Few Korean web novels have made the leap to global mega-franchise quite like “Solo Leveling,” and its anime adaptation just proved the story still has momentum. D&C Media announced that “Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow-” won both Best Animation and Best Action at the 2026 Crunchyroll Anime Awards, held in Tokyo on May 23, a double win that follows the franchise’s Anime of the Year win the previous year, making it two consecutive years of top honors at what’s often called anime’s answer to the Oscars.
The Crunchyroll Anime Awards, hosted annually since 2017 by the global anime streaming platform, determine winners through a mix of professional jury voting (70 percent) and fan voting (30 percent), a format designed to balance critical merit with genuine popularity. Winning back-to-back in that format is no small feat, and D&C Media said the repeat win “proves once again the support and syndrome-level enthusiasm of global fans,” solidifying “Solo Leveling’s” position as an unambiguous top-tier global IP.
Season 2 centers on protagonist Sung Jin-woo’s awakening as the Shadow Monarch, built around large-scale battle sequences and an expanded version of the story’s world. Critics and fans credited the adaptation, produced by Studio Red Ice, with faithfully translating both the strong narrative bones of Chugong’s original web novel and the dynamic action choreography established in the webtoon adaptation into anime form, a combination that drove enthusiastic reception worldwide from the moment it aired.
The scale of “Solo Leveling’s” reach is hard to overstate: the franchise has accumulated tens of billions of views across Japan, the US, and Europe as both a web novel and webtoon, alongside the newer anime adaptation, making it one of Korea’s flagship content exports. With the award-winning success now behind it, a third anime season has already been confirmed, targeting a 2027-2028 broadcast window.
D&C Media CEO Choi Won-young called the win proof that “the originality and competitiveness of Korean content is working perfectly in the global market,” adding that the company plans to keep expanding the “Solo Leveling” IP across games, merchandise, and other media while working to develop the next generation of global mega-IPs from its catalog.
Source: Yang Seung-hyun, Seoul Shinmun, May 27, 2026.
