Solo Leveling didn't win Anime of the Year just because of popularity, and you need to understand why

With the 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards event concluding on May 25, 2025, Solo Leveling won the Anime of the Year award for 2025. However, as soon as the results were declared on the grand stage at the Grand Prince Hotel Shin Takanawa- Tokyo, Japan, the viewers seemed split with their outlook on the results.

While the fans of other series, like Frieren: Beyond Journey's End and The Apothecary Diaries, questioned the awarding process format of the show, calling it a popularity contest, the truth is somewhat different from what the fans might think. While the awarding does rely on fans' votes, Crunchyroll also uses something else to determine the winners, and here's what that is.

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Solo Leveling winning the Anime of the Year award might not have been completely up to the fans

As mentioned, Solo Leveling swept the floor on May 25, 2025, at the 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards by winning the Anime of the Year award. While there were some heavy hitters among the nominations, like Dandadan, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Delicious in Dungeon, Kaiju No. 8, and The Apothecary Dairies, the series outshone them all.

While the winning series' fans rejoiced with the outcome of the award, fans from the other series started criticizing the entire process of Crunchyroll's event, calling it a popularity contest, and did not hesitate to let out their opinions on several social media platforms:

"Frieren robbed . We don’t care about this," said one fan.

"And of course it does. Frieren and Aphotecary diaries deserves more in my opinion, but I can't fight against all this Aura hype," said another.

"nah they really solo’d the whole industry fr," added a third.

While the fans were very clear to show how they were in disagreement with Solo Leveling winning the award, even calling out the hype of season two being the unfair reason for season one winning, the awarding process is not entirely reliant or concluded based on the fan votes received in each category.

As mentioned in their ruling process on their official website, Crunchyroll has a two-round official process for voting. In round 1, which mostly consists of the nomination process, a panel of expert judges, consisting of critics, reviewers, and professionals, selects the nominees for each category. The fans have no say in the matter at this stage.

In round 2, which is the voting process for the winner, the judges vote alongside the fans to determine the outcome. While the judge's votes count for 70%, the fans' votes only count for 30% towards picking the winner. Meaning, even if a million fans would've voted for Solo Leveling, it wouldn't have won without the strong support from the judges.

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In conclusion

While the fans are partially right in blaming the outcome for being somewhat influenced by the hype and popularity of the Solo Leveling series' season two, it is also true that the series did get enough support from the judges to have made it into the nominations and eventually come out as a winner.

Now, to answer whether it truly was the Anime of the Year is very subjective and is entirely based on individual opinions. But it can be completely clarified that Solo Leveling winning just because of the fans is a completely false conclusion, which is also proven in this article.

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