIST
Being 100% honest, I’m voting with my heart here. Anos Voldigoad is my dude. In the most garden variety Harem Fantasy Anime there could be, this guy is just great. He’s massively OP. He mercilessly torments his enemies and also gets under the skin of the Tsundere of the show. If I had one thing that made me love this guy, it’s this clip above.
His show was full of OP badass moments like this and made an otherwise forgettable show enjoyable. That being said, he most likely loses this category to either the charming Caterina Claes from My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! I have no regrets. I also voted for Anos in the Best Boy category over likely winner from Jujustu Kaisen Gojou.
BEST ANTAGONIST
Easily my favorite category this year based on who is in it. Rachel from Tower of God is in this category for the simple fact that people know who she eventually becomes. The character is loathsome, and thats being kind. However, you can’t make this judgement on future actions. Besides, Overhaul and Echidna are far more deserving of the reward. Overhaul was trash. Plain and simple. The villain from My Hero Academia: Season Four was an amoral jerk exploiting a child’s quirk for his own motives. A real Joker type. Wanting to set the world on fire and letting chaos reign.
My pick for this category however, belongs to Echidna from Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- (Season 2). She was deceptively charming from the minute you met her, yet her demeanor hid a dark, twisted machinations that gives you chills. Couple that with phenomenal performances by BOTH her JP and EN actors, and you could understand why she was my pick.
BEST GIRL
This was far too easy. There is absolutely no competition in my mind that Mizuhara Chizuru from Rent-A-Girlfriend won’t run away with this category. For a series featuring possibly the trashiest of trashy MC’s, along with 2 other really great possible Best Girl candidates, Chizuru stands out because she is THAT great. Shinomiya Kaguya from Kaguya-sama: Love is War would be kind of a nice 2nd choice, but she’s pretty lame in comparison. I just started watching Dorohedoro! so I haven’t seen enough of Noi to give her the nod either. Abigail Jones in Great Pretender looks like she’d probably be a pretty great choice too, but Chizuru is bae.
BEST OPENING SEQUENCE
Its always hard to vote for these types of categories. It requires the voters to have watched all of them just to judge fairly. Most of course, like me, won’t be watching every single anime up for the nomination. Since I pride myself on being fair however, I did watch each of these openings and wow, this is a tough choice! If I was voting with my heart, I would say that DADDY! DADDY! DO! feat. Airi Suzuki by Masayuki Suzuki from Kaguya-sama: Love is War? would take home the win. I love that show to death, and everything I love about it is in the opening.
But I would be lying if I didn’t say I was impressed with Great Pretender‘s G.P. by Yutaka Yamada. It gave me serious TANK! from Cowboy Bebop vibes. Its also hard to ignore BEASTARS‘ Wild Side by ALI. The open itself has a stop motion animation element that was very creative and expressive. I could see any of these 3 winning the prize! Its too hard for me to pick!
BEST FIGHT
Being 100% honest here, this category rings somewhat self-serving. Crunchyroll’s own Awards show, stuffed 2 offerings from a show the company produces in this category. Could it be a case that there were no other viable options? I’m not buying that for a second. That being said, the choices in front of those two, are pretty damn great.
The God of High School was unique in that actual martial artists were rotoscoped performing moves for animators. That lent a sense of realness to the kicks and punches thrown in these two fights. It would be easy to pick one of these two and call it a day. Yet, there was the epic fight between Bercouli & Dark God Vecta in Sword Art Online Alicization: War of the Underworld Part 2. This was a marathon battle that was filled with awesome epic moments. Its likely the favorite to win in this category for me. Yet there is still more to consider.
Naturally, you have to talk about Deku vs. Overhaul in My Hero Academia. Coming off of last year’s awesome All-Might vs. All-For-One battle, it somewhat falls short of expectations. But you have to give the animators immense credit. They can capture those manga panel-perfect moments in anime form and it shows here when Deku gives the decisive blow at the end. Chills.
Finally, the Satoru Gojou vs. Ryoumen Sukuna fight was just too damned short for me to give it any credence. It was good for what we got, but it left you wanting a whole lot more! So we’ll revisit that series’ fights next year I’m sure.
ANIME OF THE YEAR
This year’s choices for Anime of the Year are TOUGH. Last year, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba had taken the world by storm. Up for the award this year are Dorhedoro, APPARE-RANMAN!, Great Pretender, BEASTARS and Jujutsu Kaisen. Jujustu Kaisen and BEASTARS are probably the two that have the most juice behind them. BEASTARS got people talking, but Jujutsu Kaisen most likely takes it home in a tough one. Great Pretender has a really great story, so does APPARE-RANMAN! Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! is hurt by being a comedy since not many of those take home Anime of The Year awards.
OTHER CATEGORIES
There’s plenty of other categories up for nomination so I’ll run through them really quickly here. In Best Fantasy, I have to go with Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- (Season 2). It’s my favorite Isekai anime of all time and for good reason. Best Couple is probably going to come down to Kaguya & Shirogane from Kaguya-sama: Love is War? and Legoshi & Haru from BEASTARS. As much as I love Mizuhara Chizuru in Rent-A-Girlfriend, I loathe MC Kazuya in equal amounts. The dude is complete trash right now. He gets better later, but he’s clearly the anchor around Mizuhara’s neck.
There’s a lot of tough choices in Best Comedy, and I couldn’t pick one. The Misfit of Demon King Academy, Kaguya-sama: Love is War? and My Next Life as a Villainess are the likely picks here. There are a couple other categories to vote in that you should go check out on The Anime Awards voting page here!
Let me know what your selections are for the Anime Awards in 2020. Please consider joining us on Twitch for Culture Junkies LIVE on Wednesdays at 9PM EST!