The American Anime Awards are a series of awards designed to recognize excellence in the release of anime and manga in North America.
The first annual American Anime Awards balloting was supervised by Milton Griepp of industry website ICv2. The first gala awards presentation was hosted in New York City on February 24, 2007 at New York Comic Con. The hosts of the evening were eight actresses from the anime production company ADV Films: Christine Auten, Shelley Calene-Black, Jessica Boone, Luci Christian, Alice Fulks, Hilary Haag, Taylor Hannah and Serena Varghese. A streaming version of the one hour awards ceremony can be seen on IGN.com. The awards will later be broadcast on the Anime Network.
The ballots contained nominations from industry companies and professionals. To be eligible for an award, anime or manga must be available in the U.S. during the previous year, prior to the awards gala. Whether by DVD (or book or periodical, in the case of manga), national TV, or theatrical release. Anime and manga are defined, as animation or comics, respectively, originally produced in Japan.
Voting was conducted via an online ballot system. The American Anime Awards partnered with respected industry news site ICv2 to host and track the fan voting to ensure accurate voting and to eliminate any mass voting by single individuals. Fans cast their votes at www.americananimeawards.com starting on January 1, 2007 and ending on January 31, 2007.
Winners are denoted in bold
The nominating and voting process has received criticism from fans for lack of clarity and being too inclusive: for example, while some acting nominees are specifically cited for one or more series, others are cited for none at all, leaving it to the voter to decide if they should consider the series specifically mentioned, or the actor's entire body of work. Also, since evidently any anime that was released in any way in 2006 is eligible for nomination, some actors have been nominated for work done years or even decades ago. Another criticism was the apparent error of including Johnny Yong Bosch as Best Actor in a Comedy despite the fact Akira is not a comedy.