The (rigged) Seiyuu Awards - revisited
I wasn’t planning to go revisit this topic; but as hashihime had left a recent comment and revived the topic, what was intended as a short reply turned into something of length, and I felt the need to address the issues openly again. I strongly recommend reading j1m0ne’s coverage again for the background - as she truly did a magnificent job of exposing the corporate incest involved in this award (which I couldn’t be bothered to write about myself for various reasons). Anyway, firstly here’s hashihime’s comments in regards to the Seiyuu Awards’ shameless merchandising post we put up earlier:
I’m not sure why this is such a big deal. Is it unusual for the entertainment industry to be interested in merchandising?
And in fact, the more I think about the awards, the less I think they were necessarily rigged. There is a spread across agencies large and small, unlike last year. And some of the winners you disagree with (read: Hirano Aya in all her manifestations) may easily have won by sheer public popularity, deserved or not.
Hashihime: No it’s not unusual for a company of an entertainment industry, driven by profit, to be interested in merchandising and we never claimed it to be. What is unusual is for an industry representative body that is not profit driven, formed for the purpose of giving out supposedly genuine awards to acknowledge the works of the seiyuu, to be interested in merchandising. When you put the two entirely different enterties under the same label of “entertainment industry”, of course you would come up with the exact question that you’ve asked, but I hope you see the difference and why the question you formed is a fallancy.
Also as j1m0ne has pointed it out in great detail already, I really don’t think there was any need to beat this dead horse. But I do want to address your comment here again because it shows an almost deliberate oversight of how the award currently works just so to believe that the result is entirely fair. For starters, it was made absolutely clear that the nominees were based upon public voting but then subjected to a panel of judges who decides on the winners. If the awards were won by sheer public popularity as you have suggested for certain winners, then why the need to have the judges in the first place? Wouldn’t a more strictly monitored voting system be sufficient to determine the winner? Why not just disclose the vote counts? I’m almost certain if they did that, it would actually put more legitimacy on the award than what they have going for them right now, and that the general seiyuu otakusphere wouldn’t have been in such an uproar about it - both domestically in Japan and overseas.
On the other hand there is the issue with the judges - what criteria the judges based their opinion on were not only kept entirely hidden, but in some cases were bent to questionable standards (eg Nagi’s qualification as supporting female character, or any of Kugimiya Rei’s mentioned roles in the official Seiyuu Award page for that matter being considered “supporting female roles”), so this begs the question of why the secrecy? And above all - why even the need to have the first round of public voting when in the end it’s the judges’ call on who wins - if not just to present the illusion of fairness and delude people to think that their vote somehow counts towards something to make the award seem open and fair?
Put simply there is absolutely no transparency in the system of this award. Once you start looking at the corporate links going on in the background it’s hard for people not to doubt the legitmacy of these awards - unless you really want to turn a blind eye to all the connections.
May 1st, 2008 at 03:39
As far as I’m concerned, your bias is showing — and mine is making it possible for me to be objective, lol.
The words “shameless merchandising” seem odd. This whole industry is about merchandising. The Tokyo Anime Centre appears to have been set up to help promote the industry. Is there something morally wrong about merchandising? Selling postcards of the winners is a way of promoting the awards and the industry. I still don’t see what’s wrong with it. It says nothing about the fairness of the awards. Forgive me for thinking that you seize on it because you disagree with the results.
As far as j1m0ne’s excellent report on the awards is concerned, I didn’t see it as being particularly conclusive about whether the awards were “rigged” or not. She believed they were rigged, but also appeared to agree with about half the choices, contrary to her expectations. She pointed out that Shogakukan got into the winner’s circle this time, unlike last year (I have to add in the interest of fairness that they also became a sponsor of the awards this year).
The number of people with JOQR radio connections was striking, but a lot of seiyuus have passed through their halls. And Nagi as “supporting” did seem odd, like an attempt to find a place for KugiRie. Maybe that was the jury doing good work. No doubt at least some people nominated her in that category, so the jury could legitimately give her that award. (Although I myself thought Yukino Satsuki in Hitohira was the best supporting performance I saw last year.)
For 2006, there seemed to be an effort to spread the awards over major agencies. This year, there seemed to be more minor agencies represented. I’m not sure where the evidence of bias is, except in that the choices did not correspond to those that would be made by the higher class of Japanese and foreign otaku. Maybe they did correspond more closely to those of the larger body who actually voted, however.
Clearly you and j1m0ne particularly disagree with the awards Hirano was involved in. You don’t think she’s that good, and that’s a reasonable opinion. But perhaps the public voting was so strong in favor of her that the judges went along with it (happily). I can’t say, which is why I said the results might not “necessarily” be rigged. No-one has demonstrated to me that they were “rigged” in any bad sense.
Let’s see, for best lead actress there were Hirano, Kuwashima and Kawasumi. I would definitely call the latter two better seiyuus, but whether either of them had the more effective role last year is not so clear to me. Hirano came up with a new comic voice that worked to ground that show, which was enormously popular among the common run of late-night anime fans in Japan. It seems entirely possible to me that the public voting could have placed Hirano first, even for Motteke, which she herself seems to take no pride in. In any case, I think that there is room for disagreement, which means room for the award to go to any of them. You can disagree with the choice, but that doesn’t mean the choice was “rigged.” Would it have been rigged if they made a point of giving it to someone they preferred but the public didn’t?
The possibility of the judges massaging the results definitely is there, because of the way the awards are managed, with a committee of sponsors’ reps as a jury to work with the nominations. I wrote about that last year, before they had made it clear on their web site. I just haven’t had it demonstrated to me that this year’s choices differ, by and large, from what the voting public might have done.
It’s very hard to set up a scheme that works for such awards. Pure open voting is no better than pure jury selection, it seems to me. This kind of mixed system doesn’t seem unreasonable. Under ideal circumstances, the jury would be there to prevent one person from winning everything, or to make sure that unrecognized great performances could be recognized. Whether these awards are “ideal circumstances” remains undetermined, for me. What I observed was at least a step in the right direction, away from the more obvious massaging of 2006.
May 1st, 2008 at 09:57
Woah, long heavy discussion. Just a few quick points before I dash off.
I have absolutely no idea, hashihime, why you so vehemently defend the legitimacy of these awards when hardly anybody else does.
I did not ‘agree’ with the awards, I merely thought they made more sense than last year’s. Which isn’t hard, given how stupid they were in 2007. But any blind person can see that the awards are unfair, the nomination criteria is questionable & the judging process is not transparent.
Why the hell would they want to sell merchandise if it’s supposed to be an industry thing that recognizes excellence in performance? I don’t see the Oscars or Grammies selling postcards of the winners. And promote the awards - whatever for? Nobody knows/cares about them except hardcore otaku.
I’m not going into whether Hirano gave a good performance or not, that is a moot issue at this point. And I have no idea why you (hashihime) keep going on about Hirano and are extremely defensive about her winning the award. It’s not even my main complaint (& that’s the lack of transparency etc). I’m just surprised that you seem so blinded to the obvious ridiculousness of the whole awards thing, and your comments seem to paint you as a ‘blinkered Hirano Aya fan’.
For the record, last year’s spread across agencies (just for the acting & newcomers):
Baobab - 2
Aoni - 2
81p - 2
Wakakusa - 1
Supekura - 1
Mausu - 1
En - 1
And this year’s:
81p - 2
KenPro - 2
Aoni - 1
Himawari - 1
Supekura - 1
Mausu - 1
Holy Peak - 1
I’m - 1
A difference of 1. Don’t see that much of a spread to ‘minor’ agencies, unless you consider I’m a minor agency.
Anyway, I have already given up on the awards ever being a fair reflection of reality and unless all those corporate bigwigs are removed, they never will be. I would vouch for a system where the winners are voted by people involved in the industry (seiyuu/animators etc) but god only knows how well-informed those people are.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:13
tl;dr for everything
Regardless, Yukarin didn’t win anything. Hell, she wasn’t even there. Thus it was rigged.
END OF STORY.
Plus Aya Hirano won best female voice? WTF o_O
May 1st, 2008 at 16:09
Besides the dodgy nomination criteria and the judging process, it doesn’t seem that painfully rigged.
I’m not all that well informed, but a lot of people were happy with Miyano Mamoru. Personally I think he sucked as Setsuna so much that I couldn’t watch Gundam 00, but I’m the minority; a lot of people were happy.
Hirano Aya has a lot of love but a lot of hate too. Kamiya Hiroshi’s Gundam 00 won maybe because Tieria is so popular (with his effeminate looks and all xD). Kugimiya Rie won that 2channel Moe-est Seiyuu of all poll, which definitely shows some major popularity showing.
I think the big corporations had a major say in the winners, hence the unfairness, but the winners themselves are to my knowledge, really quite popular and so are a lot of their roles. Hence, the (sort of) fairness.
It’s based off popularity rather than talent and acting. Then the major companies get to influence. Influence, but not total control.
Haha, hashihime, your Aya bias is showing, but so is everybody’s anti-Aya bias xD
May 1st, 2008 at 16:58
“And above all - why even the need to have the first round of public voting when in the end it’s the judges’ call on who wins - if not just to present the illusion of fairness and delude people to think that their vote somehow counts towards something to make the award seem open and fair?”
See that’s what I said, that they were playing fast and loose on both front, the public and private votes. I still honestly just refer to them as the Kadokawa Seiyuu Awards because that’s were they are. Why Kadokawa would add fuel to the fire of an already fading stars growing unpopularity is beyond me, but this just goes to show you that Japanese organizations are still in their infancy when it comes to mastering underhanded marketing. Kadokawa being so painfully obvious at times that I question whether they know product placement is supposed to be subtle and borderline subliminal.
I still get a chuckle every now and then out of Hashihime’s defence of Aya Hirano. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do I guess. Though nobody here is really attacking her as far as I can tell.
@Hashihime: but this really isn’t about Aya Hirano as people have said, it’s about the awards as a whole. Consider that Kadokawa had a stake in Kidou Senshi Gundam 00 and that series took home more awards for itself then any other franchise I believe. Couple that with their love child in Lucky Star and Kadokawa basically ran the show. Also their horrible reputation for self-advertising (again Lucky Star among other things, Rental Magica and now Code Geass R2 with the intrusive ads after the eyecatch) doesn’t lend much credibility to the awards either when you consider that they did so well.
May 1st, 2008 at 18:16
Heh, everyone else had pretty much addressed the points so I don’t really have to bother. But again there are some points you’re missing hashime:
Tokyo Anime Center is not the creator of the postcard set, they are merely a distributor *hired* by the Seiyuu Award Committee to print these postcards. The creators of the merchandise *is* the Seiyuu Award Committee, TAC just sells them. And just as j1m0ne pointed out, you don’t see any respectable movie/acting awards, big or small, Hollywood or small art festivals, creating merchandising to “promote” their awards. And again, your fallancy of lumping together a non-profit organization with the “entire industry” is blinding you and making your arguments weak.
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.
May 1st, 2008 at 23:07
I really like Miyano, he’s one of my favorites between younger voice actors - and I’ve really enjoyed Gundam 00 as well, but I absolutely don’t agree about Miyano winning the award based on his Setsuna performance. Just like I really like Kamiya Hiroshi but I didn’t find his Tieria anything special really, especially if compared to his Zetsubou sensei ^^;
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
May 2nd, 2008 at 00:13
>> Let’s see, for best lead actress there were Hirano, Kuwashima and Kawasumi. I would definitely call the latter two better seiyuus, but whether either of them had the more effective role last year is not so clear to me.
*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. >_>
May 2nd, 2008 at 03:10
Well, good answers all. I can hardly say the process was transparent. But I still think it was better than last year, and at least as good as all the other awards situations, such as public voting in magazines, which produces a bias in favor of the people that particular magazine covers.
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.
May 2nd, 2008 at 06:47
I don’t think there is any collusion amongst us here to condemn the awards. But you could probably read that there may be a high correlation between opinions that the awards are rigged and the chances that it probably is.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:10
Eh, I’m not anti-Hirano. I’m anti-awardsunfaircorpsuckupyukarinblanked(ry
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 ^^;
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:20
Oh and I would like to mention that CLANNAD, once of 2007’s biggest shows and of which DVD sales have been outperforming Lucky Star, won nothing as well. Could it be that perhaps (gasp) Kadokawa have no involvement with CLANNAD?
And the first line of my previous comment got messed up big time. I didn’t emphase my non anti-Hiranoness on purpose!
May 2nd, 2008 at 18:37
I’d also like to add that there’s also Nanoha Strikers which DVDs and CDs had sold phenominal numbers but its creators (King Records) was not involved, but we all knew that too right? :P
May 10th, 2008 at 01:49
sidestepping most of the arguments here, because I don’t really care about the awards. it’s fun (because it is a vote) but because it is a popular vote system, it is also boring and not at all of any objective value for quality of acting that the winners display.
i think in order for this award to gain legitimacy, they need to take a more elitist, professional approach.
May 10th, 2008 at 03:03
> omo
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.