Sugoi Japan Awards 2017 Announced

The annual Sugoi Japan Award winners have been announced for 2017!

Voting for the annual awards took place between November 16 and January 3 across four categories: Manga, Anime, Ranobe (Light Novels) and Novels.

The top five anime is a pretty standard list with no real surprises – Joker Game comes in at number 3 above above One-Punch Man and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure which might seem a little odd, but for some reason Japanese anime fans have been loving Joker Game since it aired in Winter 2016.

Boku dake ga Inai Machi (Erased) came in at second despite some fans being disappointed with the final few episodes. Personally though, I really liked the whole series and enjoyed the way it concluded just as much as the rest of the show – if you ask me it thoroughly deserves to be second!

Re:Zero took top spot in both the anime and light novel list and I’m super pleased to see it! Airing through Spring and Summer 2016, I came to the show halfway through it’s second cour but I soon caught up to the airing episode. If you haven’t seen it, I’d highly recommend it for it’s original take on the ‘stuck in a fantasy world genre’.

As for the literature awards, the first thing that struck me was the abundance of yaoi taking up the list. Yes ka No ka Hanbun ka in the light novel category and Ten Count in manga make up this contingent – although this is only 20% of each section respectively when you consider how much yaoi manga and light novels are produced in comparison to other genres it does seem a little surprising. That said, the Yuri on Ice phenomena has really brought the genre to the fore for anime viewers which may have contributed to some of this popularity (either that or I’m underestimating the genres popularity in Japan!).

Number one on the manga list was Boku no Hero Academia, which I’m actually surprised didn’t make it onto the anime list as well following it’s popularity back in last Spring’s season. It’s not a manga or anime I’ve seen but with season two on the horizon and the manga still going strong it is something I’d like to find the time to get into.

I was surprised to see Dagashi Kashi on the manga list, but again I haven’t actually read it, just found myself underwhelmed by the anime. Perhaps the manga wasn’t as big a sweet advertisement as the anime was. The KonoSuba light novels also made the list, adding to popularity of alternative world series in the last few years.

For the full list of winners, go to the Sugoi Japan website. It’s a pretty cool site generally and is all available in English as well, so make sure to check it out!

Thanks for reading! 🙂