Opening Up Nominations for the 2024 Inaugural Lemmy Anime Awards

Submit Nominations Here

Hey everybody! A couple days ago, @NineSwords@ani.social reached out to me with an idea. Why don't we try to set up some year-end awards for the communities we moderate? Well, a bit of back and forth, and today, I am glad to announce that we have opened nominations for the 2024 Lemmy Anime Awards. The nomination round will remain open until I post next week's general discussion thread (usually late Sunday/early Monday US time). Note that there are partner awards for the manga and light novel communities as well.

Like normal, feel free to also use this thread just like you would a normal discussion thread.

As always, remember to be mindful of spoilers. If you want to know more about how to handle spoilers in this community, check the guide here (also linked in the sidebar).

52 comments

Hey all! Welcome to my meta comment about the year-end awards. I am going to try to pre-emptively answer some questions you may have:
- Regarding voting methodology, can we please use STAR voting instead? I like the acronym.
  
  I'll take a look at this. From some initial reading and poking around the survey software, I think I can create the questions for this (0-5 scale) and the methodology seems nice. I also found the starvote python package that I could use to process the ballots. It might come down to which of the methods are easier to wrangle the data into shape. The exported csv from the survey software is a bit messy, so if one of them is easier to bash the data into shape, then that will probably be the winner.

This is a cool idea. I pinned the thread to local so hopefully more people see it!
- I would appreciate it If you could do the same for the Light Novel Thread, please.
  
  Done! Sorry, I didn't see it.
- The nominations have closed as of now, so you might want to unpin these threads from local.

Thanks for the patience and for answering all my questions @wjs@ani.social
I have submitted my nominations. Unfortunately, you may see a few duplicate submissions from me because I wasn't sure if I have submitted some of them previously.
Anyway, I'm predicting that these anime would take the top spots:
Frieren
Apothecary Diaries
Dan Da Dan
Now, gotta go nominate some manga 😭

I spent WAAAAAY too much time on MyAnimeList narrowing down my choices. I felt like there wasn't a whole lot of suspense anime to pick from, and Adventure wasn't a category. I also thought Isekai/Reincarnation would get its own category but I guess we can just lump that in with Fantasy for the most part.
Seriously though, in some categories I had a really hard time narrowing it down to just 3, and in others I left spots blank simply because there wasn't much I had seen in that category at all. I guess that's normal though.
- I thought about making a category for isekai, but decided against it as most isekai are basically fantasy with extra steps (my personal opinion). However, most of them do tend to fit nicely into another category as well (fantasy, slice of life, etc.), so I decided against making a dedicated category for it.
  I do allow you to submit the nominations multiple times if you really want to nominate more than three things. 😉
  
  most isekai are basically fantasy with extra steps
  Haha, true. And a lot of isekai is isekai in name only, where the fact he's in another world NEVER comes up ever.
  I do allow you to submit the nominations multiple times if you really want to nominate more than three things. 😉
  Oh? Well there goes my afternoon... maybe... maybe not XD
  Anyway, thanks for putting this together!
  
  I do allow you to submit the nominations multiple times if you really want to nominate more than three things. 😉
  I think it's more convenient if there are more than 3 textboxes per category so that we can submit all of our nominations in one form instead of having to submit the form multiple times.
  
  most isekai are basically fantasy with extra steps
  Preach
- IKR? I spent too much time weeding out stuff that I wanted to nominate, but didn't actually show up in 2024...

This was a lot easier than the manga awards.
The nominations have been mostly Frieren, Apothecary Diaries, Euphonium, Monogatari, Makeine and Nier Automata for me. With 1 curve ball: Metallic Rouge for best OP. Anime sucks, but OP is fire
- I can't even enjoy the OP because hearing it makes me think I'm gonna have to watch more Metallic Rouge.
- Metallic Rouge OP was really, really good. The show never lived up to it.
  
  It never did. Still can't believe that was supposed to be Bones' anniversary project. Quite likely the worst anime of the year for me.

This survey made me realize how little anime I actually watched this year. I can't even fill in all the categories! The few shows I did watch were really damn good. At least it makes it easy to pick my favorites!

This past week was going to be my attempt to catch up a bit on my backlog of shows. I was actually making progress until...well, all the awards stuff took up a ton of my anime-watching time. So, what I managed to make it through:
Dan Da Dan - This show's craziness continues to deliver. What other show can somehow tie together a mantis shrimp, crippling poverty, kappa, aliens, and milk into a coherent storyline.
Villainess in History - A lot of fun. Alicia is one of my favorite non-Dan Da Dan characters of the season. Episode 10 was an out of character down episode, but I am sure that we will get back to fun Villainess-y hijinx.
Loner Life Isekai - The dungeon crawl parts of these past few episodes have been painfully slow. Thankfully, we have made it past that going forward.
Appraisal Isekai - Overall, I have been happy with this. Yes, the warfare strategy doesn't make sense and the animation is pretty barebones at times, but the characters are really the important part of this show.
Negative Positive Angler - Episode 10 was incredible. It was what I was hoping all these happy slice of life episodes was leading up to. An incredible payoff that I expect will keep delivering through to the end of the season.
I have started catching up on some other shows, but am not current yet. Working on it!

What is considered a 2024 anime?
If the series started in 2023 but ends in 2024, does it count?
What if it starts in 2024 but is going to end in 2025?
- Good question, I will add this to my meta post about this.
  I am taking a broad view of 2024 anime. Basically, if it broadcast in the calendar year of 2024, it is fair game. That means that stuff that ran into 2024 from Fall 2023 is ok (Frieren, Apothecary, etc.). Also, stuff that will continue on into 2025 is ok (Orb, Re:Zero, etc.). The one exception to that would be OP/ED. So, Frieren OP1, which only aired in 2023, would not be eligible, but Frieren OP2 would be.
  
  Oh shoot! I hadn't thought about shows that started in 2023! I would've definitely nominated Apothecary for some stuff, particularly Best Drama.

Done totally not biased ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° ).
- That's odd, one of these nomination submissions just says "shikanoko nokonoko koshitantan" over and over again.
  
  It fit every category even romance.
  But tension not I am law abiding citizen. I will never abuse my powers ;).
  (Naah really probably I am the only one who nominated Brave Bang Bravern!. So, you will know my submission XD.)

Weekly ranking roundup:
Anime Corner - Full Results - Weekly Winner: Bleach: TYBW
Reddit Karma - Weekly Winner: Dan Da Dan
Anime Trending - Weekly Winner: Blue Box
Credit to /u/Abysswatcherbel for making the chart for reddit karma and /u/Nooble5 for the Anime Trending chart.
Three different winners this week. Blue Box made a small jump up the AT chart this week to claim the top spot. I saw a lot of hype for Blue Box at the beginning of the season, but it seems to have died down a lot as the season has gone. It has fallen out of the top 10 this week in the reddit karma chart for instance.

I love the idea of awards, but with only a few notable exceptions, I don't watch currently airing anime, so...
And on that note, the first thing I watched this past week was the rest of Katanagatari, which I started last week. And I loved almost everything about it. The artstyle and character design particularly stood out, but it was all notably high quality. Though I still have to say I loved almost everything about it, because there was one part I really did not like at all:

...
So... I needed to decompress a bit from that, and I already had an obvious choice lined up - a series that I knew I wanted to watch, but hadn't gotten around to because I hadn't quite been in the mood for the particular sort of stupidity I knew it was going to offer - KonoSuba. And it was pretty much just what I expected - shallow, goofy, egregiously ecchi mindless fun. The only thing I didn't like about it is that Kazuma is, not to put too fine a point on it, a petulant, bitchy, self-absorbed asshole, and I really wanted to punch him in the face. Repeatedly.
And now I'm in the middle of something completely different - Boogiepop wa Warawanai. I watched the original version - Boogiepop Phantom - years ago and mostly enjoyed it, though I also mostly had no clue what was going on. The story is strange and complex and mysterious, and it's told non-linearly through multiple viewpoints, so it's opaque at best. The biggest problem with the original though is that it came in the wake of the success of things like Evangelion and Serial Experiments Lain, so it took what was already a complex and mysterious story and buried it in surreal symbolism. This one is still complex and non-linear, but at least it sheds a bit of the surreal symbolism in favor of more straightforward storytelling, and to its benefit. I have a lot of episodes left, but it's shaping up well.
- Kazuma is, not to put too fine a point on it, a petulant, bitchy, self-absorbed asshole
  Yeah, pretty much. Konosuba is one of those shows that I can't binge because it is just too much of this. The only reason this works in the show is because of how absurd and ridiculous all the characters are around him. If you put him in a cast of pretty normal people, he would be way, way more insufferable. I have the same issue with Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I love the show, but the whole cast are huge assholes, by design, but that means I can only watch 1-2 episodes at a time.
  Konosuba S3 would be eligible for the awards btw if you make it that far.
  
  Yeah - the rest of the cast is definitely what makes it watchable.
  I was sort of surprised by how much I ended up liking Darkness. She seems like she'd just be a tedious one-note character, and she does get that way sometimes, but the way her masochism syncs with the expected self-sacrifice of a knight actually gives it some flavor and context. I like those moments when she just shines - when she really is a noble and chivalrous knight, even though, as we'll soon be reminded, it's for all the wrong reasons.
  Aqua is sort of odd. I get what they were trying to do with her, with that combination of helplessness and hyper-competence, but it just somehow doesn't quite work - the parts just don't quite mesh. Though part of it is just that I find myself comparing her to Hestia from Danmachi, who's pretty much better in every possible way. Still though, Aqua does have her moments.
  Megumin is plain awesome, and easily my favorite character.
- The only thing I didn't like about it is that Kazuma is, not to put too fine a point on it, a petulant, bitchy, self-absorbed asshole
  Yeah, he is, and the anime knows it, and that's what I like in this case. His assholeness is what makes the complete cast work for me. You kinda need to be a self-absorbed asshole in order to even be able to deal with someone like Aqua. Without a character like him, I don't think it would've been as funny as it is for me. He's like the mega tsukomi to everyone else's mega boke (most of the time anyway).
  I can understand why others might not like that though.
  
  That's undoubtedly true - at the very least, Aqua needs a dose of him just because it takes a sort of verbal two-by-four across the forehead to get through to her at all, and Darkness needs a dose of him because... reasons.
  Still though, I just regularly want to reach into the screen and punch him in the face, and that's sort of unpleasant and exhausting.

Hope you don't have too much trouble grouping up the answers, I mainly stuck to the first title on MAL but got tired of using full names half way through cuz it's a PITA on mobile 🥲
- Haha, yeah. I get it. The light novel titles that are super long don't make things any easier. Thanks for the submission!

I guess it's a little late to be saying this, but do you think it might make sense to delay this a bit so that recency bias doesn't hit quite as hard? I'm not too worried about it for manga, but the way anime gets published makes it really easy to just say "Dandadan" without even thinking back to other excellent shows like Bravern that aired earlier this year.
Edit:
Not a huge deal but I also think it would make sense to have separate OP and ED categories.
- Recency bias is tough. Even if we held off on this until a month or two into 2025, the Fall shows will still be more recent in the mind than Winter. I do appreciate this concern though. I intend on keeping this in mind when sorting through nominations to make sure that it isn't just all Fall stuff that makes the final list.
  As for OP/ED being separate, I actually had it that way originally, but opted to include a couple extra genre categories and collapse them together to keep the total number of categories a bit manageable. Depending on how things go this year and feedback, I am open to splitting them for next year.
- Not a huge deal but I also think it would make sense to have separate OP and ED categories.
  While we are at it, what about insert songs? Some of the best songs are not OP or ED, but the insert song e.g. Zenzenzense from Your Name
  
  I had one insert song I wanted to nominate and I put it into the best soundtrack category.
  
  OST would probably be the place for insert songs since they are a one-off thing most of the time.

When we nominate something for the Best Soundtrack category, do we nominate the soundtrack itself (e.g. Zoltraak from Frieren) or the anime (e.g. Frieren)?
If it is the former and we want to nominate an insert song, does the song belong under the Best Soundtrack category or Best OP/ED?
- OP/ED is very specific, so I would say it belongs in OST. Generally, for an OST category like this, it would take the entire soundtrack of the show/movie into consideration (an insert song being part of that whole). For next year, I can add a category for something like Best Original/Insert Song that would capture this kind of thing. Apologies that I hadn't considered it!
  If you want to call out an insert song specifically in your nomination, feel free to do so. If I see a lot of people nominating a specific insert song, then I can think about how to handle it as a special case.

Regarding the Best Voice Acting category, do we nominate voice actors or anime (i.e. take all voice acting into account)?
If it's voice actors, do we nominate the voice actor for all of their roles in 2024, or only for their role in one particular anime?
- This is a good question. Looking up how it is done for other, similar awards, it is typically awarded for a specific role. So, you would nominate a specific VA for a specific role.
  
  This means that we can nominate a VA multiple times if they have held multiple roles in 2024, right?

52 comments