Just when you thought that hype over Solo Leveling couldn’t pique anymore, the prestigious Astra Awards have dropped their nominees for Best Anime, Best Voice Over Performance, and Best Supporting Voice Over Performance, and Solo Leveling is included in each of these categories.
The Astra Awards, previously the Hollywood Critics Association Awards, were first issued by the Hollywood Creative Alliance in 2016 for creative and technical excellence in the field of entertainment. Solo Leveling certainly showcases creative and technical excellence with its absolutely beautiful fight scenes, excitingly dynamic animation, and gorgeously displayed artwork. In 2024, Solo Leveling Season 1 was able to cinch itself a win for the category of Best Anime, but will it be able to pull the same off again this year with Season 2?
Fighting The Likes of Dragon Ball
It’s going to be tough competition this year. For Best Anime, Solo Leveling Season 2 is up against the likes of Dandadan, Fire Force Season 3, and Dragon Ball DAIMA. Each of these is an exhilaratingly strong contestant, but none so much as Dragon Ball DAIMA. With fans of the series consuming anything Dragon Ball related as early as the late 80s, does an anime like Sole Leveling, which has only been out for a year and a half, really stand a chance?
Solo Leveling
Solo Leveling absolutely bulldozed through the other contenders for anime viewers’ attention in the winter 2024 anime drop, earning itself some steadfast fans right off the bat and boasting an impressive 89% on Rotten Tomatoes. It rather impressively drew fan focus away from the isekai genre, giving more credit to power fantasy, and revived the idea of the OP protagonist trope seen in other anime offerings such as Sword Art Online. Solo Leveling Season 2 is currently sitting at a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, and, considering it has already won the Best Anime Astra Award in 2024, it would make sense to say that Solo Leveling is on track to take the cup once more.
Dragon Ball DAIMA
Dragon Ball DAIMA isn’t exactly going to take that lying down, however. Fans of the series say that DAIMA ‘breathes life into the franchise’ with its authentic appreciation of the original Dragon Ball material in its humour and the hijinks the gang gets up, but it brings a new and interesting twist to the traditional stories by opening up the demon realm, a setting for intriguing exploration in the new stories Goku is weaving.
Whoever wins the Astra Awards Best Anime for 2025, we do know that all the nominated anime have had some serious work and love pumped into them. After all, what’s a good anime without a little blood, sweat, and tears to help it transform into its final form?
Nominations for Voice Acting
Solo Leveling’s Aleks Le (Sung Jinwoo) and Justin Briner (Yoo Jinho) have both received a nomination for Best Voice Over Performance and Best Supporting Voice Over Performance, respectively. It’s not hard to see why. Aleks Le does an amazing job of replicating the intimidating baritone of Sung Jinwoo, and Justin Briner brings youthful energy to the character of Yoo Jinho.
Perhaps the excitement of winning an award like The Astra Awards Best Voice Over Performance would entice Aleks Le into giving us a few more details about Solo Leveling Season 3’s release date. The young voice-over star left an interesting post on his social media, hinting that he knew the details before cutting to the ending credits of the anime in a nod to the way the anime likes to end its episodes on nail-biting cliffhangers. Fans are practically starving for information, so anything that could give us more of a hint would be appreciated.
Solo Leveling Season 3?
Current speculation on the release date for Solo Leveling Season 3 is sometime in 2028. The rumour is that the anime will coincide with the Olympics, and the studio has commented on wanting to expand into other creative projects for the time in between Solo Leveling seasons.
Fans still hold out hope, however, that the anime will honor its previously strict schedule of releasing in January one year later, in which case a release for Season 3 could be on the cards as early as January 2026.
