The eighth edition of the Crunchyroll Anime Awards, or just Anime Awards for short, is nearly upon us. And with a year so filled with excellent new anime and new seasons, it is bound to be an interesting rendition.
Among the awards to be given to the rightful winners there are Anime of the Year, Best Continuing Series, Best New Series, Best Animation, Best Director, Best Film, Best Soundtrack, Best Character Design, Best Opening Sequence, Best Ending Sequence, Best Main Character, Best Secondary Character, Best Art Direction (new), Best Cinematography (new), among other categories for voice acting performances in different languages and categories that are genre-specific (e.g. Best Fantasy Anime).
So, if you’re curious to know whether your favorites will win, or even if you’d like to vote for them, here’s what you need to know.
Everything to know about the upcoming 2024 Anime Awards
This year the Crunchyroll Awards will take place on March 2, 2024, at 6 pm Japan Standard Time (1 am Pacific Time). The location is the Grand Prince Hotel New Takanawa, in Tokyo. It will be hosted by 23-year-old singer and voice actress Sally Amaki and 65-year-old presenter, radio and stage personality, Jon Kabira. In addition, Crunchyroll released a list of guests that will walk on stage, at one point or another during the show. The exciting lineup includes the likes of singer LiSA, Megan Thee Stallion, NFL player DeMarcus Lawrence, Grammy nominee Labrinth, Japan’s most famous male host ROLAND, and the Pop Duo YOASOBI, among many others.
According to Crunchyroll, last year’s edition had “fans from over 200 countries and territories cast 18 million votes.” Nominees for this year’s awards and voting opened on Jan. 17, 9 am PT, and closed ten days later on Jan. 27, 11:59 pm PT. Fans are required to make a login with their email address or cell phone number to be able to cast one vote per day on each category if they so wish. As it happened in years past, the panel of select judges chose six nominees for each category. In a second round, the same judges as well as the public’s votes will pick their Grand Winner for every category.
Now that voting is done, the winners remain to be unveiled during the star-studded ceremony. This year’s Crunchyroll Anime Awards are live-streamed on Twitch or YouTube, on March 2 at 6 p.m. JST.