All the winners of the 2025 Anime Awards

Between enchanting fantasy, high school romance, and supernatural thrillers, the 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards looked set to be a showdown between heavyweights of the animation industry in Asia. This year, series like Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, The Apothecary Diaries, Dan Da Dan, and Delicious in Dungeon all went head-to-head, but out of nowhere, it was Solo Leveling that dominated the awards show, which was hosted in Tokyo on 25 May.

Winning nine of the 13 awards it was nominated for, Solo Leveling took home all the glory when it clinched the coveted Anime of the Year prize. It’s worth noting that this year’s Crunchyroll Anime Awards covered all anime released from October 2023 through to December 2024, meaning that only the first season of Solo Leveling was eligible. The show, which is based on the South Korean web novel of the same name and its webtoon adaptation, has been a massive hit since it first debuted in January 2024. A power fantasy about a monster-hunter named Sung Jin-woo, who rises in status from weakling to an absurdly powerful necromancer, Solo Leveling has been a critical and commercial smash hit so far. The series is available with a Crunchyroll subscription.

While Solo Leveling was a lock to win awards like “Best Action,” there has been spirited debate online over the other awards it bagged. With anime like Frieren – about an elven mage who outlives her adventuring companions – and Dan Da Dan – where high schoolers battle both aliens and the supernatural – also nominated for “Best New Anime Series,” fans of those shows (both on Netflix) felt that Solo Leveling’s win was underserved compared to how those series feature more nuanced and layered storytelling in comparison. 

Read more: Quality over quantity: Thunderbolts kicks some serious ass-terisk!

Other notable 2025 winners included Anime Film of the Year Look Back, from Chainsaw Man creator Tatsuki Fujimoto, about two young girls who bond over drawing manga (and which is on Prime Video); ever-popular Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (Best Continuing Series and Best Animation); and Blue Box (Best Romance), where teens deal with complicated feelings as they train for basketball Nationals. Both Demon Slayer and Blue Box are in the South African Netflix library.

For the record, voting for the Anime Awards is weighted 70/30 between a panel of anime industry judges and public opinion. The accolades have been dished out since 2017, when groundbreaking figure skating drama Yuri on Ice became the first Anime of the Year winner.

The 2025 Awards Ceremony was an emotional night for the people who worked on the iconic Attack on Titan anime, as well as it was awarded Crunchyroll’s first-ever Global Impact Award to honour the mark it had made on pop culture worldwide since debuting back in 2013.

Looking ahead, this year will see several highly anticipated anime films and TV series released. A trilogy of Demon Slayer films will wrap up the anime, and the next arc of Chainsaw Man will also be on the silver screen. Meanwhile, on TV, while anime series like Dragon Ball Daima, Sakamoto Days, and Lazarus are earning rave reviews from critics and fans alike, new seasons of megapopular properties like Spy x Family, One-Punch Man, and My Hero Academia are lined up for home viewing later in 2025. DM

This story was first published on PFangirl.

Below you’ll find all of this year’s winners, while a full list, including nominees, can also be found here.

2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards Winners