For every full year of Crunchyroll content, it produces its newest dominant hit, dooming itself to constant comparisons with new challengers. 2025 started strong, with Solo Leveling poised to steal the limelight with its superior, clean animation, but it’s sadly no longer the shiny new toy for fans. In fact, Summer 2025 saw Crunchyroll bring its latest exclusive contender, Gachiakuta.
Fundamentally, these two series have reasonable overlap, catering to typical shōnen audiences while being particularly edgy with their gore. They’re exceptional action series in their own rights, but beyond Solo Leveling’s spectacle, it lacks much of what makes Gachiakuta special. In fact, Gachiakuta is hard-pressed to find a truly worthy contender for Crunchyroll’s 2026 Anime of the Year honor.
Crunchyroll Brings the Ultimate New Challenger to Solo Leveling
Despite Solo Leveling’s origins as a Korean web novel and then a manhwa, its breathtaking action and power fantasy elements inevitably draw in the shōnen audience. So naturally, a similarly violent shōnen series from Kodansha’s Weekly Shōnen Magazine, expertly animated by Bones Film, creates a perfect Solo Leveling contender with Gachiakuta.
Unlike other contentious Anime of the Year debates suggesting titles like Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End and The Apothecary Diaries, respectively a more relaxed shōnen series and a seinen mystery, Gachiakuta is a natural fit thanks to its deserved hype. Gachiakuta has stayed at the top of Crunchyroll’s Popular page for weeks now, and this indicates more than its trending status.
While superficial, an Anime of the Year distinction, such as from Crunchyroll’s own Anime Awards, is a big win for any respective fandom. For Crunchyroll’s in particular, it’s primarily nominated by a panel of judges, but the 70:30 judges-to-fans weighted voter ratio is what decides the ultimate winner. Gachiakuta’s trending status and general popularity indicate it could take the title.
It’s not just Crunchyroll, either; FlixPatrol consistently shows Gachiakuta continuing to rank highly in its tracking, alongside fan-driven outlets like MyAnimeList and AniTrendz. While still not nearly as prominent as Solo Leveling’s mighty 8.63 MAL rating, it’s also not finished its season, so it has time to marinate. But beyond hype and a voting majority, Gachiakuta has more going on.
Solo Leveling’s Dominance Is Challenged by Its New Rival
There’s no denying that Solo Leveling is an excellent anime in its own right. It’s superbly animated and boasts enormous visual flair. But beneath this stylish veneer is an amalgamation of manhwa cliches like hunters, towers, gates, systems, time loops, and game UIs. That it executes these tropes well is part of why it’s still the best manhwa-to-anime adaptation yet.
While Solo Leveling is a showcase of manhwa’s popular formulaic tropes, Gachiakuta isn’t afraid to go to dark places without veering outright into overly explicit seinen territory. While it never approaches Takopi’s Original Sin-level shock value, it masterfully depicts a broken world with glimmers of hope and change that other top-tier anime struggle to achieve.
Gachiakuta, meanwhile, is expertly animated by Bones Film, the studio behind Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and Mob Psycho 100. It shows similarly excellent dedication to cinematic composition, weighty character movement, and strong implementation of impact frames. It’s certainly no slouch in the animation department, and boasts an unusual art style compared to its contemporaries, alongside bone-crunching action in its own right.
Gachiakuta shows its true advantage in its confident world building and strong supporting cast from episode #1 onward.
Even if Solo Leveling’s animated fidelity were to win out, it falls flat in other arenas against Gachiakuta. While Solo Leveling season 3 promises hefty concepts like fleshing out the other Monarchs, Ashborn’s story, and Sung Jinwoo’s relationship with National Level Hunters, Gachiakuta shows its true advantage in its confident world building and strong supporting cast from episode #1 onward.
Gachiakuta Has Several Key Advantages as a New Anime
Solo Leveling is a great viewing experience, but beyond the power fantasy of seasons 1 and 2, Jinwoo’s journey feels siloed off from a pool of fascinating supporting characters. The anime practically feels devoid of compelling moments, while its best instances for Yoo Jinho and Cha Hae-in, sadly, won’t appear until season 3.
Meanwhile, Gachiakuta thrives on exceptional supporting characters, making the series feel alive even without its protagonist, Rudo Surebrec, present. Amo’s disquieting backstory is already a series highlight in episode #13, and Zanka’s cliffhanger against Jabber in episode #16 already has viewers emotionally invested. But in Solo Leveling’s defense, it’s adhering to its Jinwoo-centric premise here, however flawed that may be.
Amo’s disquieting backstory is already a series highlight in episode #13, and Zanka’s cliffhanger against Jabber in episode #16 already has viewers emotionally invested.
While Solo Leveling takes two seasons of episodic power fantasies in which Jinwoo grows, assembles his Shadow Army, and attains level 100, its world building feels stagnant. This is true even in the manhwa, with Solo Leveling: Ragnarok arguably handling its concepts more organically from the get-go. However, Gachiakuta’s execution of this feels consistently good from episode #1-onward.
Gachiakuta’s world building depicts a universe strongly removed from Solo Leveling’s urban fantasy. It shows a lofty Sphereite society viewing the Ground world below as the Pit where it dumps its trash. From the Watchman Series, to Rudo and Amo’s respective traumatic upbringings, to the Angel, the Ground’s subsistence on sweets, and more, Gachiakuta’s world building is in another class above Solo Leveling.
Solo Leveling Faces an Uphill Battle for a Consecutive Title
The distinction of Crunchyroll’s Anime of the Year, whether in its official awards or in the eyes of its fans, is a notoriously difficult honor to win. Only one anime has ever won it twice, Jujutsu Kaisen in 2020 and 2023, and none have won it twice consecutively.
Gachiakuta is a likely contender to at least give Solo Leveling a run for its money, alongside gorgeous hits like Medalist, The Apothecary Diaries, Takopi’s Original Sin, and To Be Hero X. Each series is excellent, although really only To Be Hero X and Gachiakuta have the hype of their target audiences to drive a significant voting presence.
Putting aside whether To Be Hero X’s status as a donghua will hurt its chances to contend or not, it’s noticeably still less popular than Gachiakuta. While Solo Leveling certainly can’t steal Best New Anime Series from either of these shows now, they’re easily the most viable contenders given the passion and zeal of their fan bases.
But while Gachiakuta is at least worthy of contending as Anime of the Year for Crunchyroll, it’s clearly winning online discourse in terms of the streamer’s new 2025 offerings. For now, it’s a matter of getting nominated, and whether it can keep the hype train rolling, or take advantage of Solo Leveling’s absence of a season 3 confirmation.
