Anime's Latest Controversy Is Quietly Tearing Fans Apart

The Crunchyroll Anime Awards are a pretty big deal. They're one of the biggest awards events dedicated entirely to anime and the rare one that rewards different aspects of production, as opposed to simply best show and best movie. It's also an event that gives me hope for the future of animation as a medium, which seems to be constantly battling existential threats on multiple fronts (whether it's crunch, AI, or a shortage of animators).

Yet, at the same time, watching the 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards live from Tokyo was a reminder of the awards show's biggest flaws and the reasons it stirs up controversy every single year. You could sense this online as fans began complaining that "Solo Leveling" was winning every award despite being widely regarded as a show that's more mindless fun than high art anime. ("Solo Leveling" made our list of the best anime of the Winter 2024 season, in case you think we're inclined to hate on it.) This could also be felt on the ground in Tokyo when the entire press lounge collectively sighed in unison when that same series won Anime of the Year.

This isn't the first time this has happened, either. In fact, it seems like a populist choice ends up winning nearly every category on an annual basis. This, in turn, points to an inherent problem with the Anime Awards — namely, that it's in the awkward position of being as much of a fan-driven event as it is an industry one.

First, it's important to know how the Crunchyroll Anime Awards work. It begins with a voting round to select the candidates for each category. This is overseen by the judges, which feature critics, reporters, influencers, YouTubers, and other professionals among their ranks. Then, after the categories are selected and finalized, it is left to the fans to vote. Fans, as it were, can vote as many times as they want with few restrictions and no limits. As you might expect, this is prone to causing issues.

As Crunchyroll Chief Operating Officer Gita Rebbapragada told /Film in an exclusive interview the day before the 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards took place, the company and awards organizers leave it to fans to assemble themselves and push for their favorites. "We have a huge voting campaign obviously to make people know when they can vote, but a lot of it is just grassroots," Rebbapragada explained. "Fans are just encouraging fans to kind of share who they're voting for and that kind of thing."

"We've seen over the years that little discussions and sort of rivalries happen," she continued. "People are like, 'I want this show, I want this show.' And it's just kind of grassroots being spread."

Mind you, this kind of fan engagement can, for sure, be fun. Yet, when it comes to awards, it means the Anime Awards tend to be quite predictable, with most of the categories being split year after year between the most popular anime shows like "Demon Slayer" or "Jujutsu Kaisen" in years past.

It all comes down to an issue with identity. The Crunchyroll Anime Awards are both an attempt to be the Emmys of anime and a prestige awards show with deep industry connections, but they're also a fan-driven awards event where regular people have the biggest say over what wins each individual category. This leads to constant underwhelming winners.

So, what's the solution? Simple: Start dividing the fans and those who are involved in the industry. Have a single Audience Award category rather than leave the fate of every category to the most organized fandom. You can't be both the Kids' Choice Awards and also the Emmys. This is how we end up with anime titles like "Ninja Kamui" winning Best Original Anime even though most online reactions agree that it drops off in quality in its second half.

It's not just the fan vote, it's the nominations as well. For the Crunchyroll Anime Awards to be free of controversy like this, they need proper industry people familiar with specific parts of the animation craft to be involved in the nominations. Even seasoned journalists (this writer included) aren't necessarily super knowledgeable about, say, what, precisely, makes for great character design. For all the many, many, many issues with the Oscars, they at least adhere to the perfectly sensible idea of having peers vote for their specific categories.