It's clear that there was one big winner at this past weekend's 9th Crunchyroll Anime Awards. With 13 nominations leading to nine wins, Portal Fantasy anime Solo Leveling had the best night of any of this year's nominees. Solo Leveling's success during the weekend has proven controversial with fans online. It's worth noting that the Anime Awards are decided by fan vote and it's clear that, despite the naysayers, Solo Leveling has become popular enough to dominate that fan voting.
Solo Leveling's performance at the Anime Awards is particularly impressive, since four other of the past year's most popular anime series received more nominations (Dan Da Dan, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Delicious in Dungeon and Kaiju No. 8) and it was tied with The Apothecary Diaries with 13 nominations. The series took home the following awards this year:
• Anime of the Year
• Best New Series
• Best Action
• Best Main Character
• Best Score
• Best Ending Sequence
• Best VA Performance Awards in English, Castilian Spanish and Portuguese
A quick intro Solo Leveling
Based on a series of novels originally published online by the South Korean author Chugong that ran in several various forms from 2016 to 2021, the anime adaptation of Solo Leveling is produced by the Japanese studio A-1 Pictures (Fairy Tail, Sword Art Online). The second season of the anime concluded March 30, 2025, meaning that it was fresh in fans' minds during the period of voting for the Anime Awards.
Solo Leveling is a Portal Fantasy anime, belonging to a genre that's on the whole similar to the popular Isekai genre of anime and manga, though with a few nuances to how the story and its world actually work. Both involve the protagonist being transported to another world, though Portal Fantasy usually has the mechanism of how that happens more clearly explained — Isekai anime tend to start with the protagonist being spontaneously transported or reincarnated in another world. Portal Fantasy also usually provides the protagonist with a way back to their original world.
Crunchyroll's official synopsis for the series describes it as follows:
"They say whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but that’s not the case for the world’s weakest hunter Sung Jinwoo. After being brutally slaughtered by monsters in a high-ranking dungeon, Jinwoo came back with the System, a program only he could see, that’s leveling him up in every way. Now, he’s inspired to discover the secrets behind his powers and the dungeon that spawned them."
To provide a bit more context, Solo Leveling takes place in a version of the real world where interdepartmental portals lead to incursions by dangerous Fantasy monsters like goblins and giant insects. Hunters are humans who manifest magical abilities that operate on Fantasy-RPG logic and go on inter-dimensional raids to hit the monsters where they live and collect mana crystals that can be harvested as a source of clean energy back in our world. On the whole, it's pretty consistent with Isekai anime that actually take place inside video game worlds. Solo Leveling very much works on video game-esque logic, despite not actually taking place inside a video game.
Solo Leveling is going to be a controversial series for a while
The current controversy over whether or not Solo Leveling deserved to win the Anime Awards it did largely revolves around the perception that Solo Leveling has a weak story compared to the other nominees — especially Frieren and Dan Da Dan. It's true that Frieren is a much more introspective and melancholic story than the typical Fantasy anime and Dan Da Dan's storytelling is infused with its off-the-wall tone and aesthetic. Conversely, Solo Leveling is a much more straight-forwardly action-oriented story, though there is a certain level of novelty in its story that infuses the real world with aspects of fairly traditional Fantasy elements.
Fans of action are definitely going to be at home with Solo Leveling. Similarly, it should appeal to fans of Sword Art Online and Attack on Titan due to the similarities in tone and execution. Even fans of playing Dungeons & Dragons will probably enjoy the concept. One of the strongest aspects of the series is the fact that, unlike a lot of recent Fantasy anime, it presents its concept straightforwardly and sincerely. Unlike something like Delicious in Dungeon, which uses the premise of dungeon exploration to create a lot of humor, Solo Leveling treats the same basic concept with seriousness and without irony.
Especially with the Anime Awards still so recent, there's probably not going to be much resolution to whether or not Solo Leveling did deserve to bring home the haul of awards that it did. At this point, the best thing to do is just watch the series and decide for yourself. You can do that by streaming both seasons produced so far on Crunchyroll.
A third season of Solo Leveling has not yet been officially announced, but odds are good it'll be coming down the pipeline at some point. The Bam Smack Pow team be keeping an eye out for any news of a third season, and we'll be bringing you the biggest anime news each and every week.