Open Crunchyroll's 2019 hit list and the name waiting at the top is Boruto. JoJo sits at ten, with a messy mix of isekai, student-council war, and guild shonen filling the middle — the catalog as it looked when the service was still the legal player next to Netflix.
Live charts in 2026 do not freeze that podium. The ten titles below stay the snapshot: what actually filled the player before Funimation folded into Crunchyroll and the megahits of the 2020s rewrote what “popular” means on the platform.
Contents 11
What “most popular” means on Crunchyroll now
“Most popular anime on Crunchyroll” is at least three measurements that get mashed together. The live Popular row shows what is pulling streams right now — it moves with the season and the region. View-count history counts what has been started most often over years. A frozen top ten from 2019 is neither of those. It is a photograph.
| Lens | What it shows | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Live Popular | What is running on the platform right now | Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Golden Kamuy, Fire Force |
| View-count history | Most watched since catalog tracking began | Solo Leveling, as of the end of March 2025 according to Sony |
| 2019 hit list | The ten titles filling the player then | Boruto at 1, JoJo at 10 |
On Crunchyroll's English Popular page, recent names have included Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Golden Kamuy, Fire Force, Fate/strange Fake, and the isekai I Got a Cheat Skill in Another World. That order is not a trophy for the shelf — it shifts as soon as a new season drops.
What moves more slowly: Sony's 2025 Music Japan business-segment deck put Solo Leveling at number 1 in Crunchyroll view-count history as of the end of March 2025. Sung Jinwoo arrived in 2024 and, in two seasons, overtook catalog giants that had years of head start. At the 10th Crunchyroll Anime Awards on May 23, 2026 in Tokyo, the Final Season of My Hero Academia took Anime of the Year. Those facts sit beside the 2019 list. They do not replace it.
10 – JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure
The Joestar family is anything but ordinary. Across generations they fight supernatural forces. In 1987, Jotaro Kujo locks himself in a cell because he believes an evil spirit has possessed him.
His mother, his grandfather Joseph Joestar, and the Egyptian Stand user Muhammad Avdol come to get him out. Avdol's fire Stand, Magician's Red, forces Jotaro's own Stand — Star Platinum — into the open. From there the plot unspools toward DIO, and the family history that made that fight inevitable. For the map of parts and Stands, there is a JoJo guide on the site.
9 – Domestic Girlfriend
With a story of love and disillusionment, Domestic Girlfriend tells the tale of a boy who is deeply in love with his teacher. The young Natsuo Fujii is in high school and has this forbidden desire. To forget Hina — the teacher — the boy goes to a party.
There he meets a very strange girl named Rui Tachibana. The two start to get to know each other a little more and decide to lose their virginity together. In Natsuo's mind, he would forget his passion for Hina.
Later, Fujii's father has a second marriage. Who is his new wife? That's right, Hina. As the saying goes: “there's nothing bad that can't get worse.” Natsuo's teacher brings her sister to live in the new house, and her sister is none other than Rui. Believe it or not, it will be an unprecedented experience for everyone.
8 – Kaguya-sama: Love is War
This seinen — aimed at an adult male audience — tells the story of two student-council leaders who are in love with each other. The fear of saying it out loud turns into an unending war to make the other confess first.
Miyuki Shirogane and Kaguya Shinomiya belong to Japan's local elite. Beautiful, extremely intelligent, and proud: that is the pair in one line.
Each one tries to make the other reveal their feelings first. Neither will rest until they win. Their determination is great, and stubborn too.
7 – Black Clover
Asta was a baby when he was abandoned in the Clover Kingdom. He and his wizard friend Yuno — from the same orphanage — train to join the Magic Knights and improve their skills.
Yuno is a prodigy, fully capable of controlling his magic. Asta has none, so he compensates with brutal physical training. What he does have is a grimoire and a sword that can nullify magic.
Yuno's ambition is to become the Wizard King; Asta wants to be the strongest Magic Knight. That rivalry is the engine of the series. Black Clover is one of the great shonen that still filled Crunchyroll queues in 2019.
6 – The Rising of the Shield Hero
Upon finding a mysterious book in a library, young Naofumi Iwatani is summoned to a parallel world alongside three others. The invitation is to become heroes of that universe.
Naofumi's lack of presence in the room gets him only a shield, while the others receive attack gear. On the second day of the new job, his combat partner betrays him. Accused of crimes he did not commit, he is forgotten and hated by everyone around him.
The only way he sees to leave the hatred behind is by buying a slave, Raphtalia, who becomes his new partner.
Naofumi's misadventure then turns into a campaign to improve his skills and show the other heroes what the shield can actually do.
5 – That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
The life of Satoru Mikami changes overnight after his death. Once an office worker, he reincarnates as a monster familiar from RPGs: a slime.
To survive in the new world he has to devour other creatures. By devouring them, he acquires their abilities and stays alive.
Under the new name Rimuru Tempest, he allies with the storm dragon Veldora. The slime then has a mission: free Veldora from a seal imposed by a heroine long ago. In 2019 this was the isekai filling Crunchyroll; later seasons kept it on the platform's seasonal lists.
4 – Fairy Tail
By the late 2010s the manga was already past 60 million copies in print, and the 2018 television run kept it among the most-watched that year. Fairy Tail follows 17-year-old Lucy Heartfilia, a mage who wants to join the famous Wizard Guild of the same name.
She arrives in the city of Hargeon. Needing money to support herself and improve her skills, she runs into her future partners: Natsu Dragneel and Happy. If the guild tone is what you want more of, there is a list of anime similar to Fairy Tail.
3 – Sword Art Online
In a not-so-distant future, virtual games of the role-playing type become a craze in a new modality: virtual reality. The mode called VRMMORPG — Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game — dominates the minds of young people.
The saga is set in 2022. With the NerveGear, teenagers immerse themselves in Sword Art Online, created by Akihiko Kayaba.
On November 6, ten thousand users enter the world of SAO and quickly discover they are trapped. Kayaba forces them to clear the hundred floors of the floating castle Aincrad.
If a player forcibly removes the NerveGear or dies in the game, they die in real life.
With that macabre rule in place, Kazuto Kirigaya — Kirito in the game — uses knowledge from the old beta test, which had been available only to 1,000 players.
That knowledge, and a new friendship with Asuna Yuuki, are the tools he has to save others and himself from Kayaba. Watch order and the later arcs are mapped in the Sword Art Online watch order.
2 – One Piece
Monkey D. Luffy is an aspiring pirate with one ambition: to become King of the Pirates. He sets off in search of that dream and slowly gathers the crew that will be called the Straw Hat Pirates.
Together with his crewmates — among them the cook and fighter Sanji and the swordsman Roronoa Zoro — he sails the Grand Line toward the Red Line, the continent-like wall that cuts their world in two.
The manga is a bestseller, and the anime is still one of the most-watched series of all time. On Crunchyroll it never really left the catalog; it just stopped being the only giant in the room.
1 – Boruto: Naruto Next Generations
The story continues Naruto Shippuden. It is set about ten years after the Fourth Great Ninja War, with the Naruto universe finally at peace.
Boruto is the son of Naruto Uzumaki, Hokage of the Hidden Leaf. Born from the marriage with Hinata Hyuga, the boy feels distant from his father because of the village duties.
Sasuke Uchiha returns to the village to warn Naruto of imminent danger. Young Boruto asks if his father's old friend could be his mentor. Sasuke agrees, with one condition: the boy must be able to execute the Rasengan.
The son of the Seventh uses an illegal ninja tool that lets him copy skills, and he harms himself with it during the Chunin exams. Naruto rips off his own son's headband — ashamed. In the middle of the tournament, two members of the Ōtsutsuki clan invade the arena. Boruto asks the other five Kage for help to bring Naruto back. That opening arc is why Boruto sat at number 1 on Crunchyroll in 2019: the platform was pushing the next Naruto cycle into the player, not declaring that the son had surpassed the father.
Crunchyroll's live charts will not put Boruto back at number 1. As a document of which ten titles dominated the catalog in 2019, the list still reads: JoJo at the end, Boruto in front, and in between the exact mix of isekai, shonen, and school war that filled the player then.
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