Seiyuu Awards - the real deal
This is not some fanboy 2ch voting, but this year marks the first Seiyuu Awards. Sponsered by several big players in the industry such as Kadokawa and Bunkahousou, the public voting began on the 10th of this month and votings are done via various websites. There are 8 categories open to the public to vote for plus 3 special awards which will be choosen by the committee, and they are as follows:
- Best male voice actor - based on the character in a show broadcasted this year
- Best female voice actress - same as above
- Best supporting male voice actor - same as above
- Best supporting female voice actress - same as above
- Best new male voice actor (has to have debuted within the last 5 years)
- Best new female voice actress (same as above)
- Best singer
- Best personality
And the 3 special awards are:
- Special service (for seiyuu whom had passed away)
- Service
- Synergy
I have a feeling that Sugita Tomokazu and Hirano Aya will bag the best actor/actress awards due to all the Haruhiism still going on, and Hirano Aya might even just make the best new actresss award as well. While Mizuki Nana should win the singer category without a doubt. Sad to say but Suzuoki Hirotaka might be choosen for the Special Service Award.
The awards ceremony will be held on the March 3rd, 2007.
November 12th, 2006 at 02:59
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20061110/seiyu.htm
>> There are 8 categories open to the public to vote for plus 3 special awards which will be choosen by the committee
公眾投票只是初選，最終結果還是由委員會決定
>> and Hirano Aya might even just make the best new actresss award as well
平野的聲優出道作是「天使のしっぽ」，符合新人賞的條件嗎？
November 12th, 2006 at 09:58
Wow this is very cool, and long overdue. Tomokazu is pretty good and I wouldn’t mind him winning regardless of Haruhiism on the male side, though I’m forced to go with Nakahara Mai on the female side this year.
I have my own doubts on the fairness of the method though. I’m not sure how much public voting will skew the results towards recognizability vs. achievement. I’d like to think that the short-answer method of voting will force some kind of self selection of those who are more specifically voice fans who would actually care about the results, against general anime fans who would vote for any name they vaguely recalled.
Then again, doesn’t this essentially make it the same as the unreliable 2ch fanboy holy war, except backed by an industry money? Suppose, merely as an example, someone like Yukarin mobilized her enormous internet fanbase to vote for her, or perhaps on the other side of things Nogawa gets screwed out of deserved nominations because of the recent age incident. I wouldn’t want someone to win solely based on the current size of their club membership. I wonder if they have quality screeners who will weed out really low content votes (this would be a scandal in itself).
It looks like there will be a lot of things that need to be ironed out for the first ceremony. Either way I hope they get a good turnout and make this an annual event. I’ll be curious to see how this eventually works, and who the winners are.
November 12th, 2006 at 13:37
I get the feeling that marketed voice actors shouldn’t have a real advantage in this award thing, but if it’s going to go by popularity votes at all, wouldn’t it get stale pretty fast?
I think it’s cool, even if it’s more a pep rally kind of thing, and a way to market more voice actors as a way to move their works. Should be a lot of fun. Plus, this should include all those dubs, too? That’ll be a lot of fun. I for one am not going to take this seriously until something more drastic happens.
November 13th, 2006 at 22:56
> 公眾投票只是初選，最終結果還是由委員會決定
但係官網唔係甘寫 ._.
> 平野的聲優出道作是「天使のしっぽ」，符合新人賞的條件嗎？
2001年, 僅僅可以(?)
November 14th, 2006 at 02:13
Maybe I should write in English? ^^
The description on the official site is kind of unclear, but it did say that public voting makes up the first round of the selection process （「一般投票により一次選出を行う部門」）. And I suppose this is more reasonable than simply taking the votes as the final results, with reasons Paranda has written above.