Yuri!!! On Ice wins Crunchyroll’s “Anime of the Year” Award – Angering Crunchyroll users

Yesterday Crunchyroll announced on social media that sports anime Yuri!!! On Ice won the “Anime of the Year” award in their inaugural Anime Awards, meaning that it won all the awards it was nominated for; seven of the fourteen prizes overall.

However, the victory has also resulted in angry comments from some who regularly use Crunchyroll, with people taking to their forums to complain about not just YOI winning this award, but the whole of the awards, and have accused fans of the series of rigging the poll.

When the awards were launched Crunchyroll users complained about the quality of the shortlist, saying that having four nominations in each category (apart from “Anime of the Year” which had eight) was not enough, although later during voting it was revealed that an “Other” section was created to allow any nomination.

After the rest of the awards were announced, most of the complaints were directed at the fact that Crunchyroll users thought YOI won awards it did not deserve, in particular the award for “Best Animation”, and referencing stills from the show which featured what they claimed to be poor quality animation. They also highlighted the large amount of votes cast in categories in which YOI was a nomination in comparison to those in which it wasn’t nominated, and many claimed that those such as fujoshi and people on social media sites like Tumblr were actively encouraging people to vote as many times as they could in the open poll, effectively accusing YOI fans of cheating. Others said that the timing at the end of the year meant that YOI had an unfair advantage over shows broadcast earlier in 2016 as the series was fresh in people’s memories.

However, other Crunchyroll users have also defended the awards, saying that none of the evidence the attackers have used to argue that there has been vote rigging has been conclusive, and have some have accused those of attacking the awards of just moaning that their favourite shows didn’t win.

Crunchyroll themselves have said on Twitter that: “We had very strong anti-cheating methods that gave us results in line with true audience sentiment” and that, “we had some surprisingly complex ways to fight multiple voting that worked based on multiple tests.” At the time of writing, although Crunchyroll announced YOI as the winner of the “Anime of the Year” award, they did not say how much by or where the other nominations finished. Nor has Crunchyroll said if there will be changes to the way the awards are run for next year.

A full list of the other awards can be read here.