Japan's Top 5 Anime Rankings Make One Thing Clear: One Piece WIT Studio Remake Can't Come Soon Enough
Once anime’s unshakable flagship, One Piece may be losing its grip as Japan’s Newtype Anime Awards unveil a top five that hints at a changing of the guard.
One Piece is the reason a lot of people fell in love with anime in the first place. It has been the big ship in the harbor for decades. But the latest Newtype Anime Awards dropped their top five, and Luffy and crew didn’t even make the list. That’s... a shift.
Quick refresher: what are the Newtype Anime Awards?
Newtype is a monthly Japanese magazine from Kadokawa Shoten that covers anime, manga, voice talent, casts, video games, the usual cross-media swirl. Every year they run awards to spotlight standout titles, characters, and creators. This cycle’s results (2024–2025) were announced at the Machi Asobi Vol. 29 event.
The top five Newtype picked this time
- 1) Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines – A-1 Pictures’ slice-of-life adaptation of Takibi Amamori’s light novels took the top spot. Season 1 premiered last July, and Season 2 is already on the way.
- 2) Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX – Yes, that exact spelling. Looks like a garbled title or placeholder got through somewhere, but Newtype’s list slotted this Gundam entry at No. 2 regardless.
- 3) The Apothecary Diaries Season 2 – The palace-intrigue phenom’s second season landed in the third position.
- 4) Solo Leveling Season 2 - Arise from the Shadow – The follow-up to the hit power-fantasy ranked fourth.
- 5) Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray (Season 1) – The horse-girl juggernaut’s 'Cinderella Gray' banner rounded out the five.
It’s an eyebrow-raising lineup, partly because it leaves out some very obvious heavy hitters.
So... where is One Piece?
That’s the part setting timelines on fire. One Piece had a strong year by most measures, but it clearly didn’t connect with Newtype’s voters in Japan this time. The why isn’t exactly a mystery if you’ve been watching week to week: pacing. It has dogged the Toei version for years, and longtime fans complain about it every arc. When the story sings, it soars. When the anime stretches, it really stretches.
The WIT Studio remake might be the reset button
Enter the announced remake from WIT Studio. The whole pitch is essentially: fix the core problems at the adaptation level. Tighter pacing. Cleaner on-ramps for new viewers. A retelling that doesn’t ask you to commit thousands of minutes before it hits its stride. If WIT delivers on that promise, it could pull lapsed viewers back in and bring in people who bounced off the early episodes or the series length.
In other words, the remake is less about replacing the original and more about giving the story the kind of adaptation that can compete in 2025 attention spans. If it hits, it could absolutely reheat the franchise’s awards presence and cultural footprint in Japan, not just overseas.
The bottom line
Newtype’s latest list nudges One Piece out of the spotlight, at least for now. Whether that’s a blip or the beginning of a longer slide probably depends on how quickly the WIT remake lands and how sharp it is out of the gate.
If you want to catch up or keep rolling, One Piece is streaming on Crunchyroll.