4th Seiyuu Awards Results
They got good at not letting results leak early this year! That means I have to pay attention during awards time – there’s live streaming of the event online this year, though still not on TV… anyway, results first and I’ll update the post with pictures later when the news sites start reporting on the Awards.
So let’s see how many I got correct this time by my amazing powers of prediction (refer to my kujibiki post, and my predictions post). Like all lame economists, I usually get them all wrong and only try to explain afterwards why I got them wrong. This year, I’m taking a much more laidback view and will enjoy the announcements for what they are, be it popularity poll or rigged connections or whatever.
Here we go!
Best Male
Winner: Ono Daisuke (Mausu) for Sebastian in Kuroshitsuji
Kujibiki Prediction: Ono Daisuke (Mausu)
My Real Prediction: Ono Daisuke (Mausu)
Comments: This was a foregone conclusion as far as I’m concerned and nobody should be surprised at all. Kuroshitsuji provided such a strong, almost indisputable case for his victory that any other result would have been a travesty.
Best Female
Winner: Sawashiro Miyuki (Mausu) for Canaan in CANAAN & Lag Seeing in Tegami Bachi
Kujibiki Prediction: Shiraishi Ryoko (Aoni Production)
My Real Prediction: Sawashiro Miyuki (Mausu)
Comments: See? I knew they were going to give it to Miyuki ahead of Saito Chiwa’s Senjougahara. Le sigh.
Best Supporting Male
Winner: Namikawa Daisuke (Across) for Mikage in 07-GHOST- & Kazehaya Shota in Kimi ni Todoke, Miki Shinichiro (81produce) for Roy Mustang in Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood & Lockon Stratos in Mobile Suit Gundam 00
Kujibiki Prediction: Sakurai Takahiro (81produce)
My Real Prediction: Sakurai Takahiro (81produce), Fukuyama Jun (Production Baobab)
Comments: Lol those are two I totally didn’t see coming.
Best Supporting Female
Winner: Horie Yui (VIMS) for Kushieda Minori in Toradora! & Hanekawa Tsubasa in Bakemonogatari, Inoue Kikuko (Anemone) for Furukawa Sanae in CLANNAD AFTER STORY & Grace O’Connor in Macross Frontier
Kujibiki Prediction: Nakahara Mai (I’m Enterprise)
My Real Prediction: Horie Yui (VIMS), Tomatsu Haruka (Music Ray’n)
Comments: All I can say is FOREVER 17 FTW. I’m really happy Hocchan won, she deserves it for a solid 2009.
Best New Male
Winner: Abe Atsushi (Ken Production) for Kamijo Toma in To Aru Majutsu no Index, Maeno Tomoaki (ARTSVISION) for Fujii Toya in WHITE ALBUM & Oyagi Saku in Sora no Manimani
Kujibiki Prediction: Abe Atsushi (Ken Production)
My Real Prediction: Maeno Tomoaki (ARTSVISION), Terashima Takuma (Production Baobab)
Comments: I facepalmed when I found out Terashima would be at an event in Osaka on the day of the Awards, so that was definitely one prediction gone wrong. Anyways I wasn’t too far off, with my kujibiki prediction picking out eventual winner Abe Atsushi.
Best New Female
Winners: Ito Kanae (Aoni Production) for Mihoshi Akeno in Sora no Manimani, Suzukawa Koume in Taisho Yakyu Musume & Amu in Shugo Chara!, Toyosaki Aki (Music Ray’n) for Hirasawa Yui in K-ON! & Nakamachi Kana in Kanamemo
Kujibiki Prediction: Toyosaki Aki (Music Ray’n)
My Real Prediction: Ito Kanae (Aoni Production), Toyosaki Aki (Music Ray’n)
Comments: 予想通り。I think these two were soooo obvious winners for 2009.
Best Singer(s)
Winner: K-ON! girls [Toyosaki Aki, Hikasa Yoko, Sato Satomi, Kotobuki Minako, Taketatsu Ayana] (Pony Canyon)
Kujibiki Prediction: Sphere (Lantis)
My Real Prediction: K-ON! girls (Pony Canyon)
Comments: Did you really expect anything else??
Best Personality
Winner: Onosaka Masaya (Aoni Production)
Kujibiki Prediction: Tamura Yukari (I’m Enterprise)
My Real Prediction: Seppuku Kuro Usagi (my imagination)
Comments: Oh god masayangest won. He’s so un-PC with his lewd jokes I’m amazed they let him on air sometimes.
Overseas Awards
Winner: Saiga Mitsuki (Ken Production) for Wolfram in Kyo Kara Maoh! & Okita Soji in Peacemaker KUROGANE
My Vote: Kaneda Tomoko (Aoni Production)
Comments: I don’t know how this got worked out at all, hahaha. I mean, really? Wolfram & Okita? Can this result really be due to overseas voting? I’m wondering if there was an online campaign to get her to win or something *shrug*
Other winners as previously announced:
Special Services Award (posthumous): Takahashi Kazue
Services Award: Genda Tessho (81produce), Sugiyama Kazuko (Aoni Production), Tanaka Nobuo (Haikyo)
Tomiyama Kei Award: Mizuki Nana (Sigma Seven)
Synergy Award: Mobile Suit Gundam, awarded to Furuya Tohru (Aoni Production), Ikeda Shuichi (Haikyo)
Kids/Family Award: Mizuta Wasabi (Ken Production), as Doraemon in Doraemon
Full list is up on the official site already.
Official picture taken from akiba.kakaku.com (click for full size). Hoping to get a better one later that doesn’t have poor Masayangest & Saigar peering out from the back, trying hard to be noticed…oh, and one that didn’t block half the K-ON! girls and Nana.
So in the end, 13 awards dished out on the night (I didn’t attempt to predict Overseas Fans Award) and here’s my percentages for this year:
Kujibiki Success Rate: 37.5% (3/8)
Predictions Success Rate: 58.33% (7/12)
I’m really getting better at this forecasting business!! So, what do you think of the awards? Fairer this time? Deserved? Conspiracy?
Themocracy
Best Supporting awards difficult.
Your Predictions Success Rate ａｗｅｓｏｍｅ.
Ahaha I think the correct predictions were mostly due to good luck. 運がいいのかな？
Yay for Maeno and Lolwtf for Saiga Mitsuki! I dunno where my anime/seiyuu watching self went during 2009 so I can’t say anything about the rest
Lol yes I’m uber-pleased about Maeno getting his dues after being passed over last year
Saito Chiwa > Sawashiro Miyuki for best female lead in 2009. Why, oh why? I agree Miyuki might deserve the award…but still, 2009 was Senjougahara’s year. >_<
butthurt senjougahara fag is butthurt
I consider Miyuki having a terribly boring 2009, unworthy of winning. Her Canaan was a textbook case of wooden voice-acting and I can’t even begin to see how Lag > Senjougahara >_>
Lag is just a cry baby [though her voice acting is very realistic for that kind of personality]. STILL Canaan and Lag cannot pass over Senjougahara. Saito Chiwa!!!!! ;A;!!!!!!!!
Maeno. <3
Saigar is leaving me totally confused. Wtf. How in the…
Onosaka is cool.
If they can let a guy who talks about Inoue Marina’s bum win, then they can totally let Yukarin win next year.… And what is Miki wearing on his head?
Somebody’s nether region hair would be my first suggestion, but that could be a bird’s nest or Maggi noodles too I guess
Hmm, some was plain expected, and some made my day a bit better. Miyukichi and Chiwachiwa both have amazing malleability with their voices, so I wouldn’t mind either winning.
I feel like going to Taiwan for PF12 to meet Onozaka now… orz
Lol Onosaka is quite awsm, if they let him say and do what he wants.
I’ll feel sorry for the translator (content wise)
Saiga is great . . . where would an organized overseas campaign for her be coming from? Uzbekistan? Maybe Sabah and Sarawak? Seriously, she’s the kind of actress who rarely gets the attention she deserves – versatile, not glamorous, plays the mature and boys roles. So the most likely answer is that someone said – “Saiga’s never going to get one of the regular awards, and we can’t figure out how to tabulate stuff from our overseas voting database, and like who cares about the voting anyway, so let’s just give it to her”. And everyone was “Yeah. Yeah. Great idea.”
But seriously (I know I said that already?) the bigger WTF is Inoue Kikuko. Yes, she’s had a huge career, and the fact that she’s still getting roles when almost all female seiyuu her age have a hard time working at all is great, but seriously? For Grace and Sanae?
Both, especially Inoue, are like “We want to give her some kind of career/specialized role award but we can’t so let’s just give her some other kind of award, doesn’t matter.” And they can’t given them them the Merit awards, cause those are locked up by industry heavyweights, sometimes literally.
So maybe they should create a new “Special Honor” (Tokubetsu Kenshou) award or something like that Inoue or Saiga could win, for ongoing career achievements that don’t fit the other categories. They have those at the Nihon Record Taisho. But then I would (wish fulfilment) want Koroogi Satomi for Ushio and Chi, and in general for locking up the animal and baby roles over many years. Or Kanetomo could win this one . . .
Saiga already won Best Supporting Female 2 years ago so I’m not sure why they’d really want to give her an Overseas Award for the sake of awarding…
And errr…. I’ll ask around Sabah if there was a campaign to vote for Saiga. Probably not.
As usual, you’re on top of things. So you’re right, it doesn’t seem like it was a substitute prize.
You check KK, and I’ll check Honolulu. We will find the culprits. Honestly, I think there are probably around 50 people outside of Japan who even know who Saiga Mitsuki is. So it’s a real mystery . . .
Even if it was a joke campaign, it’s not clear what the joke is, and you’d think they’d vote for someone they’d heard of.
Woo! Im glad Itou Kanae won! She became a favorite of mine last year :p
I don’t know why or how Saiga won, but I would still say YAY. OnoD was pretty much expected right? And lol, best personality :Onosaka Masaya
I like Sawashiro and normally I would say I’m glad she won, but I’ve got to agree her winning roles were nothing really special, and I sooooooo wanted Saitou Chiwa to win.
I wonder if Terashima Takuma would have won Best New Male if he wasn’t at another event. I predicted/hoped he’d win it as well.
Also: I like the picture. OnoD looks terrible, as if his face has been squashed or something, and his smile looks perverted; he may be popular but he’s still the same old キモカッコイイ OnoD. And Hocchan is as unnaturally cute as ever. I think she may even be getting cuter as she gets older.
I kinda agree with the Daisuke comment. I looked at the pic and was like, omgwtf was that Ono Daisuke?
Lol. This year I think I’m the one who’s more disappointed in the results. But the awards do generally make sense to me, even if I disagree with some of them.
I think Hanazawa Kana deserves a newbie award for Darker than Black, et al., but I can’t really argue with Itou Kanae, since she did a great job in the first few eps of Sora no Manima ni. Both deserve it more than Toyosaki Aki, but K-On was so popular, I can see the fans voting for her.
And I think it’s ludicrous to say that either Canaan or Lag Seeing are better voiced than Senjougahara, but since I think she’s one of the very best seiyuus, I can hardly be upset that Miyukichi won.
And how can it be true that foreign fans voted en masse for Saigar, good as she is? Where are the foreign fans that even know her? Must be a campaign from someone, somewhere. All’s fair in love and the Seiyuu Awards.
Otherwise okay, I guess. But for me, it was Hanazawa and Chiwa who were the most obvious choices of all. Along with Nana for her award, of course.
…since when has the Seiyuu Awards been about awarding deserving people?
FACT: Hanazawa Kana will never win as long as she’s signed to Osawa Agency, same goes for her colleagues – Noto Mamiko, Asanuma Shintaro, Kawasumi Ayako, Itou Miki, Nakata Jouji etc.
She was never ever close to winning in my eyes. Unless something changes within the awarding committee, she never will. Neither would anyone from Haikyo or Sigma 7 win any acting awards (four years of awards, 0 acting prizes for these 3 agencies). Don’t see it happening.
Interesting awards this year, though I am still a little upset Nakamura Yuichi hasn’t won anything yet! Don’t get me wrong, Daisuke, Shinchiro and OnoD are all great male Seiyuu, but its Yuichi Nakamura who has impressed me alot over the past few years when he’s gone from a few minor roles to suddenly being everywhere around 2007 and onwards. Is it because of the label he’s on?
Yeah Nakamura is on Sigma 7, same as Inoue Marina, Wakamoto Norio & Yukana. They don’t give awards to anyone there apart from Mizuki Nana & that’s only cos of other connections (Dwango etc)
What does the committee have against Osawa and Sigma 7? The awards seem to be well spread among many other agencies, even minor ones.
I’m unhappier this year, but still willing to be more optimistic about the awards: lots of deserving people have won, both this year and in the past. And undeserving people have won whom I think the public would have voted for. But I am very interested to know why these specific anomalies continue. The spread over publishers has improved, has it not? Maybe because more publishers have started to support the awards, lol.
Oh I’m pretty sure those 3 agencies can’t be bothered to play the whole idol-orientated Seiyuu Awards ‘game’. They would have to agree to allow their seiyuu to do silly things like attending magazine shoots in Voice Newtype for pre-determined awards, attend winners’ events & in the past, release postcards & DVDs… practises I’m not sure any of those agencies would agree to.
Osawa have never cared about parading their seiyuu around for the sake of publicity anyway (I mean, their site doesn’t even have talent profiles). Similarly, Sigma is not really interested in that kind of thing while Haikyo is not even an agency but rather just a sort of collective/union.
Public votes obviously count for nothing, as proved by the Saiga award this year. IIRC, Shueisha & Sony/VAP are the major additions to the committee – those 2 already cover a vast amount of properties & projects.
It sounds like the politics behind the awards render them little more than a joke, but Sawashiro Miyuki is easily my favorite seiyuu by a mile so I can’t complain. Absolutely adore her with every proton, neutron and electron in my body. And their constituent subatomic parts too.
Hitagi is a more impressive role than Canaan or Lag individually, I have no problem admitting that. But Sawashiro overall in 2009 just can’t be touched. Honestly, one of Sawashiro’s best 2009 roles was from Bakemonogatari as well – Kanbaru Suruga! The scene in her room as she explains the situation to Koyomi and gets progressively more intense is one of the highlights of the year.
She was also spectacular as Cal in Phantom (even if the show did its best to ruin the character), and holy crap she completely took over SoraKake as Baba Tsutsuji. And I bet most will have overlooked crazy Lydia in a minor show like Tears to Tiara.
Sawashiro Miyuki won… I recognize she was good in CANAAN but I prefer Saito Chiwa for her Senjougahara Hitagi. It’s just so unfair… At least, I’m not the only one who was disappointed about this Seiyuu Award.