This past Saturday was the 2020 Crunchyroll Anime Awards. This was my first year actually making a point to watch the whole show. I wanted to put together some of my thoughts on the winners and the awards as a whole.

First the positives. I was surprised at how short the awards were. Not that I’m complaining at all, but I have never seen an award show go that quickly. I’m assuming it is partly because they didn’t have any major musical performances. , although there was a music video played. I know for other major award shows that can add time. It was also interesting to see how the presenters presented each category for the nominees. I appreciated how they kept the show moving, but allowed adequate time for really important awards like for the Industry Icon award. It was definitely inspirational and encouraging to hear from George Wada president of Wit Studio.

I was also super excited to see some great representation for the presenters. I was most excited to see Mark from RDCWorld1, mainly because they are a group I aspire to work with in the future (speaking it!). It was also really cool to see Kieraplease the cosplayer. And of course it wouldn’t have been right if King Vader wasn’t in attendance. I’m glad I was able to see them be a part of the award show. There were also plenty of Seeing the show gives me hope that I could be on the stage one day.

I will say though, some parts of the show were freaking awkward. Like I mean really really awkward. I mean I know you can get some of that with the genre, but there were some cringey moments. A lot of the cringe would happen when presenters were talking or “trying” to have banter with each other, to then just miss the mark. There was another unfortunate moment when the show tried to broadcast another location, and there was no audio at all. I hope for next year they can try to work on the flow between each award.

Moving on to the winners. I am so happy Demon Slayer won the awards it did. It got Best Boy, Best Fight and Anime of the Year. I know there are some who maybe thought Demon Slayer was over-hyped and didn’t deserve the recognition it got. I think most of those opinions are that it’s too mainstream. But it’s no different than when My Hero raked up back in 2018. I would also argue that My Hero is waay more mainstream than Demon Slayer.

I also loved that Senku from Dr. Stone got Best Protagonist and Isabela from Promised Neverland got Best Antagonist. Out of the new shows, I was surprised at how little The Promised Neverland won. Emma was definitely my choice for Best Girl.

The awards this year also gave me some new shows to watch to see why they were nominated. I’m looking forward to watching Vinland Saga, Carole and Tuesday, Mob Psycho, and Dororo.

Those are all my thoughts on the Crunchyroll Anime Awards! What did you guys think of the winners? Did you have a favorite presenter? Let me know dwon below! Peace!