Solo Leveling is Here! Should You Watch It?

The winter 2024 anime season is almost a third over, and I’m still figuring out what shows I want to watch. One series I started recently is Ore Dake Level Up na Ken, aka Solo Leveling, based on a South Korean novel and manhwa. Let’s see if the series is for you!

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The Story of Solo Leveling

Ten years ago a mysterious gate opened up in the city, connecting our world with the realm of magic and monsters. To combat these creatures, humans received superhuman powers and became “Hunters.” We follow a man named Sung Jinwoo. He’s a low-rank Hunter who does battle with monsters to pay for his mother’s medical treatment. But when a mysterious program called the System chooses Sung as its sole player, he’s able to level up and become an S-rank Hunter!

Why did Japan and South Korea have a diplomatic spat? Read my blog post here!

Right off the bat, this anime is unique because all the names are Korean, as it’s based on a Korean web novel that became a popular manhwa. In addition to Sung Jinwoo, we have his younger sister Sung Jinah, cute healer Lee Joohee, the uber-powerful S-rank huntress Cha Hae-In, and Sung’s friend Yoo Jinho.

When the project was announced, A-1 Pictures said the main character’s name would be changed from Sung Jinwoo to Shin Mizuno, and the story would move from Seoul to Tokyo. Fan backlash against this change must have been huge, as these plans were scrapped, with the original Korean names kept in the story. The city setting seems to be generic, able to represent either Seoul or Tokyo.

Solo Leveling is a proper high-budget anime, with great animation by Sony-owned A-1 Pictures. It is a co-production by Aniplex, Crunchyroll and Korean animation studios Kakao Piccoma, Netmarble and D&C Media. The Japanese voice cast is great if you want to watch it in Japanese with subtitles, although it might be more immersive to watch the show in Korean with subtitles.

Anime is a Pan-Asian Industry

One thing I love about anime is the way it’s grown from an industry based exclusively in Japan to become a vibrant network of hundreds of companies based all over Asia. As a strong believer in the motto “world peace through shared popular culture,” I think it’s great that we can all feel connected to awesome stories from various countries under the umbrella of anime.

As I’ve written before, it can be fun to consider the various eras of anime. I personally define them this way:

Golden Age, 1963-1978. Tezuka Osamu’s Astro Boy explodes onto the scene. Astro Boy is the first anime made cheaply enough that weekly TV episodes are economically feasible. Speed Racer, Space Battleship Yamato and the original Mobile Suit Gundam are all huge hits. Commercially successful anime outside of Japan are still rare.
Silver Age, 1981-2000. This era covers the popularity of Urusei Yatsura, which caused a Cambrian explosion of anime with its massive popularity. Macross, Akira and Sailor Moon all find popularity around the world. The era ends when Fujifilm stops production of cels, forcing everyone into digital coloring.
Bronze Age, 2000-Present. The current age in which anime has become a global cultural juggernaut. It’s taken for granted that all anime is made in partnership between Japan and studios all over the world, including South Korea, Vietnam, China, and the Philippines.

Ever since The Simpsons started airing in 1989, the world has known about South Korea’s animation industry. The industry dates back much further, of course. In the 1960s and ’70s, Saturday morning cartoons became super popular, and American animation studios couldn’t keep up with demand. Korean studios stepped up to the plate and by the mid-1990s more than 50% of what we perceive as “American” animation was being made in South Korea.

South Korea and Anime

South Korea hates being in the cultural shadow of Japan. That’s why the Korean government spent a lot of money promoting manhwa internationally as a totally separate genre from manga. While that hasn’t been as successful as the government might have liked, similar promotion of K-POP and K-doramas has yielded better results. Korean TV and films seem to get more and more popular every year.

After some bumps in recent years, South Korea and Japan are experiencing extremely close relations. This is thanks to the election of current president Yoon Suk Yeol. Yoon campaigned on a platform of warmer relations with Japan and the U.S. You can see signs of this new closer relationship everywhere, from the Korean snack foods appearing in Japanese convenience stores to the large number of K-POP idols present at the year-end Kouhaku Red and White Song Battle show to the huge numbers of visitors to Tokyo from South Korea. Important co-productions like Solo Leveling are another good sign of improving relations between the two countries.

Japan and South Korea are two of my favorite countries, and I want them to have peace and cooperation between themselves. Considering the massive challenges every modern country faces over the rest of the century, it’s far more important that countries cooperate and look for positive solutions than trying to re-litigate events that happened 80+ years ago, which every other country in the world has moved on from. I like the direction both countries are heading in, and hope the positive momentum continues!

Thanks for reading this blog post about the Solo Leveling anime, and South Korea’s animation industry. Are you watching the show? Tell us in the comments below!

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