Tokyo’s Grand Prince Hotel New Takanawa shook with cheers on 25 May as the ninth Crunchyroll Anime Awards logged a record 51 million fan votes and crowned Solo Leveling Anime of the Year, the first manhwa-based adaptation to take the top prize.
The A-1 Pictures hit, adapted from Chugong’s South-Korean web novel, swept nine categories—including Best New Series, Best Action and Best Score—setting a single-ceremony benchmark that eclipsed previous franchise hauls. Crunchyroll hailed the outcome as evidence of anime’s “global influence,” noting celebrity presenters such as Kacey Musgraves and Stranger Things actors Finn Wolfhard and Gaten Matarazzo helped drive worldwide streaming of the show’s bilingual broadcast.
While Solo Leveling dominated headlines, jurors also recognised quieter craft achievements: Keiichiro Saito claimed Best Director for Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, which additionally won Best Drama and Background Art; Ufotable’s Demon Slayer – Hashira Training Arc repeated as Best Animation and added Best Continuing Series; and Science SARU’s short film Look Back earned Film of the Year. Attack on Titan received the inaugural Global Impact Award, capping its decade-long run with an emotional tribute accepted by director Yuichiro Hayashi.
“Fans form deep emotional connections to anime—these works help define their identity,” Crunchyroll president Rahul Purini said ahead of the ceremony, pledging to keep the event in Tokyo “the birthplace of anime.” Industry analysts point to Sony-owned Crunchyroll’s growing awards footprint as a strategic counterweight to the Academy Awards’ new best animated feature branch, signalling anime’s march into mainstream entertainment budgets.
Not everyone was satisfied. An op-ed on ComicBook.com argued that Solo Leveling’s “power-fantasy spectacle” edged out richer storytelling from rivals such as Frieren only because of its outsized fandom, reigniting perennial debates over popularity versus quality in public-vote hybrids. Reddit threads echoed the critique, with some users insisting the two-round voting system still skews toward “hype trains,” though others defended the result as a fair reflection of anime’s shifting centre toward action-driven titles.
Even so, market watchers noted that multilingual voice-acting prizes—from English winner Aleks Le to Castilian Spanish actor Masumi Mutsuda—illustrated the genre’s borderless appeal, a trend distributors are keen to monetise as the global anime audience heads toward one billion.