Lycoris Recoil narrowly edges Call of the Night in its Summer 2022 Anime of the Season Award

By
Deiru
-

With the smallest margin ever recorded in Anime Trending history, Lycoris Recoil triumphed over Call of the Night for the Summer 2022 Anime of the Season award. The action-packed show survived a late surge by Call of the Night, which won the Last Week Advantage prize and caught up to match Lycoril Recoil’s total win count of 5 weeks . Still, after tallying up the overall votes, that LWA win came up short, and Call of the Night still trailed Lycoris Recoil by 4 votes.

Lycoris Recoil’s slim victory gives A-1 Pictures its second consecutive and eighth overall AOTS title in Anime Trending, solidifying their standing as the studio with the best seasonal podium finish. Other AOTS-winning series from A-1 Pictures include ALDNOAH.ZERO, Your Lie in April, ERASED, Sword Art Online, and Kaguya-sama: Love is War. Meanwhile, Call of the Night is LIDENFILMS’s first anime to finish within the Top 3.

Both contenders also tied during the  Summer 2022 Anime Awards, totaling up to 5 awards each. Call of the Night’s Kou Yamori takes home this season’s Best Boy title after an outstanding comeback win over the early favorite Kiyotaka Ayanokouji (Classroom of the Elite). Yamori struggled in the initial weeks while Ayanokouji already had won four weeks.  Another week would’ve solidified Ayanokouji’s position as Best Boy. In a surprising turn of events, Yamori turned the tides by winning five weeks consecutively to close out the Summer 2022 polls. In the final tally, Yamori edged Ayanokouji by a total of 247 votes.

Yamori’s co-lead, Nazuna Nanakusa, isn’t as fortunate but still places second for this season’s Best Girl title behind Chisato Nishikigi (Lycoris Recoil). In the weekly charts, Nishikigi won four weeks while Nanakusa won three weeks. Kei Karuizawa (Classroom of the Elite) was also one of the contenders in winning Best Girl with two weeks’ worth of votes, but ultimately placed fourth for this season’s Best Girl and placed first for Supporting Girl.

Lycoris Recoil won the remaining character awards, including Favorite Couple-Ship with Nishikigi and Takina Inoue ship and Favorite Supporting Male Character with Majima. The pairing became the second yuri ship to win the seasonal title after Sakura Adachi and Hougetsu Shimamura (Adachi and Shimamura) from the Fall 2020 anime season won the Favorite Couple-Ship as the first yuri ship.  The first same-sex couple to win the Couple-Ship award was the pairing of Ash Lynx and Eiji Okumura (Banana Fish) from the Summer 2018 anime season. 

Compared to those ships, Nishikigi and Inoue’s victory is the most definitive win, as they won over their closest competitor, Yamamori and Nanakusa (Call of the Night), by 4,063 votes.

However, Call of the Night still swept the theme song awards this season thanks to duo hip-hop unit Creepy Nuts’ songs “Daten” and “Yofukashi no Uta,” which were used as the opening and ending theme song respectively. The ending theme song, which bears the same name as the series’ Japanese title, was actually inspired by Kotoyama’s love for the hip-hop group. Creepy Nuts’ two songs currently are also the top Summer 2022-anime related songs streamed on Spotify.

Call of the Night is the fourth anime to have won both seasonal theme song awards. Other anime that achieved this rare feat were Mekakucity Actors in Spring 2014, Vinland Saga in Summer 2019, and BanG Dream! in Winter 2020.

Aside from Lycoris Recoil and Call of the Night, four other anime also took home at least one award. Made in Abyss won for Favorite Drama, Fantasy, and Sci-Fi/Mecha, Shadows House for Favorite Mystery or Psychological, My Stepmom’s Daughter is My Ex for Favorite Comedy, and The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting for Favorite Slice of Life.

The full list of awards and results are available on our Summer 2022 Anime Awards Winners Portal. 

Check out how our community reacted to the winners on Facebook and Twitter.

Leave a Comment!

RELATED ARTICLES

Leave a Reply