2022 Hosting, Jury Discusses, and Final Write-Ups
In 2022, I once again hosted the r/anime Awards, but this year I was much more involved in the process than the year before. As far as actually running the awards, I’d say I was 1 of 4 hosts most involved in the wider scheme of running things, and basically did this as my main job for 6 months (alongside my actual day job), managing a lot of things behind the scenes.
I hosted 3 categories directly (Slice of Life, Character Design, & Anime of the Year), but I was involved in various other areas. I assisted in designing the application, aiming to garner the attention of more productive and skilled writers. I involved myself in managing multiple other categories’ juries, primarily when debates broke out. I helped organize posts, including all of the Jury Discusses posts for this year, acting as the lead on this project this year. I also coordinated the proofreaders for the final write-ups that go on the website, including designing the helper application and proofreading some of the categories myself, and also writing a write-up for a category.
For the Jury Discusses posts, we were very experimental, with many aspects being changed to try and make them more appealing. The core concept of the posts was the same as last year though; we had jurors write their thoughts and discuss the show which would be the subject of the post, and the host in charge of that post edited it to provide the various viewpoints. I was only directly responsible for 1 post myself this year:
I also had a large part in the final write-ups, in particular as the host in charge of the proofreaders, but I personally proofread the write-ups for the Comedy & Character Design categories, alongside 1 other proofreader in each category. I also wrote 1 write-up myself this year, the State of the Category for the Slice of Life category:
For fans of Slice of Life, 2022 will be a year to remember. Even outside of the Slice of Life jury, jurors and voters found countless things to love. Such a variety of fantastic Slice of Life shows aired this year, that they’re heavily represented in other genres, character categories, production categories, and even Movie and Anime of the Year. We’ve fallen into the comfy embrace of Deaimon and Yuru Camp’s beautiful backgrounds. We’ve explored hobbies in the lives of Cute Girls Doing Cute Things in Do It Yourself!! and Yama no Susume: Next Summit. We’ve laughed along with the childish antics of idols in Kiratto Prichan and Waccha Primagi. We’ve revisited middle school and seen the insecurities of youth melt away with Akebi-chan no Sailor Fuku. And we’ve gotten a final curtain call on Aria with another film in the revered iyashikei franchise, rounding out this series in beautiful fashion with Aria the BENEDIZIONE. There are few things as powerful as these character driven stories of the mundane, displaying the beauty of everyday life in imaginative and expressive ways. Even amongst the shows discussed which missed the cut, such as Healer Girl, Maiko-san Chi no Makanai-san, Cue!, and Kumichou Musume to Sewagakari, there was much to appreciate in their approaches to representing the day to day.
