Before the first month of the new year is over, we’d like to make some additions to The Year in Anime Awards, which we presented a short while ago. It’s not all just about serious awards for worthy shows. No, the review staff of The Fandom Post also knows when it’s time to kick back and take a less reverent look at the year just passed. Here, our staff members present some individual or specialized “awards” for outstanding…something or other. It’s not all criticism, there is praise mixed in as well. Without further ado, let’s see what our staff thought about various “achievements” in anime last year.
Longest Title
We don’t care. Use shorter titles Japan.
Most Relentlessly Cheerful
Greg Smith: Love Live! School idol project
There are plenty of anime that keep things light and lively, but perhaps the show with the most relentlessly positive attitude this year was Love Live! Week after week, despite the obstacles placed in her way, Honoka Kōsaka forged ahead with her plan to form an idol singing group to save Otonokizaka Academy. There were down moments and times where the mood turned glum, but Honoka and the other girls always bounced back to surge ahead once more with a song and a smile.
Bryan Morton: I’m sure I coined that phrase especially for Love Live, and so I’d have to agree with Greg – if there’s one show this year that could lift my mood, Love Live was it. It was far from perfect – some of the characters actively got on my nerves, and I never did get to the stage where I could list off the names without referring to Wikipedia, but at its core the show just set out to have fun with its cast & idea, and it did that extremely well. One I’m definitely looking forward to the second season of, in case you couldn’t guess.
GBS: Yes, you did and so I couldn’t help but steal…er…borrow it.
Brian Threlkeld: Oh, have to go with the (not be confused with-) Love Lab. Week after week, despite the obstacles placed in her way, Natsuo Miki forged ahead with her plan to…learn about love! I think there were down moments…something about Sayo, and Riko being boneheaded…but I can’t remember them clearly because the girls (scripted by the same expert team behind the Relentlessly Cheerful For Life, Yuruyuri) were so much fun. (Nearly a “Year’s Biggest Surprise”, given its delayed simulcast.)
G.B. Smith
Greg Smith has been writing anime reviews and a review column on anime dubbed into English for several years, first at AnimeOnDVD and now for The Fandom Post. His occasional column on English anime dubs, Press Audio, appears whenever he comes across a dub worthy of a closer look. He is also the deputy editor for our seasonal and year end retrospectives.