Summary

Previous AOTY winners often sweep multiple awards, highlighting potential popularity bias.
Winners may not always be the best but benefit from overwhelming popularity and visibility.
AOTY winners historically gravitate towards action, fantasy, and thrill genres, potentially marginalizing other genres on the fringe.

The 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards took place on the 25th of May, with Solo Leveling having overwhelming success at the event, with the most notable takeaway being that the first season of the A-1 Pictures-produced anime was voted Anime of the Year, much to the joy, and to the chagrin of the global anime community. It's no secret that a large portion of anime fans believe the series won out over more deserving titles, but that's neither here nor there when it comes to our current undertaking: finding out how 2025's AOTY compares to previous winners of the same accolade.

Elements being considered in this exercise include story quality, characters, popularity (to some degree) and overall potential to change the anime industry on some level. So, without further ado, let's see how Solo Leveling compares to previous Crunchyroll Anime of the Year winners.

Solo Leveling, DANDADAN Big Winners at 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards

The 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards just concluded. Here are all the winners of each category.

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By Naledi Ramphele

Crunchyroll AOTY Award Winners Over the Years

Identifying the Competition

Crunchyroll's Anime Awards were established in 2017, and the Anime of the Year award has been one of the two highest honours in contention at the event from the very beginning. The winners of each category are determined through a combined voting process that collects votes from both the official judges of each installment of the event, and fan votes. This year, Crunchyroll got a record-breaking 51 million votes from various countries in North and South America, as well as Europe, showing growing fan interest in the event. The table below features every single winning title from the past 9 editions of the Crunchyroll Anime Awards. Note that the titles in contention in a specific award year are from the previous year, so the award year and title's release year are different.

Crunchyroll Anime of the Year Award Winners
Award Year	Title	Genre	Studio
2017	*Yuri!!! On Ice*	Sports \| Yaoi	MAPPA
2018	*Made in Abyss*	Adventure \| Sci-Fi \| Dark Fantasy	Kinema Citrus
2019	*Devilman CRYBABY*	Supernatural \| Action	Science SARU
2020	*Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba*	Action \| Dark Fantasy	ufotable
2021	*JUJUTSU KAISEN*	Action \| Supernatural \| Dark Fantasy	MAPPA
2022	*Attack on Titan: The Final Season*	Action \| Dystopian \| Post-Apocalyptic	MAPPA
2023	*Cyberpunk: Edgerunners*	Cyberpunk \| Sci-Fi \| Drama \| Thriller	Studio TRIGGER and CD Projekt
2024	*JUJUTSU KAISEN Season 2*	Action \| Supernatural \| Dark Fantasy	MAPPA
2025	Solo Leveling	Action \| Fantasy \| Supernatural	A-1 Pictures

As per the above table, MAPPA has enjoyed a period of dominance over the Crunchyroll Anime Awards, with three wins in nine possible award cycles, the most of any animation production studio. The competition was stiff every single year, with the 2017 nominees including the critically acclaimed time-travel whodunnit, ERASED; Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju; Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress; the first seasons of both Mob Psycho 100, My Hero Academia and Re:Zero - Starting Life in Another World From Zero. 2018's nominees included the second seasons of Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju, My Hero Academia and March Comes in Like a Lion; Land of the Lustrous and Little Witch Academia. In 2019, the nominees were A Place Further than the Universe; Hinamatsuri; Megalo Box; Violet Evergarden and Zombie Land Saga, while 2020's award winner, Demon Slayer, fended off the likes of O Maidens in Your Savage Season; Carole & Tuesday; the second season of Mob Psycho 100; The Promised Neverland and the critically acclaimed MAPPA adaptation of Makoto Yukimura's Vinland Saga.

A Deeper Look At The Anime of the Years Past

The AOTY Almost Always Sweeps

We could continue, but these first four years of the Crunchyroll Anime Awards have already highlighted something very important: the list of nominees features standout titles from each respective year, but almost invariably, the winner is a title that might not necessarily have been much better than the competition. For instance, Devilman: CRYBABY, as messy as the story got and as haphazard as the pacing was, won over The Promised Neverland, whose first season was setting it up for a historic run despite the tragedy that was season 2.

Demon Slayer, for the triumph in animation that it indisputably is, does not win out over Vinland Saga for many audiences if we're comparing them in terms of writing; however, the former's popularity is in a whole other stratosphere, especially after episode 19 broke the internet. Every year, there were titles that some fans considered superior to the winners when it came to characters and writing, but their ultimate defeat was potentially because they simply could not match the overwhelming popularity of the winning title.

The only time this was not the case was with Made in Abyss winning the 2018 edition of the Crunchyroll Anime Award. As popular as it was during its run, it had nothing on the immense hype surrounding the second season of My Hero Academia, with those major moments of sublime animation by BONES; yet one can argue for the story being told having much more depth, mystery and garnering more intrigue.

What is also particularly interesting, and was pointed out by staff at Anime News Network (ANN) was the fact that every year, the Anime of the Year award winner always "swept"; meaning that the title nominated for Anime of the Year also walked off with multiple awards. At the 1st Crunchyroll Anime Awards, Yuri!!! On ICE had seven nominations, and walked away with seven awards. At the fourth awards, Demon Slayer had 9 nominations and walked away with three wins; while at the fifth, JUJUTSU KAISEN, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! And Great Pretender had 10 nominations, with JJK taking three.

At the sixth event, Attack on Titan was second only to JUJUTSU KAISEN in terms of nominations, with 11, taking home four awards, while the 8th awards had JUJUTSU KAISEN Season 2 taking home seven wins from 17 nominations, second only to CHAINSAW MAN, which had 25 nominations. This year, Solo Leveling took nine awards from 13 nominations, which is the second-most prolific nomination-to-award ratio of any title with more than four category nominations at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards since its inception. The second, third, and seventh award years were the only times when the Anime of the Year didn't have such a huge grip over several other categories, with Made in Abyss being one of only two times that the AOTY had fewer total nominations than more than two titles that year, the other being Solo Leveling.

The Pageantry of Award Shows

What Could The Overwhelming Dominance of AOTY Mean?

Featured Solo Leveling Episode 25 Preview Image Released Sung Jinwoo

The simplest explanation as to why the Anime of the Year severely dominates the Crunchyroll Anime Awards in general is that the shows that win the coveted award are simply that good. However, many fans dispute this dominance as they can usually mention other titles that they feel deserved particular recognition in specific categories that were, in their eyes, usurped by the AOTY. There's also an interesting trend in which the winner of Anime of the Year is a title that features some action, fantasy or thrill.

This categorically places various genres on the fringes already, as something like Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, as good as it was, is simply not going to beat the flashing lights and hype of a mainstream shōnen title. Is it possible that the AOTY winner is determined by the fact that they were not only nominated several times, but were also winners of other categories? From the outside looking in, it's possible that the overwhelming popularity of a title can almost guarantee its victory in several categories, as it's clear that the visibility of a series, especially in the award proceedings, contributes greatly to its chances of winning.

Given the fact that the Crunchyroll Awards determine winners through a combination of fan votes and those of judges, and the overwhelming popularity of each year's award winner among fans, it seems that popularity, while not explicitly the deciding factor, is a major underlying element in the determination of the Anime of Year winner. Given the phenomenon that Solo Leveling has been since its release in January 2024 (and, arguably, prior to that), there was simply no way it wouldn't be considered for some of the most prestigious awards, regardless of whatever flaws it may have, especially in its first season.

Whatever it is fans may feel about the state of the Anime Awards, we can at least say that some of the top titles of each year have at least been in consideration. While we can never be certain that fan votes have the most sway in these situations, it is no secret that award shows in any field are highly controversial for various reasons, and those who engage with any medium should interrogate the level of authority they give to these events in determining which titles are deserving of acclaim. How does Solo Leveling ultimately compare to past winners? Well, it continues a pattern of action/shōnen dominance, as well as the pattern of the AOTY absolutely sweeping the proceedings.

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