To start with, I just want to thank everybody that took the time to vote in the awards for this year. For some meta discussion about the awards themselves, check out my pinned comment. Without further ado, here are your winners:

2025 Anime Series of the Year

  • Apocalypse Hotel

2025 Anime Film of the Year

  • Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc

2025 Anime Character of the Year

  • Yachiyo (Apocalypse Hotel)

Best Comedy

  • CITY the Animation

Best Drama

  • The Apothecary Diaries Season 2

Best Fantasy/Adventure

  • Clevatess

Best Romance

  • My Dress-Up Darling Season 2

Best Slice of Life

  • CITY the Animation

Best Action

  • Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc

Best Animation

  • CITY the Animation

Best Soundtrack

  • Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc

Best Voice Acting (specific role in any language)

  • Aoi Yuuki - Maomao in The Apothecary Diaries - Japanese

Best Musical Sequence (OP/ED or insert song)

  • wjs018@ani.socialOPMEnglish
    17·
    2 days ago

    Meta Comment:

    Thanks again, everybody that voted! If you want to check out the anonymized ballot information and inspect the code I used to process the votes, you can find a repository I made here.

    Total turnout this year (~25 votes) was down quite a bit compared to last year (~90 votes). I think there were a couple contributing factors to this:

    • The private-message voting system was new, and I don’t think it seems like it was popular. Last year I had run a survey site that lets people fill out a web form for their vote. However, the software was really flaky on the backend side of things and I didn’t want to run it again. Also, there was not really any way to prevent somebody from voting multiple times because I couldn’t tie a vote to a user account.
    • Last year’s voting period happened over the holidays, and I suspect that boosted turnout.
    • I think total overall activity is down compared to a year ago, especially so since we are in the middle of a season. The active user count always tends to tick up when a new season kicks off, but then falls back down a bit to coast until the next season sees another bit of a spike. So, doing these awards in the middle of a season probably didn’t help turnout.

    Please feel free to let me know if you have any ideas for improvement in the future. Whether that is about the voting process, nomination process, timing, whatever…

    As for the award winners, there were a couple titles that really soaked up lots of votes in any category they were nominated for. Specifically, CITY, Apocalypse Hotel, and Chainsaw Man - Reze Arc got a huge portion of the voteshare whenever they were nominated. So, if there is any takeaway from these awards for me, it’s that those are this community’s standout favorites from last year.

    Other interesting things I noticed:

    • I was glad to see Ninkoro doing so well in the Best Comedy category. I loved the dark humor in that series so much, and the anime really elevated the source material in lots of ways. Glad to see others agreed!
    • I was also happy to see Rock is a Lady’s Modesty do well in the OST category. It’s always nice when an anime about music actually has good music in it.
    • I found it interesting that Maomao absolutely ran away with the voting for best Voice Acting, but she didn’t even make the nomination list for best character. In fact, Shisui received more nominations than Maomao for best character.
    • Crank@ani.socialEnglish
      7·
      1 day ago

      First of all, big thanks for making this happen.

      As for the factors contributing to lower turnout, I think the following might have affected it:

      • RCV voting system - it’s harder to understand than your typical voting system where you only cast one vote for your favorite show. It might be more fair overall, but people might have questions like:
        • does specifying the second, the third choice, and so on, affect the chances of my first choice winning?
        • if I didn’t watch all the nominated shows, should I include them in my ballot at all?
          I think instead of thinking this through, people might just decide that I don’t understand this system, I don’t want to think about it, so I will not vote at all
      • in the nominations phase: not having a list to choose from, and having to come up with the nominees on your own. I think such list should include not just the titles but also posters to make the search easier (also needs to be mobile friendly)
      • having to edit a markdown file by hand. It might be discouraging on a desktop computer but it’s straight up annoying on mobile devices, and I imagine that more than a half of the userbase uses their mobile phones to browse social media.
      • as others already mentioned, the user interface of Lemmy doesn’t make it obvious where do you send a private message. Perhaps there’s some way to create a direct link, like https://ani.social/create_private_message/5000605 ? But that only works if someone is registered on ani.social. Anyway, if you plan to use private messages in some way again next year, I think it would be a good idea to explain how to send one (which would be challenging anyway, because each mobile client does it in its own way)

      Sorry if it came out as overly critical. It wasn’t my intention. I know it’s hard to come up with a good solution that satisfies everyone and I’m grateful for all the work you’ve done.

    • ReluctantlyZen@ani.socialEnglish
      5·
      1 day ago

      Total turnout this year (~25 votes) was down quite a bit compared to last year (~90 votes).

      Damn, that’s very low. I figured it’d be higher, given the amount of upvotes.

      The private-message voting system was new, and I don’t think it seems like it was popular.

      Yeah, it wasn’t great tbh. The whole markdown list was a bit tedious. Can’t do it on a phone well either. But also, I find private messaging very unintuitive on Lemmy. I opened my laptop to fill it out, but it took a while before I even found the chat thing (in the notifications area apparently).

      I found it interesting that Maomao absolutely ran away with the voting for best Voice Acting, but she didn’t even make the nomination list for best character. In fact, Shisui received more nominations than Maomao for best character.

      I think Maomao is great, but I think Shisui meant more for this season than Maomao did.

    • braindamagebuddy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      2 days ago

      Yeah not going to lie the private message thing was pretty brutal. Filling out the template on mobile takes a good amount of effort. I also think ranked choice may discourage some from voting since people may not know each of the choices very well.

      Thanks for hosting again this year and trying things out though.

      • wjs018@ani.socialOPMEnglish
        5·
        2 days ago

        Yeah…it won’t be private messages next year for sure. Lesson learned!

      • ReluctantlyZen@ani.socialEnglish
        2·
        1 day ago

        I also think ranked choice may discourage some from voting since people may not know each of the choices very well.

        Yeah I wondered about that too. I left out the ones I didn’t watch from my voting list, but that feels a little unfair

    • Endmaker@ani.socialEnglish
      8·
      2 days ago

      May I trouble you to update this post to show the top 3 nominees for each category, along with their final vote count?

      • wjs018@ani.socialOPMEnglish
        10·
        2 days ago

        Ranked choice voting doesn’t allow a simple top X candidates due to the way votes can transfer between rounds. If you want to see how each category’s voting rounds went, you can see them all here.

        In the list below, I have listed the second-highest receiver(s) of votes in the final voting round:

        • 2025 Anime Series of the Year - CITY the Animation
        • 2025 Anime Film of the Year - 100 Meters
        • 2025 Anime Character of the Year - Izumi Wako (CITY the Animation)
        • Best Comedy - Ninkoro and 100 Girlfriends (tie)
        • Best Drama - Summer Hikaru Died
        • Best Fantasy/Adventure - Secrets of the Silent Witch
        • Best Romance - Fragrant Flower
        • Best Slice of Life - Apocalypse Hotel
        • Best Action - Dan Da Dan Season 2
        • Best Animation - Chainsaw Man Reze Arc
        • Best Soundtrack - Rock is a Lady’s Modesty and Umamusume Cinderella Gray (tie)
        • Best Voice Acting - Mikako Komatsu (Nagumo from CITY the Animation)
        • Best Musical Sequence - Kaseijin by Yorushika - Shoushimin Season 2 OP