Recently, the Crunchyroll Anime Awards 2025 took place again. The winner in the category “Anime of the Year” is facing a lot of backlash from fans, despite them being able to vote for it themselves. MeinMMO clarifies why viewers are so upset.
Who is the winner? There were many categories at the awards, but the most important is probably the “Anime of the Year.” The nominees were:
- Dan Da Dan
- Delicious in Dungeon
- Frieren
- Kaiju No. 8
- Solo Leveling
- The Pharmacist’s Diaries
The winner of the category is ultimately Solo Leveling. The anime was chosen by viewers and a jury. Besides the most coveted category, the series was also able to win in 8 other categories, thus sweeping more awards than any other anime.
Nonetheless, fans are currently on the barricades and expressing their anger. They do not understand why Solo Leveling received the award – and would have preferred a different winner.
Fans want a different winner for Anime of the Year
Which anime would viewers have preferred? Many on social media are dissatisfied with the choice of the best anime. Under the X-post from Crunchyroll, many users write that Frieren is the real winner. The anime has been robbed of its prize.
Even in the Reddit forum, there are many supporters of Frieren. One fan writes that Solo Leveling probably achieved the 9 most undeserved victories. Another user believes that Solo Leveling did not even deserve one of its awards, and can justify that.
On My Anime List, fans can rate all animes. Currently, Frieren is in first place among the best animes and has been able to defend its title since its release. The first season of Solo Leveling, on the other hand, only ranks 324th (via MAL), even though a similar number of people have rated it.
How can this be? One reason why the anime likely ranks higher than it deserves is the fact that Season 2 was released recently. It is also rated much better than Season 1 and ranks MAL at 49th place.
However, the evaluation period covers animes that aired from October 2023 to December 2024 (via Crunchyroll). Season 2 was aired shortly after this period, so it should not have been included in the evaluation. Many fans find this unfair.
Moreover, the votes of the jury are weighted in a ratio of 70:30 against the votes of fans (via Crunchyroll). Thus, the jury’s votes count much more than the fans’. It could be that most fans really saw Frieren in first place, but the jury did not.
The ratio is from 2022. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find an exact distribution for this year, but we assume that not much has changed since then.
If only the MeinMMO team could vote on which anime is the best of all time, the voting would look completely different. We have shared which series have earned a special place in our hearts: The best anime of all time – What our editorial team is watching
