“I'm so excited to see everybody in the room to celebrate anime, dude,” d4vd tells Teen Vogue backstage at the Grand Prince Hotel Shin Takanawa, where the 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards will be taking place just in a little over 24 hours. “I was absolutely geeked [when I got the offer to be a presenter],” he says, not even trying to hide the ear-to-ear smile forming on his face. “This is my environment. This is my entire life.”

d4vd's first introduction to anime was at age five, when his father brought home the entire set of Dragon Ball. “I watched it, binged it front to back. Then I was watching the weeklies when it was airing on Nickelodeon before it moved to Adult Swim. After that, it was Naruto and Bleach . The big three. And then after that, I was finding whatever I could

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