d4vd Gets Ready With Teen Vogue at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards 2025

“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 online."

When the opportunity came around to pull inspiration for his look for the 2025 Anime Awards, d4vd did not hesitate to look to last year's big winner, Jujutsu Kaisen, his current favorite anime show alongside Dan Da Dan.

Much like Megan Thee Stallion's Bruno Bucciarati-inspired 'fit for the 2024 Crunchyroll Anime Awards 2024, d4vd also looked to anime characters to inform his look without going fully into cosplay. As shared on his socials, the star used Suguru Geto from Jujutsu Kaisen as the main reference for his all-black number consisting of a long-sleeved button-down shirt from and matching balloon pants, from Tokyo brands CULLNI and ANREALAGE, respectively. The look was rounded off by a pair of black Adrian loafers from Dr. Martens.

Though Geto was the reference, d4vd shares the look is supposed to represent his anime-inspired alter ego, Itami, meaning “pain” in Japanese. The star created the split “evil antagonist” persona inspired by Tokyo Ghoul's Ken Kaneki and Jujutsu Kaisen's Gojo Satorou.

“I always had this vision of creating an anime world inside of my art,” he explains. “Itami is woven through my art pieces, visuals, music, videos, anything I can find. I wanted to build that out with this project. Releasing the anime vinyl [for my debut album Withered] was the first step into a potential d4vd manga in the future.” (The way to tell Itami apart from d4vd is usually the former's blindfold, though to keep things practical it was replaced by a pair of sunnies for the Anime Awards.)

No matter which side of the star ends up taking the spotlight thematically, d4vd's preferences prevail while getting glammed up, which is usually a relatively simple process. “I really am a quick,” he says. “You gotta get things together, you know? It's about 30 minutes and done.”

In those 30 minutes, though, you will find him gaming and listening to a perfectly curated playlist to keep the bay at nerves and the focus on getting out of the door. The standouts? "Gold" by 2hollis, "Sorry" by Justin Bieber, “Therefore I Am” by Billie Eilish, and Rihanna's entire discography.

“A get-ready-with-me playlist is kind of like I gotta focus on getting ready and the turn-up playlist [would feature] ‘Gnarly’ by KATSEYE, ‘FE!N’ by Travis Scott and Playboi Carti, and ‘Olympian’ by Playboi Carti,” d4vd shares.

One thing you definitely won't hear is his own music. “I never listen to my own music once it's released,” he says. "I can't. I don't know. It's like a weird self-criticism thing. I listen to unreleased songs I'm working on all the time, but once it's out there, I'll just let fans [have them]. I'm such a nonperfectionist when I'm making the music, but after it's out, I'm like, ‘Yo, I should have added that. I should have done this,’ so I'm focused on the live versions at that point."

d4vd might have made his Anime Awards debut as a presenter, but he's already thinking about his return, potentially as a nominee. On his dream bucket list? Being nominated for featuring on the ending or opening titles for an anime, a natural step up from his inclusion on the soundtrack for season 2 of Arcane.

“I wanna do the ending of Jujutsu Kaisen and the opening of Dan Da Dan,” he says. "Jujutsu Kaisen always has the contrasts where the openings are super hype, but then the endings are super chill. I'd want to do a chill little thing, a little jazz vibe. Then for Dan Da Dan, I'd probably do like a J-Pop vibe."

He might have kept things outside of the cosplay realm at the 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards, but the star is slowly but surely building up his cosplay folio on the side. Just a week before, he surprised fans with a cosplay of Naruto's Sasuke on his Instagram.

“That was my first cosplay ever,” he says. “I was in the Philippines, and there was an anime convention that I was gonna perform at. I was like, ‘If I’m performing at my first convention, I gotta do it in cosplay. A friend of mine who was doing the Naruto cosplay actually made it for me specifically for the show. It was a decision I made a day before.”

The first impressions could not have been better. “My heart was beating so fast. I had so much adrenaline. I was doing the poses, everything. Everybody was cheering me on. It was fire,” he says with a smile. “I think I'm gonna do Goku next. I have to. It's the first anime I ever watched. I'm gonna do Super Saiyan 4 from Dragon Ball Daima. They changed his hair color to red in the new series.”

The extravagance will be reserved for cosplay and special occasions for now, as d4vd prioritizes comfort in his daily looks, though without sacrificing edge.

“I love streetwear. I love baggy things. I love silhouettes that are like loose-fitting,” he says. “My style had evolved a lot, one because my mom stopped dressing me,” he adds between laughs. “I've gone through a lot of phases of being inspired by other artists. I feel like that was the best way I could kind of curate my taste and figure out what I liked. I was a part of the skinny jeans epidemic, I'm not gonna lie. [Laughs.] And then I got past that and found out things that fit me, but don't in a way, you know? Like the small to extra small tees with oversized jackets, baggy jeans, wallet chains, the whole package. I'm like diving into my early two thousands kind of swag too."

Some of his main style inspirations are A$AP Rocky and Tyler, The Creator, though of course, there's always room for anime. “Trunks from Dragon Ball Z just has so much swag. We're talking about fashion? Trunk's fashion is crazy. The cropped jacket, the denim, the sword. Come on. Like he really had it on.”