Crunchyroll Anime Awards

• 1. Introduction

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  The Crunchyroll Anime Awards were first presented in January 2017 by the streaming service Crunchyroll. Crunchyroll calls it a "global event that recognizes the anime shows, characters, and artists that fans around the world love most." The ceremony had been announced a month earlier, in December 2016.

  Judges and fans now pick winners across dozens of categories every year, from Anime of the Year down to specific craft honors. Where the ceremony is held, how many categories it hands out, and how much weight fan votes carry have all shifted since that first year. And nearly every edition has ended with an argument about whether the results reward quality or just popularity.

• 2. From California To Tokyo

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  California hosted every ceremony for the show's first six years, before the awards moved to Tokyo in 2023. The 7th ceremony took place at the Grand Prince Hotel New Takanawa, and every edition since has stayed at that same venue. The most recent ceremony, the 10th, took place on the 23rd of May 2026.

• 3. The Two-Round Ballot

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  Each judge starts by nominating up to five contenders per category, a first round that narrows the field before fans ever get a vote. The six nominees with the most judge support in each category then move to a one-week public vote. Since at least the 6th edition, judge and public votes have been weighted 70:30 in the judges' favor to decide each winner.

  For the first six editions, anime produced primarily in Japan and legally released between January and December of the previous year could be nominated. That window changed for the 7th and 8th editions, shifting to run from October two years earlier through September of the previous year. In December 2024, Crunchyroll announced a return to the original January-through-December format, starting with the 10th edition. The 9th edition bridged the gap, covering October 2023 through December 2024 instead. Non-Japanese voice performances are judged on a different clock, eligible based on when a dub was first released rather than when the original anime aired.

• 4. Categories Multiply And Fade

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  Only four categories have survived unchanged since the show's first edition in 2017. They are Anime of the Year, Best Animation, Best Opening Sequence, and Best Ending Sequence. Everything else has been added, dropped, or renamed at some point, and the list keeps growing. By the 9th edition, the ceremony was handing out 32 different awards.

  Some categories track craft, like Best Character Design and Best Director, both introduced in 2019, or Best Background Art, added in 2024. Others track language. Japanese and English voice acting categories arrived in 2019, four more languages joined in 2022, and Arabic and Italian followed in 2023. Hindi joined as recently as 2025. Genre categories have come and gone too. Best Drama, Best Comedy, and Best Action all disappeared for a stretch before returning, while Best Isekai Anime only appeared in 2025.

  In 2023, Crunchyroll unveiled two special honors that never made it to the stage: the Special Achievement Award and Presenter's Choice. Neither was given out during that ceremony.

• 5. Same Winners Again And Again

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  Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba leads every series in nominations, with 47 across all editions. Attack on Titan trails close behind with 46, and Jujutsu Kaisen has picked up 45. My Hero Academia and Dandadan follow with 44 and 42 nominations respectively, and Spy x Family has racked up 40.

  Jujutsu Kaisen has claimed more awards than any other series, with 22 wins total. Demon Slayer and My Hero Academia are tied just behind at 19 wins each, with Attack on Titan close after at 17. Yuri on Ice, despite trailing the modern giants in nominations, has still won 7 awards.

  Chainsaw Man - The Movie: Reze Arc holds the film nomination record, with 13 nods. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - The Movie: Infinity Castle converted its 8 nominations into 7 wins, more than any other film has managed.

• 6. The Popularity Problem

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  In 2017, the sports anime Yuri on Ice swept all seven of its nominations at the show's first ceremony, including Anime of the Year. Crunchyroll users accused fans of running an aggressive campaign to rig the vote, and allegations of possible fraud followed. Crunchyroll responded with a new weighting system that gave judges more power, meant to stop any one popular show from sweeping every category.

  At the next ceremony, the new system reportedly kept the hugely popular superhero series My Hero Academia from an unexpected loss to Made in Abyss. Years later, in the 10th edition, the eighth and final season of My Hero Academia won Anime of the Year. It became the first concluding season of any series to take that prize.

  Animehunch made the same point more bluntly after the 8th edition, arguing the awards favor popularity over merit. The outlet singled out the second season of Vinland Saga as a stronger Anime of the Year candidate. Jujutsu Kaisen's second season had won that award instead.

  In the 9th edition, Solo Leveling won Anime of the Year, beating the critically acclaimed Frieren: Beyond Journey's End and The Apothecary Diaries. Solo Leveling is an anime adaptation of the manhwa series of the same name. Viewers openly questioned whether the results favored hype and recency over artistic merit.

  Delicious in Dungeon collected 16 nominations without winning a single award, feeding speculation that Crunchyroll favored its own platform over rivals like Netflix. That theory runs into a complication: Devilman Crybaby and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, both Netflix releases, won Anime of the Year in 2019 and 2023 respectively.

• 7. Whose Show Is This?

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  Of the 32 awards handed out at the 9th edition, 29 went to franchises whose source material was originally published in Weekly Shōnen Jump. Voice acting categories showed a similar pattern. Of nine language awards, four went to actors who voiced Denji from Chainsaw Man. The only female voice actress to win played Power, also from Chainsaw Man.

  Anime News Network's This Week in Anime column made the sharpest version of this critique. Editors Steve Jones and Nicholas Dupree argued, in a deliberately sarcastic exchange, that the show serves executives who collect franchise revenue, not animators or translators. Framed that way, the award for Jujutsu Kaisen's second season looked different: the studio behind it had previously been criticized for poor working conditions.

  Wired Japan called the ceremony a "strange structural contradiction." The show takes place in Japan and covers Japanese media, yet the Japanese audience itself cannot watch it. Crunchyroll's service is geoblocked inside the country. The same report noted that "foreign" news outlets received preferential treatment over Japanese outlets covering the event.