Theron: Good day, ladies and germs, and welcome to this year's edition of “J-Pop America Happy Fun. . .” er, “Anime in America 2011.” (Yeah, that's it.) I am your host, staff reviewer Theron “Key” Martin. And across the aisle from me is. . .
Carl: . . .Carl Kimlinger, also staff reviewer, here to face the cold, hard realities of the present after months of trying to relive his youth. Don't look at me like that; everyone does it sometime. But now it's time to put away the Night Ranger LPs and face down the best and worst that the just-passed year had to offer (anime-wise). Welcome.
Theron: Enh, I was more of a Tiffany fan. Anyway, 2011 was an entirely different Pokemon from 2010, wasn't it? In 2010 we saw what was probably a decade-high peak in quality anime series writing, but the anime movie releases were so thin that we didn't even bother to give a Movie of the Year award. 2011 was the complete reverse, as we had one of the deepest movie fields ever but a comparative dearth of top-quality writing in series. While we certainly saw many good series, truly great ones were even rarer than normal, which resulted in Carl and me both struggling to fill out our Best of Year series lists instead of the normal struggling to make cuts. (A certain prominent magical girl series getting licensed but not released this year did not help matters, either. Expect it to show up prominently next year, though.) Thus this year's awards will likely be more controversial than normal. But hey, that's where the fun is, right?
Carl: If I may break in here, did you just dis Night Ranger? I'd just like you to know that I'm 53% sure that Night Ranger could beat Tiffany up. Maybe even 55%.
Theron: Yeah, but did Night Ranger ever appear in a Playboy spread or get hotter-looking as they got older? Anyway, onto business.
The Standards
Any content which saw an official, widespread release in the U.S. market during 2011 is eligible for consideration for these awards. Titles which have only officially shown at conventions or in a handful of theaters, or which are rereleases or releases of content that was previously legally streamed, do not count here, although new features added to them (such as an English dub or DVD/Blu-Ray extra) do. Titles which came out in Japan during 2011 but did not become available in the U.S. by official (i.e. legal) means are only eligible for the Unlicensed Gem award. In the cases of series split over two years, we consider only the part of the series which became available in 2011. Also, a new clarification this year: We've decided that a series of movies whose components are released as one set count as a series, rather than individual movies, for purposes of this exercise. That applies specifically to The Garden of Sinners in 2011 and will also apply to Broken Blade in 2012.