American Anime Awards Finalists (Warning: Angry Fangirl)

Well, the finalists for the AAAs have been announced--basically the nominees that made it in the top five after voting. You can see the full list here.

Now, I'm a bit sick (which is why my posting has slowed once again), so I might be overreacting just a tad to this. And, admittedly, I'm a Princess Tutu fangirl, as well as a huge fan of Chris Patton...so I'm biased.

But, in my opinion, Chris Patton should be in that finalist list. His performance in Princess Tutu was one of the best of last year, for sure. It's not that the others on the list are undeserving. It's just Chris was very good...and I still think that anime that wasn't being released last year shouldn't have been available for nomination. (I loved Hayworth as Kenshin, don't get me wrong...but that's an old dub. It's like nominating Tom Hanks for Forest Gump...this year.)

And if we're going to say "best of all time", why not 'David Lucas' for Cowboy Bebop? Or Spike Spencer in Neon Genisis Evagelion?

At least Luci Christian got in the list for Princess Tutu--which is really a bit of a miracle, considering that it's a shoujo show that hasn't appeared on a major TV network.

Still, it's disappointing that the nominees are (for the most part) more the 'most popular' than what was truely the best.

I guess I'm rooting for Vic Mignogna for Best Actor, now. (Actually, Vic's my favorite anime voice actor--I was just really, really impressed with Chris Patton Good luck to all the finaliests!

Well, anyway...to make up for being behind with the clues, here's *three* clues for the contest! This should help soothe any of you that are Chris Pattons fans like me...maybe.

The town this character lives in was based on a real German town.
This character talks to a tree in one of the episodes of the anime.
The show this character is from was first shown within the past ten years.

Good luck! Remember, e-mail me at HaleySings@yahoo.com with your guesses, and you can also ask questions in the comments!

Excuse me, do you have any Chevalier D'Eon?

...Sorry. I couldn't resist.

Anyway, IGN is streaming the first episode of the anime Le Chevalier D'Eon. I checked it out, and...it's a lot better than the other two anime that got this treatment recently, at least in my opinion. It is a bit violent (although it doesn't appear to be gratuitously so, at least from this first episode), and there's a few moments that are, to be blunt, WEIRD. But for the most part it looks like it's an excellent anime--solid animation (with very nice, atypical character design), a very interesting plot, and a solid dub. Interesting the way it mixes an historical setting with a bit of mystery and horror, too. I'm not quite ready to plunk down the money for it on DVD, but I'm definitely going to rent this one.

Oscar Nominees

Yeah, I know, it's been WAY too long since I posted. I'm sorry all.

There is, however, some interesting news to post today. The Oscars have announced their nominees. You can get the list from several places, I got mine from Ain't It Cool News.

I haven't seen most of the nominees this year, so I can't really comment on it. While I'm a film fan, I tend to lean more towards 'geeky' movies like Pirates of the Caribbean, which (sometimes understandably, considering that Dead Man's Chest wasn't nearly as good as the first movie) tend to get overlooked by the Academy. Generally, the only catagory I REALLY pay attention to is the Best Animated Movie catagory. Let's look at the nominees....

Cars
Happy Feet
Monster House

I was busy when Cars and Monster House came out, so I missed out on seeing them (Both are at the top of my netflix queue, so I'll see them soon), and I missed out on Happy Feet, too. So, I can't say if these are good films or not. They LOOK like they had quality animation, at least from trailers and clips I've seen. I can't say these are bad choices. I've heard people complaining about them, but these were mostly anime fans bitter that Paprika didn't get nominated (understandably, I haven't seen it but it's Satoshi Kon--it's high quality).

It is, however, a bit sad that the best animation of the year (according to the Academy) is....CGI films. At least we didn't get an onslaught of animal films (Happy Feet seems like it's a movie BEYOND just....an animal movie. ....Well, except for the "humans are killing the pretty animals!" message the film appearantly has), but...I like computer-animated films...but that's not ALL animation has to offer. Compared to last year's list of out-of-the-mainstream, quirky, beautifully animated movies, this year is a bit of a disappointment.

Still, I'll reserve total judgement until I at least have a chance to see Cars and Monster House. I'll try to see Happy Feet, too.

Is the American Anime Awards eligible for 'Best Comedy?'

First of all, sorry for this being out a bit late. I’ve already learned two things: (1) either Blogger is going through growing pains, or my computer is doing something odd that's preventing me from signing in at times and (2) don’t promise that you’ll do something over the weekend. I’m far too lazy for that.

But, considering that my future career is at stake here, I am going to get better. If I don’t stick to this, my dear (and hopefully not imaginary) reader, you can feel free to leave me nasty comments in the blog telling me to get my lazy rear in gear. ^_~ (Anime-style emoticons are so professional!)

So, on to my opinion on how the American Anime Awards are going.

For those who don’t know, a few months back there was a press release stating that the New York Comic Con was hosting the first ever “American Anime Awards”, which are being streamed live on IGN in February, and also being shown on ADV’s Anime Network. The nominees were decided by asking all of the major distributors of anime for their nominees, as well as a few independent sources. However, the winners are being decided by a fan vote.

Unfortunately, the voting process hasn’t been exactly smooth. For instance, Johnny Young Bosch was nominated as “Best Actor in a Comedy” for his performance in…Akira. Now, I haven’t seen Akira yet (I know, I should), but…Akira isn’t really known for being side-splittingly funny. To top it off, the dub Bosch was in has been out for half a decade. The movie itself has been available in the US since 1990. That’s right folks—anything readily available in the past year was eligible, even if it’s been out for years.

Also, I really want to know how the awards will handle non-union dubs. Cowboy Bebop, for example, is known as one of the best dubs ever created—but it’d be difficult to nominate it for something like this because, well, most of the actors were listed under pseudonyms. What happens if we get a non-union dub like that again? Ignore it in the awards?

And, of course, there’s the problem of the fans voting. For example, I’m a huge fan of Princess Tutu, one of the anime that’s nominated in several categories for this year’s awards. Of course, while I hope it does well, I wouldn’t be surprised if it loses out to something like Fullmetal Alchemist (which, for the record, is another favorite of mine). It’s not to say that FMA doesn’t deserve an award—I’d be thrilled if it got one—it’s just frustrating that I’ll probably get an award because of it’s popularity, not because of it’s quality.

To be fair, most of these issues were covered in an interview with Milton Griepp, who is one of the people in charge of the awards. For example, whoever nominated Bosch put him on the ballot as an actor in Akira--the Awards themselves didn't do that. Still, Griepp's answers fail to satisfy me. They're obviously working on things, but it's still a mess, no matter how you look at it.

Overall, I’m in favor of supporting the awards. It’d be a great, great thing if these awards did well, and I encourage everyone to vote in it. It’s just disappointing that this year has had so many issues. Here’s hoping that next year the awards will go much more smoothly.

…And that this doesn't become the fiasco that is Spike’s Video Game Awards.