Wait… who did set this up? The email I got form my form was just signed by “The Anime Blog Awards Committee.” At first I thought it was “The Anime Blog” who was setting it up, but I’m not so sure now. It all seems a bit shady.

Also, the tagline is “by bloggers for bloggers.” This is manifested in the rules that state you must be a blogger to nominate blogs. As if readers can’t have a good enough opinion of the quality of the blogs they read? I think if anything the anime “blogosphere” should be trying to encourage participation from readers, not excluding them from nominations.

It seems that that the voting will be done by only anime bloggers. Way to empower your readers… There’s something very exclusionary about this that I don’t like. Perhaps if nominations were from bloggers and popular voting could be done by everyone. I guess they might be concerned about gaming the system, but including only bloggers makes it seem like the cool kid’s club where you’re not welcome if you’re not as cool as them (assuming that anime bloggers are considered cool).

Anywho, I’d rather focus on the positive and decided to participate anyway. I put up some nominations on blogs I like (some probably don’t fit the requirements). Hopefully things will go smoothly.

Edit: Ani-Nouto pointed out that at least one person linked with the awards commitee is traceable. I guess my general point is that transparency would be appreciated since there’s really no mention at all of who is officially behind the awards. For all I know, Basugasubakuhatsu could have created them and put in some shill nominations to regain my past blogging glory. What past blogging glory? Oh, I guess you have a point.