Ninja Kamui wins Best Original anime award at Anime Awards, Internet IMMEDIATELY calls foul

[Jman]

“Rigged” is the word I’ve been hearing.

[PokeNirvash]

Of the four anime-original series I watched last year from last year, Kamui was easily the weakest of the bunch. Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night, Mayonaka Punch, even frickin' Astro Note were better.

But hey, at least we got a new key visual out of it.

 

[3ngag3]

It gets worse.

One Piece did not win a single award. Not even best ongoing series. That distinction went to Demon Slayer...for the Hashira Training Arc...one of the more critically panned arcs of the series.

[Blatch]

Uh... okay?

And here I thought the big story was Solo Leveling winning a bunch of awards.

[Toonamiguy321]

What are the criteria voted upon? I could see how an actionslop show could beat seasonal SoL if most of the people voting are brain rotted shonenbabies. And whether we like it or not, Ninja Kamui did start strong at least. 
 

8 hours ago, 3ngag3 said:

It gets worse.

One Piece did not win a single award. Not even best ongoing series. That distinction went to Demon Slayer...for the Hashira Training Arc...one of the more critically panned arcs of the series.

And that’s a good thing. One Piece shouldn’t just be handed awards because it’s trendy. Toei animation and pacing is dogshit not worthy of praise. Panned or not, at least Demon Slayer makes an effort to look good, and has an author that knows how to pace a story. 

[viperxmns]

Do we know if the people voting watch the shows they vote for lol

[Blatch]

55 minutes ago, viperxmns said:

Do we know if the people voting watch the shows they vote for lol

The people voting on Best Animated Feature at the Oscars were like that for years: not even bothering. A whole damn decade ago, The Wind Rises got snubbed for the award in favor of moar Disney, and there was a big furor over it. I even remember someone saying that they threw the screener DVDs in the trash, though I think that was for Best Animated Short. Thank Icculus they're apparently now forcing people to watch 'em.

[viperxmns]

9 minutes ago, Blatch said:

The people voting on Best Animated Feature at the Oscars were like that for years: not even bothering. A whole damn decade ago, The Wind Rises got snubbed for the award in favor of moar Disney, and there was a big furor over it. I even remember someone saying that they threw the screener DVDs in the trash, though I think that was for Best Animated Short. Thank Icculus they're apparently now forcing people to watch 'em.

Yeah heard about the oscars bullshit so wonder if other award voters are guilty also

[Top Gun]

8 hours ago, Toonamiguy321 said:

And that’s a good thing. One Piece shouldn’t just be handed awards because it’s trendy. Toei animation and pacing is dogshit not worthy of praise. Panned or not, at least Demon Slayer makes an effort to look good, and has an author that knows how to pace a story. 

Tell me you know nothing about the last two or three years of the series without telling me that. 

[Toonamiguy321]

4 hours ago, Top Gun said:

Tell me you know nothing about the last two or three years of the series without telling me that. 

Occasional spurts of decent animation designed purely to be bait for YouTube soyface reaction videos does not a show make. I’ll admit, compared previous arcs, there has been noteworthy improvement. But when the baseline is bottom of the barrel shit, there is a long ways to go up before you are competitive with other shows. And the pacing issue hasn’t really been resolved because for years Toei has been right on the bumper of the manga and only just recently caved to putting the anime on a hiatus. 
 

Demon Slayer has a panned arc and it’s wrapped up in 8 episodes. Not even a full anime cour. For One Piece, that would take 50-60 episodes. 
 

When The One Piece gets moving, that might be a series worthy of praise and awards if they do it right and keep their foot on the gas. Current One Piece not being awarded anything gives me a slight sliver of belief that this award show was legitimate and not just handing out trophies to the highest grossing franchises. 

[Top Gun]

"Occasional spurts of decent animation?" Uh-huh. Try semi-weekly examples of cinematic-quality fight scenes, the type that make you sit there and think "how the hell is this possible 1100 episodes into this juggernaut of a franchise?" What the anime team has done with the source material over the past few years is nothing short of extraordinary. And it goes beyond the raw animation, the show feels so much snappier and more ambitious now than it has since maybe its very earliest days. There's nothing legitimate about any of this CR nonsense, but if there was, there's no universe in which OP doesn't deserve a spot in the best ongoing series conversation. 

[Sketch]

One Piece animation has become consistently impressive since Wano it’s absurd to say otherwise. Animation doesn’t save the pacing of Wano but Egghead has been quite good. Well worth the win against the weakest arc of Demon Slayer that was supposedly a bit heavy on filler despite running the equivalence of 11 eps. There’s no accounting for taste… especially in Ninja Kamui’s case this instance.

The other 5 original anime nominations were barely noticed by comparison but at least 3 were much better and I doubt any of them were worse than Kamui.

So ironic that CR acknowledges Toonami’s original anime they had no involvement in but maybe because Aniplex has the rights in Japan there was a little push to recognize Kamui. No doubt Lazarus will be nominated next year.

Imagine the gloating DeMarco would be doing on social media right now if he was still on there.

[OwlChemist81]

Unpopular opinion: I LIKE Ninja Kamui, and it was probably one of the better new shows of 2024. Did it have its issues, including a penchant for killing off intriguing female characters and questionable CGI? Of course, but the overall story and animation were also at least entertaining. Definitely a bold move to take a chance on a mecha-genre show, and maybe the last time one gets accolades for a while.

[Sketch]

On 5/27/2025 at 9:18 AM, OwlChemist81 said:

Unpopular opinion: I LIKE Ninja Kamui, and it was probably one of the better new shows of 2024. Did it have its issues, including a penchant for killing off intriguing female characters and questionable CGI? Of course, but the overall story and animation were also at least entertaining. Definitely a bold move to take a chance on a mecha-genre show, and maybe the last time one gets accolades for a while.

Eh... it's maybe in the top 10 original anime of 2024 which is admittedly pretty good but it says more that so many anime originals aren't particularly good.