Yuri!!! On Ice wins all the Crunchyroll Anime Awards it was nominated for (literally)
I don't think it's easy to say 'YOI was objectively the highest quality show of 2016' because there's no measure of that. The complaints about animation/sound/story/characterisation quality are generally silly though. It can be demonstrated that the animation is professional and high quality and the soundtrack has been very well received all around. The amount of discussion the story, setting, worldbuilding and characters get is evident from even a few moments of research. It's ok to not like things even though they're high quality though. Heaven knows I absolutely detest plenty of films with excellent animation/sound/story/characterisation myself, and some of my favourites look cheap as heck.
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IncendiaryLemon
Captain Karen
I suppose that's an interesting way to look at it. Personally, I'd probably still disagree. Even if something is popular by general consensus, I'm not sure that's a measure of quality. There are still many, many people who, myself included, wouldn't call the animation 'high quality'. Obviously, a lot of people do, enough for it to win an award, but to call it 'objectively high quality' when a fair amount of people think it looks average or worse, just doesn't feel right. I mean, obviously we both have bias here, so perhaps we're not the best ones to be discussing it, or at least not for YOI in particular. I think something like art cannot be objective in anyway, really.
crashmatt
Death Scythe
YOI did not have a better soundtrack than Asterisk Wars but somehow the latter wasn't even nominated. I have heard both and it was obviously nothing to do with the fact it wasn't a Crunchyroll Licence. Iron Fortress also had better animation, hell I don't think there was another show that looked as good as Kabaneri last year.
I think with animation you can have at least some basic objective standards, even though the actual implementation is a matter of taste. Pixar films (which I don't tend to like) look incredible. Love*Com (which I think is amazing) looks wobbly. I'm reasonably confident that unbiased animation professionals would see YOI and consider it decently animated, even if they might not like the designs or the inbetweens (...). Also, I think that people who consider it badly animated need to be forced to watch the whole of Violinist of Hameln back to back then come back with a new appreciation of the painstaking effort the animators put into this skating show because it's jawdroppingly awesome to look at as television anime goes.
Likewise with audio. I hate jazz and piano music in general, for example, but if a piece of music was professionally produced and has fans then I don't think it's reasonable to say it's ineligible for recognition in awards just because it doesn't sound as good to me as dodgy European 90s pop. The YOI soundtrack was regularly trending online as music fans, skating fans and anime fans came together and enjoyed it. And the soundtrack wasn't just good; it was actively worked into the very fabric of the show, with musical flourishes in the skating themes thematically tied to events that took place in the story. That's unusual and, in my personal opinion, worthy of recognition on its own.
(Incidentally I'm a fan of the animation in YOI but I'm not especially biased towards the music. I didn't even buy the OST myself because it's classy and I spent my anime CD budget on other, less classy shows. I think it's objectively good because it's met with quantifiable mainstream success more than that I particularly like J.J.'s annoying theme song.)
Unfortunately Kabaneri has the issue of the separate $99 paywall blocking the majority of legal viewers from ever seeing it. I think it would have been a lot bigger than it was in the west if more people had been watching. I'd have loved to see it myself, but if they want me to cough up for Prime to do so then I'm afraid there's other anime out there.
Absolutely agree that the nominations should have incorporated more diversity in general, though. YOI probably was anime of the year in terms of its impact regardless, but Crunchyroll fanned the flames by putting it up in so many categories in the first place, especially against weaker contenders which would obviously get steamrolled.
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Likewise with audio. I hate jazz and piano music in general, for example, but if a piece of music was professionally produced and has fans then I don't think it's reasonable to say it's ineligible for recognition in awards just because it doesn't sound as good to me as dodgy European 90s pop. The YOI soundtrack was regularly trending online as music fans, skating fans and anime fans came together and enjoyed it. And the soundtrack wasn't just good; it was actively worked into the very fabric of the show, with musical flourishes in the skating themes thematically tied to events that took place in the story. That's unusual and, in my personal opinion, worthy of recognition on its own.
(Incidentally I'm a fan of the animation in YOI but I'm not especially biased towards the music. I didn't even buy the OST myself because it's classy and I spent my anime CD budget on other, less classy shows. I think it's objectively good because it's met with quantifiable mainstream success more than that I particularly like J.J.'s annoying theme song.)
Unfortunately Kabaneri has the issue of the separate $99 paywall blocking the majority of legal viewers from ever seeing it. I think it would have been a lot bigger than it was in the west if more people had been watching. I'd have loved to see it myself, but if they want me to cough up for Prime to do so then I'm afraid there's other anime out there.
Absolutely agree that the nominations should have incorporated more diversity in general, though. YOI probably was anime of the year in terms of its impact regardless, but Crunchyroll fanned the flames by putting it up in so many categories in the first place, especially against weaker contenders which would obviously get steamrolled.
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Buzz201
Mad Scientist
You haven't seen the show and aren't interested, how do you know "YOI did not have a better soundtrack than Asterisk Wars"?
IncendiaryLemon
Captain Karen
I mean, Limp Bizkit and Nickelback have multiple Platinum selling albums despite hefty critical backlash and generally being considered some of the worst bands of all time. Even if I don't agree that there is a way to measure objective quality in this context, popularity and sales numbers would almost certainly not be the way I'd measure it. Regardless, I do agree with your other point though, CR really didn't help themselves in this situation. I can't help but feel their own biases and wanting to promote their own shows certainly didn't help things whatsoever.
thedoctor2016
Mushi-shi
I literally voted for YOI thinking ReZero would win and I'm still sure that was the popular show of 2016 even if by Dec people forgot about it. I follow a very large variety of people on twitter they were all talking about Re0 only a certain section YOI (the Same people who were talking about Haikyuu)
I don't think you can say that Limp Bizkit aren't good overall in a definitive way even if they may sound like a bunch of angry dogs to you or I, but you can say they meet a certain standard of quality if millions of people are buying their records and tirelessly making DBZ AMVs set to their songs. Whereas a recording of me playing a xylophone would not, and if that was submitted into the Crunchyroll awards when it was used as the soundtrack to Gakuen Handsome season 2 I'd expect to hear sensible objections. Those crummy bands were (are?) popular with a certain demographic which wasn't/isn't regarded as cool or knowledgeable, but to those kids growing up Limp Bizkit probably meant a lot and helped shape their own appreciation of music. The people loving and buying the YOI soundtrack are each doing so for their own reasons - very few can afford to buy a £30+ CD album just because they fancy one of the dudes on the cover in a country where you can get leaflets featuring pictures of the dudes on the cover for free in convenience stores.
I don't think the opinions of critics are worth any more than the opinions of angry 15 year olds listening to Nickelback in what amounts to being a popularity contest. If the next JJBA ending track is a Nickelback song and it somehow wins a Crunchyroll award one day, however much I would personally cringe inside I would still consider it a valid result. If the ending track was 'Rui playing a xylophone', then I'd dispute that the right quality checks were ever in place as there's no way that any professional musicians can ever be as bad at music as I am.
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I don't think the opinions of critics are worth any more than the opinions of angry 15 year olds listening to Nickelback in what amounts to being a popularity contest. If the next JJBA ending track is a Nickelback song and it somehow wins a Crunchyroll award one day, however much I would personally cringe inside I would still consider it a valid result. If the ending track was 'Rui playing a xylophone', then I'd dispute that the right quality checks were ever in place as there's no way that any professional musicians can ever be as bad at music as I am.
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Smeelia
Thousand Master
I suppose you could say that something objectively meets certain agreed criteria used to measure quality but the actual criteria wouldn't technically be objective since they're just agreed based on collective opinions. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that Yuri on Ice is a high quality show, since it seems to have had great success with it's audience and stands out even amongst other shows that fans enjoy. Even so, you're really talking about it being high quality in it's field using subjective criteria.
Yuri on Ice is objectively the winner of the Crunchyroll anime of the year award but that award isn't an objective measure.
I don't think that sort of thing is entirely meaningless because it represents the views of a group of people and it probably matters to quite a few people too. I think it's fine that people care about awards and the opinions of others, people can care about what they want to. Still, I do think people should be careful about reading too much into the results and getting angry for the wrong reasons. The results represent the outcome of the vote based on the votes received and the structure of the voting. That does mean that people voted for Yuri on Ice and they'll have had their own reasons for doing so, which is how these kinds of things work. That doesn't mean that people who didn't vote for Yuri on Ice were wrong or that Yuri on Ice is inherently superior to the competition, it was just more successful in the context of the vote. I don't think that takes anything away from the show but it shouldn't take anything away from any other show or from anyone who voted (or even didn't vote).
I suppose I can understand the frustration of seeing a major organisation/group that you associate with give recognition to something that you're not fond of over something that you feel was deserving of recognition. I don't know if there's much that can be done about that, it's unlikely that any organisation or grouping would consistently be unanimous on all relevant issues. I don't think suggesting that people's opinions were wrong would be likely to help, although perhaps engaging in discussion with an open mind could help reach an understanding of why people made the decision they did.
Of course, as others have mentioned, there were some concerns with the particular structure of the Crunchyroll awards. Those are perfectly valid, although any problems with the award structure don't negate the views of the people who voted for Yuri on Ice based on the aspects they enjoyed of the show. The awards could have been done in any number of ways and the results could well have been different but I don't think there's any way the awards could have been done in an objectively correct manner when they're still dealing with subjective issues at the end of the day.
Yuri on Ice is objectively the winner of the Crunchyroll anime of the year award but that award isn't an objective measure.
I don't think that sort of thing is entirely meaningless because it represents the views of a group of people and it probably matters to quite a few people too. I think it's fine that people care about awards and the opinions of others, people can care about what they want to. Still, I do think people should be careful about reading too much into the results and getting angry for the wrong reasons. The results represent the outcome of the vote based on the votes received and the structure of the voting. That does mean that people voted for Yuri on Ice and they'll have had their own reasons for doing so, which is how these kinds of things work. That doesn't mean that people who didn't vote for Yuri on Ice were wrong or that Yuri on Ice is inherently superior to the competition, it was just more successful in the context of the vote. I don't think that takes anything away from the show but it shouldn't take anything away from any other show or from anyone who voted (or even didn't vote).
I suppose I can understand the frustration of seeing a major organisation/group that you associate with give recognition to something that you're not fond of over something that you feel was deserving of recognition. I don't know if there's much that can be done about that, it's unlikely that any organisation or grouping would consistently be unanimous on all relevant issues. I don't think suggesting that people's opinions were wrong would be likely to help, although perhaps engaging in discussion with an open mind could help reach an understanding of why people made the decision they did.
Of course, as others have mentioned, there were some concerns with the particular structure of the Crunchyroll awards. Those are perfectly valid, although any problems with the award structure don't negate the views of the people who voted for Yuri on Ice based on the aspects they enjoyed of the show. The awards could have been done in any number of ways and the results could well have been different but I don't think there's any way the awards could have been done in an objectively correct manner when they're still dealing with subjective issues at the end of the day.
crashmatt
Death Scythe
I have heard the OP & ED for both though I will admit I have not heard the music used during the show.
For anyone interested, according to a press statement Yuri on Ice got 44% of the vote. There are no details however concerning how many votes the other series polled.
The results of this have now been tallied and... not many people voted at all. There was a lot more diversity in the nominations (which is good) but so few responses that it's not really representative of anything much beyond that, especially given the, uh, culture of the CR forums in general. I liked some of the ideas for alternate categories though, and at least the overall winner was a worthy choice even though the chance of it winning an actual wide popularity contest is vanishingly tiny ;p
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