I start with the character awards partly because I feel once a show establishes a great cast of characters then it’s 70% of the way to ensuring that I’ll like it. And it doesn’t matter what type of show, any show can be improved with good character development.

Best Female Main Character

Winner: Ryoko from Ryoko’s Case Files

Runner-up: Iku Kasahara from Library War

An accurate description of Ryoko would be a cross between an adult Haruhi Suzumiya and the police skill of the Major from GiTS:SAC. A very potent combination and it helped make the show a must watch. My favorite Ryoko-ism was towards the end of the series when she took refuge in an empty underground mall, trying to hide from numerous soldiers trying to kill her. She realizes that her clothes are torn and dirty so she picks a killer outfit out, leaves her charge card, then calmly showers and dresses as if she’s going to a party and not to a firefight. We really need to see more shows like Ryoko’s Case Files that focus on characters that are adults because it’s so refreshing for the change of pace.

Best Male Main Character

Winner: Ryuuji from Toradora

Runner-up: Kogarashi from Maid Guy

Everyone has their little problems that they have to live with. For Ryuuji, it’s the fact that he looks like his Yakuza father – mean and dangerous. This is a problem because Ryuuji is a nice guy and just wishes for people to treat him normally. He happens to be a bit odd though because a sale at the grocery store or having the chance to clean away mold makes his day. What makes him the best male main character is that he’s truly a really nice guy. He’s also fiercely loyal to his friends, willing to go to whatever means necessary to help them with whatever their problems are and he’s also insightful and thoughtful.

Best Female Supporting Character

Winner: Minorin from Toradora

Runner-up: Ami from Toradora

I didn’t think Ami would become a character I like when she was introduced but she’s been slowly rising in the ranks. She’s a completely different person then either Taiga or Minorin but she’s shown her own positive qualities. It wasn’t enough to dislodge Minorin from the top spot because Minorin has been awesome since the beginning. Her energetic outbursts and attitude always steel the show when she’s onscreen. However, this spastic personality hides a more serious personality that she doesn’t allow people to see though she seems to be lowering her guard to Ryuuji. So for her screen-stealing personality, sunny disposition, and being a good friend to Taiga, Minorin gets my nod for best female supporting character.

Best Male Supporting Character

Winner: Dan-kun from Bamboo Blade

Runner-up: Sunohara from Clannad

One of the surprising things about Bamboo Blade was Dan-kun, Miya Miya’s boyfriend and friend to Yuuji. He was short, looked very egg shaped, and seemed to be there for comedic purposes. Over the course of the series though, we see him mature as he works hard at learning Kendo. He also is a good boyfriend by providing support to Miya Miya so she can face her inner demons and her external tormentors. He earned a lot of respect from the characters and by the final episode, he is elected the head of the kendo club which was something that would have been unfathomable at the start.

Best Non-human Character

Winner: Nyanko-sensei from Natsume Yuujinchou

Runner-up: Kuu from Wagaya no Oinari-sama

Nyanko-sensei is a spirit that had been sealed into a Luck Cat statue until Natsume accidentally lets him loose. He makes an agreement with Natsume to be his body guard under the condition that when Natsume dies, Nyanko-sensei takes ownership of the Book of Friends. At the time I thought that Nyanko-sensei would just kill Natsume at the first opportunity but Nyanko-sensei never seemed to even think of doing so. As the show unfolded, I realized that Nyanko-sensei actually likes Natsume as a friend. His gruff, catlike personality with his liking of alcohol is a great counterpoint to the often sad events of the show. And because he’s strong in his original form and also because he’s well-known amoung the spirits – oftentimes he is the one that saves Natsume from being killed.

Strongest Female Character

Winner: Sora from Someday’s Dreamers Season 2

Runner-up: Nagisa from Clannad

I’m defining strong in a more general sense then just being physically strong and both Sora and Nagisa strike me as being strong women. Neither are particularly physically strong but they both have problems that would make most normal people despair, yet they can smile and live as if nothing is wrong. Sora edged Nagisa out because we still have half a season of Clannad left and much of her story still left to see.

Strongest Male Character

Winner: Kogarashi from Maid Guy

Runner-up: Natsume from Natsume Yuujinchou

I had to give this award to Kogarashi. I can’t say he’s emotionally strong like Natsume because I’m not sure that Kogarashi has emotions. He’s more like a force of nature that’s not totally explainable to us mere humans. He can control crows, has x-ray vision, can plug a USB printer cord into his ear and print images from his mind, he’s taught at M.I.T., can wrestle with a panda bear, and the list goes on. In the show he works as a maid and strives for perfect service, even if his master disagrees.

Best Female Screen-grabber

Winner: Sakura from Wagaya no Oinari-sama

Sakura wasn’t in the show much, maybe once every couple episodes, but when she was, she made her persence known. With an imagination almost as outlandish as Hosaka’s, the ability to come to absurd conclusions, and a talent for over-analyzing a situation – she always made the viewer laugh and at the same time hope she would successful in getting Takagami’s attention.

Best Male Screen-grabber

Winner: Hosaka from Minami-ke: Okawari

Hosaka is another person that isn’t in the show too often but his mere presence is enough to get a laugh. The over dramatic posturing and habit of unbuttoning his shirt helps though. He is consumed with getting Haruka Minami’s attention but a combination of personal shortcomings and bad luck have so far stymied him. His overactive imagination is always a source of laughter – just look at my the recently posted clip from episode 2 of the third season. And the sad thing is that he’s genuinely sincere, has his good points, and would probably make a good boyfriend for Haruka.

Best Villian

Winner: Kazuhiro Mitogawa from Ga-Rei: Zero

I love a villian that’s intelligent and evil and he’s both. As we get through Ga-Rei: Zero, we see that he has this complex plan to eliminate the good guys largely through their own failing and he’s been very sucessful. He’s gotten rid of one of the most powerfullfamilies, reduced another to a single member, and killed or injured to the point of retireing several other very high level people.

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It’s finally time for me to write up my favorites and top picks in anime for 2008. Between waiting for some series to finish, wanting to marathon a couple of missed series, and catching the new season of anime – I didn’t have the room in my writing time to do this until now. I also wanted to be comprehensive then my seasonal awards and my previous yearly top picks and was successful on that front.

This time before I get to my awards, I wanted to mention what shows I watched this year. It’s these series that will be up for the awards; if a series isn’t on this list, I either dropped it very early or didn’t watch it (for various reasons) and thus you won’t see it mentioned. For the shows that either started in 2007, will continue into 2009, or have a slower sub release schedule, I have marked the episodes watched in 2008.

Some shows like X’amd and Michiko to Hatchin would do poorly in my top 10 ranking because too much of the story is still unrevealed; therefore, I’m shifting their consideration in the ranking to next year.

Winter Season

Bamboo Blade eps. 13-26
Clannad
Shana 2 eps. 13-24
Minami-ke Okawari
Hayate eps. 40-52
Shigofumi
Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

Spring Season

Kaiba
Soul Eater eps. 1-36
Maid Guy
Library War
Wagaya no Oinari-sama
Nabari no Ou eps. 1-17 (want to finish but haven’t felt like it)
The Daughter of Twenty Faces eps. 1-20
Kure-nai
Zettai Karen Children eps. 1-14 (can’t bring myself to continue)

Summer Season

Zero’s Familiar S.3
Birdy the Mighty Decode
Ryoko’s Case Files
Natsume Yuujinchou
Someday’s Dreamers Season 2
X’amd eps. 1-20

Fall Season

Mouryou no Hako eps. 1-6
Michiko to Hatchin eps. 1-10
Skip Beat eps. 1-12
Yozakura Quartet
Earl and Fairy
Toradora eps. 1-13
Chaos Head
Kemeko DX
Ga-rei Zero
Shikabane Hime: Aka
Kurozuka
Clannad Season 2 eps. 1-12
Index eps. 1-13
Kannagi

Now it’s time for the Anti-Awards. These are awards that the winners probably wouldn’t like winning and instead of spreading them out in the various parts, I’m going to put them here. Also, the awards will have a higher level of spoilers then I normally use but I will still try to keep them to minimum.

Best Half and Half

Winner: Shana 2

The first half of Shana 2 was atrocious. Sometimes I can’t believe that I got through it. If I hadn’t liked Rie Kugimiya as Shana and known how good the show could be, I probably wouldn’t have stuck around for the second half. I did though and a funny thing happened – the show got good, very good. At first my sister and I thought we were hallucinating when we starting thinking to ourselves – I can’t wait for the next episode. So for going from zero to hero, this show deserves the best half and half award.

Worst Half and Half

Winner: Daughter of 20 Faces

On the other hand, Daughter of 20 Faces started out very good. As a Lupin fan, I enjoyed the set-up of the show and eagerly awaited the next episode to see the further adventures of 20 Faces. Roughly a third of the way in, something happened that radically altered the show and it became a very different. I hoped this would pave the way for an even better show but by the halfway point, it became apparent that the creators where just coasting. The show just slowly lost more and more steam and so it earns the worst half and half award.

Most Disappointing Ending

Winner: Kure-nai

Kure-nai was an excellent show with many interesting characters and it quickly became one of my favorites from the spring season. Muraski’s freedom from her deranged family was obviously what the climax was going to center around so I won’t complain too much about how the characters suddenly had to act really dumb to allow Muraski’s family to recapture her. The problem, instead, was how it was resolved. Muraski’s family ascribed to very old traditions and they dictated that Muraski had to live in the Inner Sanctuary, away from everybody and all modern conviences, and had to marry her older brother. Our hero Shinkurou goes in and beats the family within an inch of death and should be able to get them to agree to freeing Muraski but instead Muraski convinces Shinkurou that she will work within the family to loosen the family’s restrictions and they leave her with the family. You don’t leave a kid in a pit of vipers, even if the kid is intelligent. So for totally screwing up the obvious ending and giving us a very bad ending, Kure-nai has the most disappointing ending of the year.

Most in Need of Being Longer

Winner: Library War

This isn’t a horribly bad award to get but I wanted to recognize that even though this was a very fun show, full of awesome moments, it was still hurt by being too short of a series. This could have easily been a 24 episode series. One obvious improvement this would have caused was the various side characters could have been fleshed out further. As it stands, their full depth of character is merely teased to us. Another improvement would have been additional time for a more rigorous anti-censorship message. From what I heard about the source material, much of this was stripped out of the anime due to time restraints.

The Your-Doing-It-Wrong Award

Winner: Minami-ke: Okawari

The second season of Minami-Ke earns the Your-Doing-It-Wrong Award not because the animation couldn’t match the first season but because they messed with the formula that made the first season so funny. As a person that has 5 younger siblings, I know something about how siblings interact and the first season of Minami-Ke nailed it perfectly. The second season monkeyed with this and in several episodes the three sisters where just plain mean to each other and it felt wrong and out-of-character. Then there was the decision to not show the Minami brothers for the entire second season. Another failure was the introduction of the boy that moves in next door. They spent a lot of time on this one character to the detrement of the show. He’s not funny nor does he generate laughs with his presence – bad in a comedy. He’s dweeby and nothing is done to make us like him; whenever he was on screen, I deeply wished someone would just punch him. I would even sometimes imagine a scene where Shinji from Evangelion would just show up one day and roundhouse this kid because Shinji couldn’t stand the kid either.

And on that note, let’s end part 0 and tomorrow I’ll put up part 1, the character awards.

Posted in anime, awards