{"id":16165,"date":"2021-03-05T22:51:20","date_gmt":"2021-03-06T06:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/?p=16165"},"modified":"2021-03-06T11:27:03","modified_gmt":"2021-03-06T19:27:03","slug":"fruits-basket-anime-trending-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/2021\/03\/05\/fruits-basket-anime-trending-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"The Intriguing Performance of Fruits Basket on Anime Trending Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fruits Basket Season 2<\/span><\/i> and its results were one of the biggest surprises to the Anime Trending Awards of 2021. When the anime aired weekly from Spring to Summer of 2020, <\/span>Fruits Basket Season 2 <\/span><\/i>actually lost the nomination slot. Instead, <\/span>Sing \u201cYESTERDAY\u201d for Me<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Kaguya-sama Love is War Season 2<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Tower of God<\/span><\/i>, and <\/span>My Next Life as a Villainess <\/span><\/i>took the coveted Anime of the Year nomination spots. <\/span>Fruits Basket Season 2 <\/span><\/i>only joined the roster of nominees from a wildcard round.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Yet, at the end of the awards, the anime managed to rack in several close award wins \u2014 it surprisingly placed second for Anime of the Year. Currently, that is the highest placement a wildcard nominee has ever gotten for Anime of the Year. How did an anime that barely managed to slide into nominations end up performing so well in the awards?<\/span><\/p>\n

The answer is three-pronged: pacing, timing, and community loyalty.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since <\/span>Fruits Basket Season 2<\/span><\/i> aired in Spring 2020, its only chance at a guaranteed nomination was in the season it aired. However, as a 2-cour anime, the show lasted till the end of the next season instead of ending in June like most Spring anime. Compounding that with the timing of the nomination process, <\/span>Fruits Basket <\/span><\/i>is also a famous, slow-burn story where the character development and plot happen subtly before slamming down all at once. This is particularly true for the second season as the first half of the series spends a majority of its time introducing new characters, new relationships between characters, and an overall buildup towards Tohru\u2019s ultimate motivation \u2014 to free the Sohmas from their curse.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Character relationship setups<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a result, when <\/span>Fruits Basket <\/span><\/i>had a chance for nominations in Spring, viewers watched the setup with little rewards. This understandably led to a fewer number of votes trickling in for the anime. While it certainly didn\u2019t perform poorly on the charts, it only performed just enough to stay on the charts, never quite breaking grounds to reach higher rankings. By the time the famed emotional scenes in the series showed up, its voting period had already ended. This is one of the major reasons why it didn\u2019t snag a nomination for Anime of the Year in Spring but ultimately won the wildcard round \u2014 once viewers had seen the completion of the second season.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, because of the powerfully-written episodes and scenes that happened in the second half of the season, viewers remembered the season more by the time the Anime Trending Awards opened for voting. Anime that aired in Summer and Fall tend to perform better on the awards because of recency bias: voters pick anime they\u2019ve seen more recently because it\u2019s easier to recall those powerful moments. This is the exact reason why Oscar-nominated films tend to get released at the end of the year \u2014 to take advantage of the recency bias that voters will inevitably deal with. With a double score of the anime\u2019s most powerful moments ending during Summer, voters remembered <\/span>Fruits Basket <\/span><\/i>more than they actually did in Spring.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The famed trio<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Finally, <\/span>Fruits Basket <\/span><\/i>is a remake of a classic. Similar to the famed <\/span>Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood<\/span><\/i>, a majority of <\/span>Fruits Basket <\/span><\/i>fans are otakus that found the manga in their school libraries \u2014 and likely one of the only available manga series for them to read. It is responsible for creating a generation of anime fans, especially outside of Japan, and nostalgia has proven itself as an incredibly powerful tool for many things whether it\u2019s music, books, or even toys. The majority of <\/span>Fruits Basket <\/span><\/i>voters are from the older age bracket in the anime community, but they are incredibly united in voting for the anime. By the end of the voting period, those aged 23 and above overwhelmingly voted for <\/span>Fruits Basket <\/span><\/i>in all of its nominated categories.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Their loyalty even spilled over into daily lives as the <\/span>Fruits Basket<\/span><\/i> communities on social media advertised posts with the Anime Trending Awards to everywhere \u2014 with some groups as large as 43,000 individuals strong. The fanbase\u2019s united front and devotion to the anime showed in the results: second place for Anime of the Year, Best Drama winner, and top four for six other categories \u2014 all for an anime that didn\u2019t actually get nominated in the season it started airing.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In a nice twist of coincidence, the Anime Trending Awards and voters followed a similar formula that <\/span>Fruits Basket <\/span><\/i>itself follows: a slow uphill battle that ends in a wave of positive emotions, loyalty, and positive results.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fruits Basket Season 2 and its results were one of the biggest surprises to the Anime Trending Awards of 2021. When the anime aired weekly from Spring to Summer of 2020, Fruits Basket Season 2 actually lost the nomination slot. Instead, Sing \u201cYESTERDAY\u201d for Me, Kaguya-sama Love is War Season 2, Tower of God, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":16170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[272,10],"tags":[2108,78,551,324,1823],"class_list":["post-16165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anime-awards","category-anime","tag-anime-trending-awards","tag-crunchyroll","tag-fruits-basket-2019","tag-funimation","tag-tms-entertainment"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Fruits-Basket-1-e1615010936316.jpg?fit=1107%2C666&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8n4QV-4cJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16165"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16171,"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16165\/revisions\/16171"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}