By Deanna Nguyen
Awards season is here, which means we saw all our favorite anime celebrated and rewarded at the 2021 Crunchyroll Anime Awards!
The award show took place on February 19 and kicked off with host Tim Lyu isekai’ing in the virtual world and joining up with Crunchyroll-Hime to present the nominees and announce the winners.
We also saw previews for ODD TAXI, JORAN: The Princess of Snow and Blood, I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Tokyo Revengers!
The show also revealed the PV for ZOMBIE LAND SAGA REVENGE, which will get an English dub here on Funimation!
The hosts wasted no time and dove into the first award category, Best Character Design. The winner was Mayuka Ito for their work on Toilet-bound Hanako-kun! The original designs were created by AidaIro. Next up was Best Animation, and the anime that took home the award was Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!!.
For Best Fight Scene, My Hero Academia won for the intense battle between Deku and Overhaul in season four. On the more romantic side of things, Nasa Yuzaki and Tsukasa Yuzaki from TONIKAWA: Over the Moon for You were awarded Best Couple!
Moving onto Best VA Performances, Yusuke Kobayashi, who played the role of Subaru Natsuki from Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- Season 2 won for Japanese and Zeno Robinson, whose role was Hawks from My Hero Academia in season four, won for English. Both VAs left special thank you messages!
Who was Best Girl and Best Boy, you ask? For Best Girl, it was none other than Kaguya Shinomiya from Kaguya-sama: Love Is War?! For Best Boy, Shoyo Hinata from Haikyuu!! To the Top took home the title.
With any award show, we can’t forget about the creators and visionaries. Best Director went to Masaaki Yuasa for his work on Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!! and Best Score was given to Kevin Penkin for Tower of God.
Speaking of music, the Best Opening Sequence was “Wild Side” by ALI from Beastars and the Best Ending Sequence was “Lost in Paradise,” which was also by ALI featuring AKLO from Jujutsu Kaisen!
Anime genres were next, and the first one was Best Fantasy, which was awarded to the second season of Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-. On a lighter note, Best Comedy went to the romantic comedy Kaguya-sama: Love Is War?! Last but not least, the second season of Fruits Basket took home the award for Best Drama. We love to see it.
The last round of awards was for Best Protagonist, Best Villain and Anime of the Year. Catarina Claes from My Next Life As a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! won Best Protagonist while Ryomen Sukuna from Jujutsu Kaisen won Best Villain.
And the Anime of the Year was—drumroll, please—Jujutsu Kaisen!
That’s a wrap! Big congrats to all the winners, and we can’t wait to see all the anime that 2021 will bring!
