As the live-action slaves to the floodlights percolated into the Shrine Auditorium this Sunday past, Akadot staffers hunched over a dimly lit kitchenette table enumerating the final votes to our own Academy Awards. And as the ambivalently received "Gladiator" muscled into Tinsel Town's highest honor, Akadot readers heralded Hayao Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke" as the best film of 2000. Obviously the Akars has a far more esoteric appeal than does the nominally similar Oscars (an admittedly weak pun but one demonstrative of the fun loving spirit of Akadot's official awards). Regardless, like its world-renowned brother, the 2000 Akars celebrates the field's best work (perhaps even more so than the Oscars which, over the last twenty years, has become increasingly influenced by box office sales and insider back-scratching rather than sincere academy votes).

The "Mononoke" quartet of Nizo Yamamoto, Naoya Tanaka, Yoji Takeshige and Satoshi Kuroda took home Akars in the Best Art Direction category with 38% of the Akadot readership vote, scraping by a 30% haul for "Samurai X's" Masami Hagiwara and a 25% nod to Junichi Higashi for "Cowboy Bebop." "Princess's" distinctive Miyazaki gentleness contrasts with the anime flare of Higashi's pop culture indulgent "Bebop" and Hagiwara's naturalistic "Samurai," but all enjoyed voter approval. And all three stomped Nobuhito Sue's imaginative landscapes for "Sol Bianca."

Already renowned from her scores for anime such as "Vision of Escaflowne" and "Macross Plus," Yoko Kanno swept the music categories for Best Score and Best Song for her work on "Bebop," garnering over 40% of the vote in each. Stiff competition (22%) came from legendary composer Joe Hisaishi, who scored "Mononoke" as well as several other Miyazaki classics including "Laputa: Castle in the Sky" (the music for which he improved and re-recorded to augment the Miramax/Disney release tentatively scheduled for later this year), and "Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind." Taku Iwasaki's score for "Samurai X" also made a good show in Kanno's shadow, sopping up about 19%. The inventive jazz cacophony of The Thrill, which scored "Blue Submarine No. 6," raked in 5 1/2% of the vote, disappointing considering the vitality and boldness of the music. Also unfortunate, the "Sakura Diaries" theme song "From Your Window" by Takako Kuwata succeeds in capturing the awkwardness of burgeoning sexuality where the series itself fails but also only nabbed about 5% of the vote.

Billy Crudup, rising star of the silver screen with 33% of the vote, beat out anime voice actor mainstays such as Michael Granberry, David Lucas and Johnny Yong Bosch in the Best Male Voice Actor category by a substantial 10 points for his role as Ashitaka in "Mononoke," but "Pokémon's" Rachel Lillis holds the dub actor mantle with pride, slipping into the top female place over Wendee Lee's Faye Valentine ("Bebop") by only one percentage point (each taking in the opposite ends of 22%).