Agreed. Actually just dumping the initial public voting stage and disclose the name of the panel of judges is probably a big step towards what you’ve described.

i think in order for this award to gain legitimacy, they need to take a more elitist, professional approach.

And the first line of my previous comment got messed up big time. I didn’t emphase my non anti-Hiranoness on purpose!

I agree with houkoholic about the Synergy award though. Kamen Rider Den-O has been such a success with the general public, just look at the sales of its theme songs which obliterate the anime ones.

The agencies spread thing doesn’t really matter since for the acting awards (if you would believe that they’re biased) it only mattered that most of them went to Kadokawa-related anime blabla, and that the newcomers had 2 awards reserved each year for AMG graduates blabla.

Incidentally, if Ito Kanae & somebody random like Azuma Masataka/Maeno Tomoaki win Best Newcomer next year then you can safely say AMG are rigging it. Makes all their magazine ads look more credible y’know. Check em out, they plasted Kano Yui/Kakky on last year’s ads & have now been replaced by Emiri and Waccha. It makes ignorant seiyuu wannabes think “Hey, these AMG people can produce award-winning voice actors, I’m sooo signing up for their training school!” and another sucker sends 50,000 yen in tuition fees down the drain.

And the Oscars posters…. are not for individual acting award winners and ?_? They’re just a chronicle of past winners + promo leading up to the awards (not after) – I’d love to get copies of them all, they’re darn cool. But not at $25 a pop.

Anyway, at this point I’m more taking the piss than staying on topic. I actually love the Seiyuu Awards since it gives me a good laugh for a few days & also enables me to do some research into collusion ^^;

As for whether the Oscars does any marketing, check the oscars.org site and you see their poster and videos, etc., etc.

And I keep mentioning Hirano because I think she is what most sticks in the craw of the higher rung of anime fans, because so many of them just don’t see what’s good about her work, and I continue to think they have too limited a view of what a seiyuu should sound like. However, my second-rate spoken Japanese probably means that the unnaturalness of some of her work bothers me less than it does other people, while I can still receive the strong emotional or comic effects.

Kadokawa is certainly in this with both feet, but SHnY, Gundam and Lucky Star seem to have been among the most popular shows of the past two years, by some measures at least, so them being there is no surprise. And Shogakukan got involved this year. Perhaps there is something going on there, as the organization tries to draw in more of the industry by making sure they get awards if they start helping. I can be skeptical, too, lol.

Good stats work by j1m0ne, but what it ended up showing me was a good spread across agencies in both years, whereas I thought there was more bias to large agencies in the first year.

Why do I harp on this? It’s partly Hirano, for sure, but it’s also my reflex contrarianism. Everyone being so united in their condemnation just bothers me. I still think the awards were more acceptable in year 2 than in year 1, so hopefully the committee is making adjustments.

Should they go to pure public voting? Should they go to a distinguished jury? Should they go to something like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and have members of the industry join an association and be the voters? Every method has its pluses and minuses.

*cough*Claymore*cough*Nodame*cough*
It will make a bit more sense if Aya won last year, since she wasn’t really a seiyuu in 2007. But I guess her postcards will sell a lot more compared to the Hou-chan/Ayachi/Kugimi.

Well, getting sponsors is inevitable, but shouldn’t affect the results this much. And they should really consider the whole criteria over.

I don’t take SA seriously (at all), but can’t help not to sulk over the best singers, above all. >_>

I don’t mind Hirano Aya, but really don’t see how she can compare to seiyuu like Kuwashima or Kawasumi – if we’re talking about “comic voices” I still like Kawasumi’s Nodame 10x times more than Hirano’s Konata ^^;

So uhm, I guess my point is that even though I do appreciate several of the seiyuu involved, I really can’t see how many of these prizes can be considered any fair =o

And here’s for Emily’s comments:

> Emily

Miyano Mamoru could’ve won for his role as Light in Death Note last year which would make a lot of sense, though the award was given to Fukuyama Jun for his role as Lelouch/Zero in Code Geass. Personally I would’ve agreed to either one of them winning last year as both seiyuu practically carried the entire show on their acting, but again in an attempt to make the award seem “fair” it looks as though the committee decided to 1) give Miyano a late award for shafting him last year, and 2) they don’t want to give it to a show which is not a sponser last year (Death Note is owned by Shueisha, who is not a sponser either year, incidentally). Which again, makes it quite dubious as to how much say the sponsers has. The fact that both years the best male actor award goes to a Bandai/Sunrise/Kadokawa show also doesn’t make it seem particularly, ummm, not rigged? (for a lack of better word). Especially that Setsuna just pales to practically everyone else in Gundam 00 as a character, let alone in comparison to Light in Death Note.

As for Kugimiya Rie – again, it seems in an effort to make the award seem “fair” (or shut down the fanbois – whichever you prefer) they have to give her an award for something, but any roles that Kugimiya Rie was famous for/gave her the popularity the pass year was entirely due to her 3 roles of Louis of Zero no Tsukaima, Nagi of Hayate no Gotoku and Shana of Shakugan no Shana. I dare say that no serious anime watching person would considered these 3 roles as supporting female roles. Again, this put another strike against the award’s criteria, panel of judges, and its legitimacy. Yes it’s good that Kugimiya Rie got recongnition, but the category she won it for is a big question mark. And just to add more fuel to the fire, Hayate no Gotoku is published by Shogakugan, which IS a sponser this year.

Incidentally, it happens that the award I worried about most being a filler award – the Tomiyama Kei award won by Furuya Toru – turns out to be the one that I can agree with. And I can also agree with the Synergy Award for Kamen Rider Denoh since I can actually see how the seiyuu in that show had bred a lot of awareness in seiyuu where there were previously none/near non-existing.