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We might only be halfway through 2025, but snowboarder Chloe Kim has already had quite a full year. The double Olympic gold medalist might have taken a season off from the sport to focus on her mental health in 2022, but she's back at it full force. Since January, she's been all over the world, competing (and winning) in the World Cup Laax, the X Games, the Aspen World Cup, the Toyota US Grand Prix, and the Engadin World Championships. Now topping the World Snowboard Points List (WSPL) in women's halfpipe, she's officially qualified for the 2026 Olympic Winter Games, which will take place in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, next year.
“I feel really good," Chloe Kim tells Teen Vogue in a quiet room inside Tokyo's Grand Prince Hotel Shin Takanawa. "I just finished up my last training camp of the season, and I'm now just gonna enjoy some time off, let my body reset, recover, and get back into shape. I slowly get out of shape as the season goes on because the longer it goes, the less I want to work out, so I gotta reset, [but first I'm] gonna travel.”
Though it is technically for work, Tokyo is the first destination on her dream travel list before setting sail to Korea and the south of France in the coming weeks. “I haven't really been to Tokyo before, so this is really exciting," she says, laughing. “I've probably stopped by for a night or something. When I do it's like, I'll spend the night in Tokyo and not go out, and then go to the snow. So I'm indoors to snow.”
This time is different. She's in town to be a presenter at the 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards, where she'll be accompanied by fellow athlete Myles Garrett. Anime might not be the first thing that pops up when you Google Chloe Kim's name — mainly thanks to the many records she's broken — but make no mistake, she lives and breathes for it.
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“I was so, so excited [when I got the call that I was going to be a presenter.] I was like, 'Immediate yes. We're doing it,” Kim recounts, not even trying to hide her excitement. “I don't remember where I was. I think it might have been in a big email with a couple of things that were coming up, but this was the one that really stood out. I have two older sisters, and my middle sister and I love anime. Growing up, we were all about anime, so she was like, 'Ah, I'm so jealous. Wish I could come.' But she has a j-o-b. She's low-key obsessively texting me like, 'How is it, how is it? And I'm like, 'Nothing's happened yet!'"
Before she walked the orange carpet and took the stage during the big awards, Teen Vogue sat down with Chloe Kim and had her take our ultimate anime questionnaire, where she ranked her favorites and shared all her hot takes. Keep reading for it all.
Chloe Kim: My first introduction to anime was honestly Pokémon and then Studio Ghibli. But I was a die-hard Pokémon fan from the minute I could form a thought. [Laughs.] I was born in 2000, so by the time I was like five or six, I was already kind of [into it]. Also, my sisters are older than I — they're 10 and 15 years older — so around me, there was always Pokémon. They had the trading cards, like it was a whole thing. For my seventh birthday, I got a Nintendo DS [and I played the Pokémon games]. Was it Diamond and Pearl or something? Did that come out in 2007? I don't know, but I started with Piplup!
CK: Honestly. Okay. So I was a real Pokémon fan, and then I fell off for a second because I was in my teenage era. I was watching really cute boys on TV. Riverdale. I was obsessed. Obsessed. But, during the COVID-19 lockdowns, actually, I got back on Netflix, and there were a lot more anime options. So I got back on it with The Seven Deadly Sins. I was obsessed. And then Demon Slayer. Demon Slayer really did it for me because I was like, 'Wow, this animation is incredible. Like, truly, truly incredible. And then one thing led to another, and I watched Hunter x Hunter, Attack on Titan, Haikyu!!, Blue Lock…
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CK: [Gasps.] I can't. I can do the top 500 of all time. Just like the top five is a loss. I can't, I can't rank them. I've seen a lot. Like, just now, I listed off more than five. [Laughs.] And I love, like, I love every single one of these.
CK: Okay… I'm thinking of the ones I saw recently, like literally in the last year. Don't judge me if I miss anything! These are based on the ones I've seen in the last year or six months.
Okay. Number five. Fresh. Blue Lock. I really love sports, you know?
CK: Yeah. Representation! But it is odd because that [and Haikyu!!] are really the only two sports ones I've seen. But I really like them!
Fourth place. I'm gonna have to give to… Ah, this is so hard! I actually hate that I have to do this. Fourth. I'm gonna go with Pokémon. It means a lot to me. Okay. Then. I'm gonna go with — honestly, hot take — One Punch Man. I just love having it on in the background. Number two, I'm gonna say Hunter x Hunter and one, Demon Slayer, just because it's coming out soon. That's why I'm excited for it!
CK: Princess Mononoke. Then we're gonna go with, honestly, the last Haikyu!! movie. Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle. That was insane. Like, I cried my eyes out. And then it might just be Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba The Movie: Infinity Castle.
CK: Honestly, “The Flower Garden” from Howl’s Moving Castle. I love that song so much, it brings me so much joy.
CK: I don’t think I can answer this as it’d be way too long, and I refuse to choose between all my favs!
CK: Oh! I just watched one recently. This is gonna be so, so random. It's about a girl who was reincarnated, and everything fluffy loved her. It's called Fluffy Paradise. It's one season. It's probably going to have to be that universe because I love animals, and the idea of every animal loving me is kind of my dream. And I'll be a hero in it. I have to be the girl who has that power. But also, there are dragons in this world.
CK: Maybe they are. How do we know that? Maybe the winter dragons are fluffy!
CK: A thousand percent. You should watch it. It's really cute. There's no real story, but it's really cute.
