May 26, 2025, SEOUL, KOREA – Kakao Entertainment’s flagship IP “Solo Leveling” made history by winning 9 honors, including Anime of the Year, at the 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards held on May 25 at the Grand Prince Hotel Takanawa in Tokyo, Japan. By becoming the first Korean animation to win both the highest honor and the most awards at a globally renowned event, “Solo Leveling” set a historic milestone demonstrating the global competitiveness of K-content.  

Crunchyroll, the world’s largest anime streaming platform with over 17 million paid subscribers, has hosted the Crunchyroll Anime Awards annually since 2017. Known as a leading celebration of anime, the awards honor the best series, films and producers across a wide range of categories including Anime of the Year, Best Director and Best New Series.  

This year’s ceremony, which had 48 nominees in total, was live streamed to a global audience via Crunchyroll’s social media channels. A panel of judges from the anime industry selected the nominees in Round One, and then the fans joined them in voting for Round Two.

Anime of the Year

“Solo Leveling” was nominated in 13 out of 23 categories: Anime of the Year, Best New Series, Best Anime Opening Sequence, Best Anime Ending Sequence, Best Animation, Best Action Anime, Best Main Character, Best Anime Song, Best Anime Score, Best Anime Voice Artist Performance (English,) Best Anime Voice Artist Performance (Brazilian Portuguese,) Best Anime Voice Artist Performance (Castilian Spanish,) and Best Anime Voice Artist Performance (Hindi.) This year’s Anime of the Year contenders included: “DAN DA DAN,” “Delicious in Dungeon,” “Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End,” “Kaiju No. 8,” and “The Apothecary Diaries,” alongside “Solo Leveling.”  

“Solo Leveling” won 9 honors: Anime of the Year, Best New Series, Best Anime Ending Sequence, Best Action Anime, Best Main Character, Best Anime Score, Best Anime Voice Artist Performance (English,) Best Anime Voice Artist Performance (Brazilian Portuguese,) and Best Anime Voice Artist Performance (Castilian Spanish.)

“Thank you very much from the bottom of my heart for voting (for) us for this award,” Shunsuke Nakashige, director of “Solo Leveling,” said in his acceptance speech after winning Anime of the Year. “We were able to receive this award because of the crew (who) poured their heart and soul into the project, and the fans who then watched it.”

Global popularity

Both Season 1 and Season 2 of “Solo Leveling” gained global success across major countries and OTT platforms, proving its widespread popularity and buzzworthiness. Upon its release in January 2024, Season 1 became Crunchyroll’s most popular title of the year. Season 2, premiered in January this year, also reigned atop the charts across all Crunchyroll regions – including the English-speaking countries, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa – emerging as the most popular series of the first quarter. It also ranked first on the daily charts of Japan’s Amazon and ABEMA while becoming the top January release in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Southeast Asia through broadcasts via Medialink.

Crunchyroll CEO Rahul Purini said in a recent interview that the series’ success is attributable to the strength of the source IP as well as the quality of the visuals and production.

“The most important thing is the theme of the story, it has lot of themes from gaming,” he added. “When people see those themes in a narrative story format like this, it is new and it is different, and it is a language they speak and that makes it much more compelling.”

Park Jeong-seo, Head of Story Business Unit at Kakao Entertainment, said, “’Solo Leveling’ has become the first Korean anime to be nominated for and win the top award. It’s deeply meaningful to have created this historic moment highlighting the global power of Korean webtoons and web novels. As Kakao Entertainment continues to make new history with the ‘Solo Leveling’ IP, we will not stop discovering other powerful and gripping stories that can follow in its footsteps.”

Diverse adaptations

“Solo Leveling” follows the adventures of the main character Sung Jinwoo in a world constantly threatened by monsters and the forces of evil. In his battles against these forces, readers watch Sung – dubbed the weakest hunter of all mankind – transform into one of the strongest hunters in existence. Based on the popular web novel of the same name, “Solo Leveling,” a flagship K-story IP, has expanded into multiple formats including webtoon, anime, and game. Its web novel and webtoon adaptations have amassed more than 14.3 billion cumulative views worldwide, thanks to its epic storyline and thrilling action.

The “Solo Leveling:ARISE” game, officially launched by Netmarble last year in 174 countries, ranked first in downloads in 141 countries, No. 1 in revenue in 21 countries and entered the top 10 in revenue rankings in 105 countries. It has also drawn more than 60 million cumulative users and was honored with the Grand Prize at the 2024 Korea Game Awards. Moreover, Kakao Entertainment is also currently in the planning and development phase of a “Solo Leveling” drama.