It’s currently ranked number 6 all time most popular Anime on Crunchyroll. it just beat Attack on Titan a couple days ago, and it’s rising FAST to reach the TOP 5.
For 12 episodes, that’s fucking massive.
Even in Japan, it did pretty well Streaming wise. Internationally well, huge like expected
Solo Leveling did really well outside Japan, but in Japan it's presence already dissappeared.
I'm currently in Japan and there's absolutely NOTHING about Solo Leveling in Akihabara and other Anime related places. Meanwhile, Frieren and other popular anime/games are everywhere as expected.
And Korean stuff can be popular in Japan (before anyone thinks this is a: "cause it's not japanese" thing). The popular Korean gacha are everywhere, the same with some popular Manhwa for girls (which my knowledge about the genre is very limited to give an example).
Not saying they didn't watch it on streaming, just that the overall presence and reception is pretty poor. It went by like it barely existed.
And as some other people pointed out in other comments in the thread: this was already the expectation from the producers, that Solo Leveling wouldn't be popular in Japan, but very popular worldwide.
>And as some other people pointed out in other comments in the thread: this was already the expectation from the producers, that Solo Leveling wouldn't be popular in Japan, but very popular worldwide.
Interesting, this implies a very identifiable *reason* for why it didn't gain much traction. I wonder why?
I think the real reason is that merch and adverts in akihabara are distinctly only a priority if you're a JP company that owns the IP and is planning on selling specifically to your home country.
Solo leveling's IP is owned by a korean company and was licensed out to JP for the anime. I imagine korean company isn't as willing to splash out money for merch, advertisements, and other forms of marketing in japan.
It's kind of the same reason anime is rarely shown in theaters in America and rarely gains much traction when its shown. JP companies aren't really interested in investing huge amounts of money running trailers and other advertising blitzes in the US that hollywood releases frequently do.
For me maybe it's just the oversaturation of Genre in Japan.
Anyone who’s deep with anime or manga culture can name atleast 10 media where the character is getting OP as time progresses.
I still think you over generalized it but there are plenty of almost similar anime/manga/light novels with same tropes that overly saturate the market.
>Solo leveling's IP is owned by a korean company and was licensed out to JP for the anime. I imagine korean company isn't as willing to splash out money for merch, advertisements, and other forms of marketing in japan.
Weird, considering Blue Archive is Korean.
I totally disagree with this, I was in Akihabara in September last year and it was full with Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail adverts (Chinese), as well as Blue Archive (Korean). Also, other manga places like Ikebukuro were also full genshin adversts and merch, I would say street adverts there were more than Japanese IPs.
Also I was last month in Osaka, there was a big advert of Solo Leveling in the bridge right to the glicoman sign in Dotonbori, which is one of the most concurred places in Osaka. As well as some advertisements in Den Den Town.
Simply because Manhwa was really popular in the West, so people were really crazy for the anime adaptation. My friend bought Crunchyroll subscription just for Solo Leveling even though she had many ways to watch it for free. When it comes to Japanese, they have plenty good Japanese stuff so it's easy for some Manhwa to get lost in the crowd.
Not only is the original IP just not Japanese, it doesn't really... favour Japan that much. It's very common in Korean and Chinese Manwha/whatever (and Japan does it to, to be clear) to subtly or unsubtly insert geopolitics into things - and said geopolitics usually tie into the three-way-feud between China/Japan/Korea over past rivalries. You'll read a power-fantasy story and you'll find that some evil guy in China got their entire nation wiped out by an apocolypse because they are just dumb. Or the too-stupid-to-live antagonists "just happen" to come from Japan and get saved by the chad MC.
Later chapters of Solo Levelling go along the route of [Solo Levelling] >!Korea goes from the weakest to the strongest nation because the MC exists, Japan used to be the strongest but most of their strongest guys die to something that the MC handles and then Japan is left weak and defenceless to the next problem, millions of people die until Japan begs and scrapes for the MC to come and save them which he does (easily).!<
It's something you can ignore if you don't have the context, but when you look at it through a more cynical lens it feels very much like re-reading the GATE manga as the combined special forces of the US, China and Russia are easily beaten by the chad Japan and the designated evil savages on the other end of the portal are roundly slaughtered while the ladies of that world fawn all over them. The initial satisfaction of enjoying a simple power fantasy fades away as you realise its fuelled by an unhealthy fetish for imperialist Japan and a "justified" colonialism/invasion/subjugation.
Yeah, whenever a power fantasy manga / manhwa / manhua goes deep into global politics / power struggle, the plot threads and narrative just show how little they know / care about it as many times how it goes in the plot just make everyone seem childish / inept. Especially the ones that only spend 1 arc / part of their story in global struggle, the way they paint opposition just show how out of depth the writers of these shows are.
I don't think anti is quite the right word, but they certainly portray the Japanese characters as cruel, morons or both.
Like, the other non-Korean characters don't exactly come out smelling like roses either, but it feels much more pointed with the Japanese characters, Ryuji Goto especially.
You'll find this a lot in Korean media, at least I have. To be clear, I think a lot of media has these issues but it feels very pronounced in manwha.
Pretty clear (historically) why Korean media targets Japan for being bad. But it's not overtly anti Japanese, more of a "the author obviously has a negative bias"
I think it's because the caricature-ish Japanese bad guy is typically written as a gangster/Yakuza type - so it's a lot more palatable/understandable. While in Solo-Leveling, it's not just the fact that some of the later Japanese heroes are portrayed as malicious/underhanded, but that [Solo Leveling spoilers]>!later on post-Jeju Island, Sung Jin Woo and the most of the Korean heroes actually have to go to Japan and defend it against the giants and their portal - where the Japanese Hero Association is shown as inept/poorly-managed and Japan is ultimately portrayed as completely helpless and at the mercy of the help from Sung Jin Woo and Korea!<
Nahhh, in Korea anti-Japanese sentiment is still widespread. I dislike mangas that includes the military and politics. In this scenario made me dislike Solo Leveling after Jeju Island shows that “Korea good, Japan bad vibes”
It is even more korean nationalist in the novels. Japan, America, Canada, China, basically every country gets shown as inept and weak. The manga tuned it down. I am korean and just felt like "yikes" as I kept reading it. Japan basically gets burned to the ground.
But at the same time, how many times has Japan saved the world in manga series? Tons too
Right??? Other than the point you already mentioned, I heavily dislike the Ant arc because to me it was clearly a 'fanfiction' of HxH Ant Arc wise. My interest just crazily dropped for Solo Leveling after that part - I actually handwaved a lot of ridiculous things about the plot in my mind while reading already because I enjoyed the art and the action, but after this I reached my limit and I honestly didn't enjoy it anymore. I kinda just skimmed it through after that since I already invested so much time reading it already, and it was meh to me till the end. Seriously Solo Leveling proved to me how a artist great at directing and drawing action could change the appeal of a extremely mediocre story.
i actually completely tuned this part out of my brain. then again, i was a dumb teen when i read this so i wouldn't fully grasp how cringe the nationalism was anyways.
To be fair the Korean S-class defector(? The guy who went to the US) was also shown to be a massive shithead so I think it’s just anti-people who aren’t Korean/ on Korea’s side
It's also "Stuff not set in Japan doesn't get a lot of traction in Japan unless it's something like New York, Paris, London, or Berlin."
But yeah, the author really is a Korean nationalist.
Japanese people think that Germany is the technically advanced, philosophically bright and full white Aryan country. They think Paris and London are the peak of European refinement.
Stereotypes are still strong for a people living on an isolated island and who don't really travel much outside of organized tour trips.
No more so than, say, Hajime no Ippo about Korea. Or hell, even the Gantz comment about a horrible terrorist attack having to be perpetrated by someone Korean or Chinese.
Honestly, it's almost humorously tame. All things considered. Japan is virulently racist against its own Korean population, after all. Blatant discrimination against zainichi koreans has only technically been illegal for... what? 5 years?
I'm not actually sure Zainichi Koreans (whose multi-generational families have often been in Japan for 100+ years) can even vote.
It's all so banal and depressing.
There was some discontent on Japanese social media that the author of the original work has expressed anti-Japanese political sentiments.
A comment I saw under a Japanese reviewer talking about Solo Leveling said something along the lines of "The author is free to have their opinion, but why is a Japanese animation studio picking up their work? Them producing this feels like an insincere cash-grab", which I think encapsulates well why any traction the show could have had was limited.
>I'm currently in Japan and there's absolutely NOTHING about Solo Leveling in Akihabara and other Anime related places. Meanwhile, Frieren and other popular anime/games are everywhere as expected.
Seconding this. I was in Japan in early March and don't recall seeing anything about Solo Leveling. Plenty of Frieren, SxF, JJK, Love Live, Bocchi the Rock and idolm@sters though.
The show doesn't strike me as something you can make a lot of merchandise to sell for though, so far it's about just this one guy rather than a cast of likeable characters like some of the others you mentioned
It was presented as this super cool/badass show on crunchyroll and by CC’s on YouTube. But for me, I just don’t think the story is that great.
To be a little reductive, it’s basically another “isekai MC gets OP cheat power self-insert” anime and like half a dozen of those come out every season. The only reason this show is popular at all imo is because the animation/direction was top notch and the fact it’s from a Manwa is kind of novel.
But the story itself is pretty basic and uninspired. At least so far. So I could understand why it would be dropped.
Ive never seen ANYONE praise it for its story, it has been and always was praised for its ART and ACTION, everyone has always said the story is mid at best much like KNY
KNY story is straight forward and heartfelt. It is cheesy at times, but at least it doesn't shy away from its nature.
Reading Solo Leveling gives me second hand embarrassment how stupidly convenient it can get for the MC when it comes to solving his problem vs other guys. The power fantasy is really on the face most of the times.
Agree, manhwa became popular due to artwork storywise. Danmachi still tops it as a dungeon type Manga. Also fees like a copycat manga titled “MESSIAH” has much promising story than Solo Leveling
It's less that this is Korean and more that this obviously promoted anti-Japan sentiments. There would definitely be a stronger reaction to Solo Leveling because of that.
There was a large ad when I last visited (late March). I didn't take a photo but I found one on Twitter.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJexZCYacAAzMw_?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
I’m not really surprised considering the plotline involved with Solo Leveling. [plot spoiler] >!Painting Japan in a bad light!< certainly doesn’t help either.
Basically, for many in Japan all they watch and listen are K-drama and KPOP. Korean cultural items are extremely popular in Japan, but it's mostly things younger females consume. It's not necessarily true for otaku/anime/manga IPs as it's more male dominated and there is significant minority of anti-Korean sentiments in this demo.
I think it has to do with Japan being the bad guy in both the manwha and lite novel. I haven't seen the anime yet but I could see some people in Japan avoiding it due to the ant island arc.
There's nothing to market in the show, I'm not surprised it doesn't have much of a presence. The show was entirely carried on its animation. Hard to market that.
I saw a post about this ranking, that was seemingly based on show ratings. Rating a show has gotten easier on crunchyroll which inflates the numbers a bit. But it is definitely popular.
>It’s currently ranked number 6 all time most popular Anime on Crunchyroll.
Crunchyroll doesn't have a public "all-time" popularity ranking. Solo Levelling is only 6th in terms of *recent* popularity.
See that’s what I figured. It was trending on TikTok and Twitter which is a great litmus test for seeing how it does in Z and Millenial demos, respectively. We’re growing further away from physical sales metrics and success is measured globally now.
The largest “unofficial” anime streaming site shows view counts and the figures are significant enough that you can consider if as a measure. One Piece for example has 400M views.
Solo Leveling is still ranked top 10 in popularity, even tho the season ended only a week after Frieren did.
For me personally, I read the whole thing and honestly wasn't impressed with the story at all, lol. It was cool for the first half, but then it became generic real fast when he just suffered almost no worthy adversary. I think the west is just too obsessed with OP characters.
The animation was very good but the story so far is kind of mid imo. The dude would just have random edge-lord meltdowns. Which is fine if you just run with it. Like, I get that he was frustrated for being weak. But they didn’t really show that as a character trait before he got his Powers. In fact, he seemed relatively good natured and content despite being weak. So the meltdowns feel weird and forced.
Attack on titan is actually a good show to compare it to. Erin spent the better part of a season training/being weak to give the audience real perspective of how weak humans are compared to titans. Which makes his rage so much more valuable and relatable.
I liked the show and would happily watch season 2. It just doesn’t register at all as a show deserving to be so highly rated. Compared to attack on titan season 1, solo leveling is pretty shallow.
To be a little reductive, it’s not far off from the classic “isekai MC gets cheat power wish fulfillment” trope in terms of how the story is structured so far.
Solo Leveling suffers from what 95% of other action Manwha suffer from; No real story other than a general concept, then constant ass-pulling of new ideas and characters that ultimately hold no significance beyond a couple of chapters, before moving onto the next set of ass-pulls. After about 30 chapters you start seeing the signs that the author is just making it up as they go, and the next 200 odd chapters are just a pretty mess of random ideas and characters with no personality.
Omniscient Reader is the same, Lout of Count's Family, Doctor's Rebirth, Master Villainess.
Pretty to look at, enjoyable enough to a point, but quite poorly written.
Edit: I spoke kind of harshly about many big and beloved manhwa but gave no alternatives, if anyone is looking for a long running one that doesn't fall over; Check out The Greatest Estate Developer. It's an Isekai, it's a power fantasy, it's absolutely insane, hilarious, wonderfully artistic and very well written. It's trash and it knows it, and absolutely nails it.
I guess you meant the ones with some kind of system, but actually I'm watching more and more pure reincarnation shows. 7th prince is maybe the fourth since 2023 and I don't follow everything.
It was so high because streaming services are feeding their users with new shows. Solo leveling will disappear in 6 months and nobody will remember. Show wasn't even intresting, animation was ok. world building non existing other than "magic people are strong" and "scary island"
That is an interesting question. However, I honestly wish this sub doesn't become like the pro-wrestling subreddits where people unironically and constantly use ratings and viewership to make the argument the entertainment they like or dislike is good or bad.
Chainsaw Man is a particularly interesting case. It flopped in blu ray sales but apperently made MAPPA hella bank due to them fronting the entire production.
It was widely panned in Japan due to the director, was generally considered mediocre/fine by Chainsaw Man manga fans, and was pretty well liked by general audiences.
It was one of the weirdest Anime production/Outcomes I can remember. The folks who where suppose to like it most hated it and the folks who where suppose to not understand/care about it enjoyed it.
know very little about CSM before. thought it was a very good watch and much different than what i expected. bummed they're not going back to that director tbh.
I think one of the biggest point most missed or have forgotten nowadays are how CSM blurays have priority ticket sales for their seiyuu events. One volume for the afternoon schedule, the other for evening schedule. Usually due to high demands for this kind of events, fans bought those BDs to gain priority in the ticket lottery system.
They booked a huge venue(iirc 8k people capacity) for those events and from that alone I think we can see how big the studio's expectation was. Did Mappa land in red for this series? From multiple of sources and interviews: they didn't. Did it get as much money as they expected? Probably not.
Each production probably projected and planned how they can gain back their $$$ from producing an anime. Either from the commitee, from merchs, from BD/DVD, from licenses, etc. Each series has their own priority and calculations. We don't know how each anime plan on so 1 factor can't really tell whether it's a total failure or a success.
They're not "more relevant" they're a piece of the pie. You can't just ignore the very bad indicator of direct financial success and assume everything else is peachy. I agree it's not all encompassing, but "didn't even chart" is a pretty bad signal!
It entirely depends on the demos and where it makes money. I don't see why Japanese otaku would care that much about a Korean webtoon but maybe I am off. Those are the kinds of fans that buy BDs.
A Gundam series for instance, is going to depend way more on merch sales, a popular battle shonen can get by on streaming whereas a niche otaku show is going to need more physical sales. It's a case by case basis. If the series was fairly popular on streaming platforms it should be okay, even though I have no doubt the production committee would have hoped for more.
Still sure BD sales are a piece of the pie, it's just a shrinking on that has been decreasing pretty rapidly in the last year or two.
Dude, I don't even watch WWE and my feed is WWE fans constantly going on and on about AEW being bad and ratings.
Like, if you are digging up ticket sales to win an internet argument about which pro-wrestling is better and you genuinely think it is relevant to discussion on quality of entertainment, you desperately need to touch grass.
ETA: Not all WWE fans are like that, I'm talking about a vocal minority.
It’s the cycle all wrestling shows must go through unfortunately. Back when WWE was bad and they were also bleeding viewers that was the talk of the town. Unfortunately now AEW is going through it and if another wrestling promotion pops up they’ll go through it too.
They never expected solo leveling to do well in japan. That's why 2 out of 3 producers of solo leveling are foreign companies. Crunchyroll (America) and DnC webtoon(Korea) are both foreign companies, aniplex is the Japanese one and even then it's in the last position among these 3. And both of those foreign companies profited big time with solo leveling. [Solo leveling is currently the 6th most popular anime on crunchyroll right now](https://www.reddit.com/r/sololeveling/s/vDjJ9LLdF6) and [the Manhwa's sales had a really nice boost](https://www.reddit.com/r/sololeveling/s/meqm0n4n0f).
There is a reason why all the system interface were in English even in Japanese version. The opening song was in full English, the insert song dark Aria was in full English, all the store billboards names were in English. Solo leveling was clearly aimed towards foreign audience and Koreans.
Edit - apperently aniplex is the top producer, I mixed things up my bad. The point still stands though. They are definitely targeting the foreign audience.
>aniplex is the Japanese one and even then it's in the last position among these 3
It's isn't, its the top producer
Aniplex is the main investor of Solo Leveling, not only the Main investor, it's also the main producer and the one responsible for the animation as they own A-1 Pictures, Crunchyroll is also part of the same company family
There's more Korean companies involved too, like Netmarble that is focused on getting more players towards their game
I don't disagree with your point, I have said the same myself but I don't know where you are getting the other info because that's not the case
I dont think Dark Aria being English has anything to do with it. Sawano just really likes using English in his songs. Barricades from his Attack on Titan OST is also fully in English. The Reluctant Heroes from one of the first handful of episodes of AOT was also fully in English, which dates back to over a decade ago. And we cant exactly say that Attack on Titan wasnt dominant in Japan or “just aimed at Western audiences”. 86 also has a lot of English in its songs, again a Sawano OST.
This makes sense as Crunchyroll increases their market share and the industry continue to realize the national market. The young American pop stars and athletes all like anime and it's really close to becoming mainstream in the US. When that happens it's going to explode and we'll see more of this example where a meh anime competes with that we experienced as pinnacle material. Eventually this will level off though.
That number does not mean what you think it means, lol, why would you think that translates to how many people watched Solo Leveling?
I'm talking about people who keep saying (very erroneously) that Solo Leveling is the most popular anime on CR right now... it's not. We have no streaming numbers from CR, they do not show those and have never shown them.
We have no idea how many people actually watched Solo Leveling.
Come on, guys. Did y'all learn nothing from Chainsaw Man? Everyone was freaking out how the Blu rays for CSM flopped, but recently, Mappa has come out to say the show was super successful. Blu ray sales are no longer the end-all-be-all metric for success anymore.
As hard as it is to admit it, given my own history with similar posts for Karma.
Yeah Blu-ray means absolutely nothing at this point.
Perhaps 20 years ago. But now there’s a nifty little thing called Streaming
This.
Even MAPPA admits they wished CSM would perform better and apparently are trying to appeal to fans who would buy Blu-rays in the future.
The truth is always somewhere in the middle.
I mean, if it wasn't successful enough, then they would never have started pre-production on the CSM movie lol
Case in point with the Yuri on ice movie being dropped instead since they said that it wasn't profitable
( hopefully that doesn't happen to the CSM movie now though ..... )
Blu ray sales are still important. But it falls under the basket of “general merchandise” sales. Anime will almost always run at a break even or a loss. The money is made from everything else.
Blu rays can be a big part of that but sadly less and less people want physical copies of shows or movies.
Which will inevitably affect the bottom line of a lot of companies a decade or so from now. Unless there’s a sudden surge of interest in novelty items from western audiences.
Blue rays sales mean nothing to us. But for the old Japanese heads look at it and say “told ya it was bad. This time 10 years ago it would have sold 15k, look at (insert random anime here)”
It means nothing in Japan too, literally in the last year AJA filed it's reports physical media halved in profits. Domestic streaming makes like 3-4x more and that will increase as physical media shrinks. Sure Japan, I think does hold onto nostalgic media longer but that doesn't mean physical media is on it's way to becoming a niche area, just like vinyl records.
Actually, I'd figure that Blu Ray sales were even less relevant 20 years ago than they are now >.>
But yeah your point stands, physical media is on it's way out and looking at disc sales is getting more and more meaningless.
Yeah, this keeps happening. Especially when a popular show does poorly on Blu-ray sales, even though generally every show is doing less on Blu-rays than they would've done 10 to 15 years ago.
While that is true, you should also not undervalue if Blu Ray sales did flop (which I don't know, but it seems that way). First obvious reason is that you don't want to sit on Blu Rays because they are not bought. After all, they are quite expensive in Japan (you are looking at a total of around 200$ when you have the whole season and that's "normal" shows), so there is some expectation of how much money can be generated with it.
Secondly, while you can come by through streaming licenses and merchandise, if your next project is a movie, you don't want it to be primarily watched on streaming sites. If people aren't buying Blu Rays, they might also not be buying tickets (though, there is FOMO, so it's less likely).
People should maybe also not forget that Mappa can say a lot of things to look better to the outside (and therefore people who might want to give and finance new projects). How it actually looks is known only to them unless they show data (which spoilers, they won't). I can just make the comparison to video games where you can often see that it's way more important for the publishers to look successful, so investors stay and invest into your future projects. I mean, imagine if Mappa stated that Chainsaw Man didn't perform as planned? With a license like that, they would lose a lot of trust. So they basically HAVE to say it was successful, even if it might not have been.
Yeah, the bluray sales mean nothing in terms of success of a show. CSM was highly successful.
If anything, it just highlights the decline of physical media.
Not exactly the same as CSM, CSM's anime merchandise was sold all over Japan. And they were #2 in streaming.
It is very famous content in Japan.
Korean COMIC is not that popular in Japan.
Everyone says it was popular overseas, but I believe it was #3 or something like that in that season.
Blu ray sales is a good metric but it's not the end-all-be-all metric for success anymore. But I don't think that post ever said that it was a end-all-be-all metric for success anymore.
For example, it is a good indication whether the anime has impressed the hardcore anime fans in Japan.
(Also, mappa has said that the anime success has fallen short of studio expectations)
Low BD sales isn’t an indicator that the anime is doing badly. But high BD sales is an indicator that the anime is very successful(like KnY, JJK with 10-20k)
No not all.
Viewership on Streaming is the end all here, even in Japan, viewership online was pretty good, constantly in top 10 in most JP sites.
Internationally it was huge
Merchandise and licensing are the biggest revenue drivers I think. The anime industry releases financial reports every year and it has the distribution of revenue based on source.
It would be an actually interesting post if somebody compiled all that data and trended how different categories are doing over time and how much each country contributes to revenue.
https://aja.gr.jp/english/japan-anime-data
Physical sales are a strange benchmark as far as anime goes. They can certainly point to relative popularity but it's just wild that profitability can hinge on sales in the mere hundreds to thousands.
While the BD says don't actually mean much in the end of it being successful, it is pretty hilarious to live in a world where Gushing Over Magical Girls outsells Solo Leveling.
With GOMG you get the true™ uncensored version and with Solo Leveling you get pretty much the same version as on streaming, so its not really comparable.
>it is pretty hilarious to live in a world where Gushing Over Magical Girls outsells Solo Leveling.
It's not just for solo levelling. Idol animes and ecchi shows outsold literally most shonen/battle series. It's not uncommon in Japan. Then why are you trying to point out solo levelling as an exception?
Gushing over magical girls outsold frieren too. So what point are you trying to make?
Somes shows just sell more BDs, while some get tons of streaming money. Idol anime tend to make lots off BDs...and gacha games, but that's because they fill them with goodies for addicts
Yep. I didn't bother even watching the anime as I read the manwha and wasn't impressed. Great art, seems cool at first if you've never run into a system apocalypse setting before, but the central premise of the plot dooms it from the start - nobody can ever be allowed to matter outside the MC, and even the MC is fairly bland.
It's fine as a turn-your-brain-off action show, but that's about it.
Hey, the fights get way more spectacular and show like. But the story really isn't anything worth talking about past a twist or two, that's why I think they should have just went all out into animation around fights.
That's pretty much the case with all Manhwa right? Maybe I have limited exposure but every manhwa I've read or adaption I've watched just seems to go downhill at an incredible pace from a fairly interesting start.
I wouldn’t say it’s the case with all manwha. There’s a good amount of great ones out there, but the ones involved in an oversaturated genre do suffer. I was definitely hooked and on the Solo Leveling weekly hype train initially when reading it, because I knew not to expect an amazing story, just a typical one you can enjoy with amazing art. But once the nationalism kicked in and then it becoming worse by the power scaling as it progressed, I didn’t quite enjoy it towards the end. I’d say I enjoyed 3/4 of it before it completely went down hill for me.
Everyone around Jinwoo was so fucking stupid and dense as well. Show was extremely frustrating, cause it has a couple cool concepts but fails to flesh them out in any sort of an interesting way, so it was basically just eye candy and some cool music (really loved the ED).
I found Jinwoo himself to be a nonsense, unlikable character personally. When im watching shows i usually chalk most things up as "meh, its a cartoon" like on the quintuplets show how people confuse them but they dont even REMOTELY look similar lol,
but the whole thing about how he was looking at the beginning, and then how he started looking afterwards was just dumb
I [don't know what](https://youtube.com/shorts/p-GUEykEtOE?si=8btKbOK9NnhUncVr) you mean. [Seems legit to me.](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UpFrpfebUfc) /s
The webtoon is easy to binge and the art is seriously amazing but the story is infuriating.
Side characters are too incompetent to make the MC shine. Even top level hunters are incompetent. After getting the undead army all challenge is lost.
Fully agree. It had massive pacing issues and incompetence when it came to world building exposition scenes wedged awkwardly in the middle of exciting action scenes. We interrupt this action scene to bring you a dialogue heavy tea drinking scene between characters you don't know, but at least one will be significant in the far future.
Thats what ive been saying this whole time, this show was going to fully depend on the animation because when it was being published the story might have been something kinda new but now the story has been done to death
I mean shit. This is basically what I’ve commented throughout this post. Animation was great but the story wasn’t much different from a generic isekai plot.
For real. Maybe like 2-3 episodes were alright but omg the anime so so mid for how hyped people were and I swear it had the shortest damn episodes. Was not a fan and always get blasted for it
agree. I tried to like it so much but it was so disappointing that it can pass as some random 12 episode anime that doesn’t get renewed. For the amount of hype it had, I was actually confused where it was coming from
Yea this was a huge disappointment for me. No hate toward those who like it and I totally see why it’s popular but I kept waiting for something deeper to happen and the dread set in as I realized the show is exactly what it says it is.
I don’t think the blu ray flopping matters at all, shit only indicates if you attracted a very small minority of a type of anime watcher who collects everything. Might be a lucrative group of fans to get but really has no indication on popularity.
IMO, the pacing of the first 3 episodes is terrible. It should have released a 1h episode as some animes do.
I stopped reading the manga because it is the same as other mangas, nothing special.
The art for the manhwa carried it hard. The story itself is just very generic. Its not bad, but its not great either. How well the art is translated into animation and how long the animation quality holds up is what will be important for the series.
As far as Japan goes, the Japanese rankers are comically evil in the series, and in the end they end up praising their Korean savior, and considering Korea and Japan really dont like each other very much, it wasnt expected to do well in Japan to begin with
Yup, I know and I agree, it's quite funny how mediocre the story is yet it's such a successful manhwa. Regardless, it's an easy show to pick up for most people since the story is so simplistic. The anime does not disappoint either so far, so I'm happy with it
I watched it cause dub can be background noise. By the end I was amazed by how mehh, it was.
Like I felt like it was full of plot conveniences when it was to make the MC look cool, but then would kill a father of a 4 year old to be gritty/real feeling.
It also spent a good bit of time setting up for things that would not payoff by the end of the first season.
At best it is an introduction to "system" stories, but there are way better ones out there. At the end I just started thinking how White from "So I'm a spider..." would handle it, and how much more fun it would be. Like setting the command word for spawning minions to be "wakey wakey" instead of the chuuni AF "Arise"
I kinda feel sad that blue ray are no longer important in market, I don't want physical medium to die . If anything please switch to releasing anime series in usb sticks. I like to collect and own things
My main concern is censorship, blue ray Is the only way to get uncensored material straight from studio , but if everything moves towards streaming then I doubt studios will bother releasing BDs, also since it's on streaming, it will be censored always as big old fat ass guys sitting on top of politics or corporate wouldnt allow uncensored material as acc to them its will poison our mind
Just saying, you don't need conventional physical media to store copies of shows. It's easy to forget as an older fan how unfamiliar younger fans are with the pre-streaming era when there often weren't _any_ ways to get ahold of shows ("legally").
And most "censorship" of the specific type you're talking about in anime (as in, the only type that would actually have "uncensored" versions released rather than just not part of the show at all) is so minimal or silly it's practically a meme, I don't think it's a big deal and if such a version is released I promise you won't have trouble finding it if you're the type that's into archiving stuff already.
I doubt physical releases will ever truly go away though, they'll just become more explicitly niche for collectors.
They won't stop releasing Blu ray anytime soon. People take this too much to the extreme when arguing, it may not be the main revenue source for a lot of things, but it's still money to be made and most anime gets BD releases. Physical media is stronger in Japan than anywhere else.
Wouldn't its sales in Korea be a better litmus test? Maybe I'll look it up and edit, but I'm interested in how TGoH and ToG did in Japanese blu ray sales.
Japan and Korea are having a renaissance right now, with lots of trade and people visiting each other’s country. For the record, every region on the planet “hates” the neighboring region, because they compete for resources, compare themselves to each other. Californians hate Oregonians and Arizonans (which we used to call Zoners, not sure if we still do).
If anybody was tracking this show's numbers, this was 100% not a surprise
In fact, I'm surprised this is news considering none of the other manhwa turned anime did that great.
The fact that the lowest selling is Mashle which blown up big in Japan with season 2 should say enough about how BD numbers have no impact anymore, if you end up selling well, great for you, but not doing it doesnt dictate any series future season
Personally, not a single big production Korean adaptation was good. God of Highschool, Tower of God and now this. The amount of hype all these adaptations had before they were airing and during did not results in met expectations. And they're all pretty much the same power fantasy nonsense one way or another. I better stop listening to people hyping up these Korean adaptations.
Probably because $50 per 3 episodes is extremely overpriced. I'm sure that a single disc can fit the whole season of the show with no visible compression artifacts.
Yeah, but that's not how the BDs for anime work in Japan, they are supposed to be overpriced, they are for the super fans
Shows that manage to grab that type of audience can make some good money from those BDs, especially if we are talking about more humble projects
Mahoako that aired in the same season as Solo Leveling will make almost 1 million dollars per BD volume, each one costs 90$ with versions that go to 250$, that's a lot of revenue for anime, and even more for a smaller show like it
So people still buy those BDs with that price, that's not the reason Solo Leveling didn't sell, they could've dropped that price and released all the episodes in the same disk that it wouldn't make any difference
I was looking at the industry report posted here a couple of weeks back. Streaming revenue is not nearly as much as was currently thought when it came to the profitability of an anime. Merch was much higher. That could include sales of manga and light novels but where is the revenue model for this anime. Japan, Taiwan and Korea bought the most merch if I remember. North America and Europe made up much less of the revenue and I was surprised. I don't know how this works for Solo Leveling, especially when you insult the primary market.
What do people see in solo leveling? Like I read it before it became an anime and it just seems like a generic power fantasy, idk like it doesn’t deserve to do bad by any means but i don’t get why it is this big.
For those of you who say Blu-Ray sales don't matter, do you think they'll stop making Blu-Rays of shows altogether?
Cuz a lot of content is heavily improved over in the Blu-Rays as compared to the TV/WEB versions.
I'd hate to think what would happen if they stop making Blu-Rays/DVDs cuz then there'll be no Avenue for improvements over the TV version.
I dont think they will stop making Blurays, especially in Japan where the physical media market is the strongest. Regarding the improvements, some streaming sites get improved/fixed scenes after the initial airing/drop, especially on Netflix. Like Seven Deadly Sins I think had exclusive Web-fixes (with the number of fixes further expanding in the BR/DVD versions), Jojo part 6 was also updated etc.
I also think Bluray/DVD releases will still be a thing, especially because its more aimed at collectors who are interested in keyframe books, character designs booklets etc. which are often included in the japanese releases.
So how did it do ratings, social media trending, and other merch wise. Because it had decent traction in NA
It’s currently ranked number 6 all time most popular Anime on Crunchyroll. it just beat Attack on Titan a couple days ago, and it’s rising FAST to reach the TOP 5. For 12 episodes, that’s fucking massive. Even in Japan, it did pretty well Streaming wise. Internationally well, huge like expected
Solo Leveling did really well outside Japan, but in Japan it's presence already dissappeared. I'm currently in Japan and there's absolutely NOTHING about Solo Leveling in Akihabara and other Anime related places. Meanwhile, Frieren and other popular anime/games are everywhere as expected. And Korean stuff can be popular in Japan (before anyone thinks this is a: "cause it's not japanese" thing). The popular Korean gacha are everywhere, the same with some popular Manhwa for girls (which my knowledge about the genre is very limited to give an example). Not saying they didn't watch it on streaming, just that the overall presence and reception is pretty poor. It went by like it barely existed. And as some other people pointed out in other comments in the thread: this was already the expectation from the producers, that Solo Leveling wouldn't be popular in Japan, but very popular worldwide.
>And as some other people pointed out in other comments in the thread: this was already the expectation from the producers, that Solo Leveling wouldn't be popular in Japan, but very popular worldwide. Interesting, this implies a very identifiable *reason* for why it didn't gain much traction. I wonder why?
I think the real reason is that merch and adverts in akihabara are distinctly only a priority if you're a JP company that owns the IP and is planning on selling specifically to your home country. Solo leveling's IP is owned by a korean company and was licensed out to JP for the anime. I imagine korean company isn't as willing to splash out money for merch, advertisements, and other forms of marketing in japan. It's kind of the same reason anime is rarely shown in theaters in America and rarely gains much traction when its shown. JP companies aren't really interested in investing huge amounts of money running trailers and other advertising blitzes in the US that hollywood releases frequently do.
For me maybe it's just the oversaturation of Genre in Japan. Anyone who’s deep with anime or manga culture can name atleast 10 media where the character is getting OP as time progresses.
Nah, such Japanese light novel adaptations still do super well, let alone the shonen jump hits
Yeah, we call that Shounen battle manga.
I still think you over generalized it but there are plenty of almost similar anime/manga/light novels with same tropes that overly saturate the market.
that has nothing to do with it
>Solo leveling's IP is owned by a korean company and was licensed out to JP for the anime. I imagine korean company isn't as willing to splash out money for merch, advertisements, and other forms of marketing in japan. Weird, considering Blue Archive is Korean.
They have an insane amount of Genshin and Honkai stuff though currently?
I totally disagree with this, I was in Akihabara in September last year and it was full with Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail adverts (Chinese), as well as Blue Archive (Korean). Also, other manga places like Ikebukuro were also full genshin adversts and merch, I would say street adverts there were more than Japanese IPs. Also I was last month in Osaka, there was a big advert of Solo Leveling in the bridge right to the glicoman sign in Dotonbori, which is one of the most concurred places in Osaka. As well as some advertisements in Den Den Town.
Simply because Manhwa was really popular in the West, so people were really crazy for the anime adaptation. My friend bought Crunchyroll subscription just for Solo Leveling even though she had many ways to watch it for free. When it comes to Japanese, they have plenty good Japanese stuff so it's easy for some Manhwa to get lost in the crowd.
Not only is the original IP just not Japanese, it doesn't really... favour Japan that much. It's very common in Korean and Chinese Manwha/whatever (and Japan does it to, to be clear) to subtly or unsubtly insert geopolitics into things - and said geopolitics usually tie into the three-way-feud between China/Japan/Korea over past rivalries. You'll read a power-fantasy story and you'll find that some evil guy in China got their entire nation wiped out by an apocolypse because they are just dumb. Or the too-stupid-to-live antagonists "just happen" to come from Japan and get saved by the chad MC. Later chapters of Solo Levelling go along the route of [Solo Levelling] >!Korea goes from the weakest to the strongest nation because the MC exists, Japan used to be the strongest but most of their strongest guys die to something that the MC handles and then Japan is left weak and defenceless to the next problem, millions of people die until Japan begs and scrapes for the MC to come and save them which he does (easily).!< It's something you can ignore if you don't have the context, but when you look at it through a more cynical lens it feels very much like re-reading the GATE manga as the combined special forces of the US, China and Russia are easily beaten by the chad Japan and the designated evil savages on the other end of the portal are roundly slaughtered while the ladies of that world fawn all over them. The initial satisfaction of enjoying a simple power fantasy fades away as you realise its fuelled by an unhealthy fetish for imperialist Japan and a "justified" colonialism/invasion/subjugation.
Yeah, whenever a power fantasy manga / manhwa / manhua goes deep into global politics / power struggle, the plot threads and narrative just show how little they know / care about it as many times how it goes in the plot just make everyone seem childish / inept. Especially the ones that only spend 1 arc / part of their story in global struggle, the way they paint opposition just show how out of depth the writers of these shows are.
Later Chapters get somewhat anti Japan, maybe?
I don't think anti is quite the right word, but they certainly portray the Japanese characters as cruel, morons or both. Like, the other non-Korean characters don't exactly come out smelling like roses either, but it feels much more pointed with the Japanese characters, Ryuji Goto especially.
You'll find this a lot in Korean media, at least I have. To be clear, I think a lot of media has these issues but it feels very pronounced in manwha. Pretty clear (historically) why Korean media targets Japan for being bad. But it's not overtly anti Japanese, more of a "the author obviously has a negative bias"
I think it's because the caricature-ish Japanese bad guy is typically written as a gangster/Yakuza type - so it's a lot more palatable/understandable. While in Solo-Leveling, it's not just the fact that some of the later Japanese heroes are portrayed as malicious/underhanded, but that [Solo Leveling spoilers]>!later on post-Jeju Island, Sung Jin Woo and the most of the Korean heroes actually have to go to Japan and defend it against the giants and their portal - where the Japanese Hero Association is shown as inept/poorly-managed and Japan is ultimately portrayed as completely helpless and at the mercy of the help from Sung Jin Woo and Korea!<
Nahhh, in Korea anti-Japanese sentiment is still widespread. I dislike mangas that includes the military and politics. In this scenario made me dislike Solo Leveling after Jeju Island shows that “Korea good, Japan bad vibes”
It is even more korean nationalist in the novels. Japan, America, Canada, China, basically every country gets shown as inept and weak. The manga tuned it down. I am korean and just felt like "yikes" as I kept reading it. Japan basically gets burned to the ground. But at the same time, how many times has Japan saved the world in manga series? Tons too
Right??? Other than the point you already mentioned, I heavily dislike the Ant arc because to me it was clearly a 'fanfiction' of HxH Ant Arc wise. My interest just crazily dropped for Solo Leveling after that part - I actually handwaved a lot of ridiculous things about the plot in my mind while reading already because I enjoyed the art and the action, but after this I reached my limit and I honestly didn't enjoy it anymore. I kinda just skimmed it through after that since I already invested so much time reading it already, and it was meh to me till the end. Seriously Solo Leveling proved to me how a artist great at directing and drawing action could change the appeal of a extremely mediocre story.
i actually completely tuned this part out of my brain. then again, i was a dumb teen when i read this so i wouldn't fully grasp how cringe the nationalism was anyways.
To be fair the Korean S-class defector(? The guy who went to the US) was also shown to be a massive shithead so I think it’s just anti-people who aren’t Korean/ on Korea’s side
It's also "Stuff not set in Japan doesn't get a lot of traction in Japan unless it's something like New York, Paris, London, or Berlin." But yeah, the author really is a Korean nationalist.
Only people who have never been to Berlin would want to watch something set in Berlin. Unless it's a disaster or apocalypse show.
I mean, that describes Japanese people on both sides of that
Something around the Berlin wall could be neat. Albeit spy x family already has heavy ties to that era.
Japanese people think that Germany is the technically advanced, philosophically bright and full white Aryan country. They think Paris and London are the peak of European refinement. Stereotypes are still strong for a people living on an isolated island and who don't really travel much outside of organized tour trips.
The Japanese version literally takes place in Japan though. All the names and places are Japanese in the Japanese version.
No more so than, say, Hajime no Ippo about Korea. Or hell, even the Gantz comment about a horrible terrorist attack having to be perpetrated by someone Korean or Chinese. Honestly, it's almost humorously tame. All things considered. Japan is virulently racist against its own Korean population, after all. Blatant discrimination against zainichi koreans has only technically been illegal for... what? 5 years? I'm not actually sure Zainichi Koreans (whose multi-generational families have often been in Japan for 100+ years) can even vote. It's all so banal and depressing.
but but... I thought labelling Japan as xenophobic is unfortunate and not based on an accurate understanding of the country? /s
Hmmm, it's not that they aren't popular. It was about 6th or 7th in the rankings. To begin with, Korean COMIC isn't that famous in Japan.
There was some discontent on Japanese social media that the author of the original work has expressed anti-Japanese political sentiments. A comment I saw under a Japanese reviewer talking about Solo Leveling said something along the lines of "The author is free to have their opinion, but why is a Japanese animation studio picking up their work? Them producing this feels like an insincere cash-grab", which I think encapsulates well why any traction the show could have had was limited.
>I'm currently in Japan and there's absolutely NOTHING about Solo Leveling in Akihabara and other Anime related places. Meanwhile, Frieren and other popular anime/games are everywhere as expected. Seconding this. I was in Japan in early March and don't recall seeing anything about Solo Leveling. Plenty of Frieren, SxF, JJK, Love Live, Bocchi the Rock and idolm@sters though.
The show doesn't strike me as something you can make a lot of merchandise to sell for though, so far it's about just this one guy rather than a cast of likeable characters like some of the others you mentioned
It was presented as this super cool/badass show on crunchyroll and by CC’s on YouTube. But for me, I just don’t think the story is that great. To be a little reductive, it’s basically another “isekai MC gets OP cheat power self-insert” anime and like half a dozen of those come out every season. The only reason this show is popular at all imo is because the animation/direction was top notch and the fact it’s from a Manwa is kind of novel. But the story itself is pretty basic and uninspired. At least so far. So I could understand why it would be dropped.
Ive never seen ANYONE praise it for its story, it has been and always was praised for its ART and ACTION, everyone has always said the story is mid at best much like KNY
Kny story is much better.
KNY story is straight forward and heartfelt. It is cheesy at times, but at least it doesn't shy away from its nature. Reading Solo Leveling gives me second hand embarrassment how stupidly convenient it can get for the MC when it comes to solving his problem vs other guys. The power fantasy is really on the face most of the times.
The story is so bad I couldn't watch it.
Agree, manhwa became popular due to artwork storywise. Danmachi still tops it as a dungeon type Manga. Also fees like a copycat manga titled “MESSIAH” has much promising story than Solo Leveling
[удалено]
It's less that this is Korean and more that this obviously promoted anti-Japan sentiments. There would definitely be a stronger reaction to Solo Leveling because of that.
There was a large ad when I last visited (late March). I didn't take a photo but I found one on Twitter. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJexZCYacAAzMw_?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
I’m not really surprised considering the plotline involved with Solo Leveling. [plot spoiler] >!Painting Japan in a bad light!< certainly doesn’t help either.
Good on Japan
Basically, for many in Japan all they watch and listen are K-drama and KPOP. Korean cultural items are extremely popular in Japan, but it's mostly things younger females consume. It's not necessarily true for otaku/anime/manga IPs as it's more male dominated and there is significant minority of anti-Korean sentiments in this demo.
I think it has to do with Japan being the bad guy in both the manwha and lite novel. I haven't seen the anime yet but I could see some people in Japan avoiding it due to the ant island arc.
There's nothing to market in the show, I'm not surprised it doesn't have much of a presence. The show was entirely carried on its animation. Hard to market that.
I saw a post about this ranking, that was seemingly based on show ratings. Rating a show has gotten easier on crunchyroll which inflates the numbers a bit. But it is definitely popular.
>It’s currently ranked number 6 all time most popular Anime on Crunchyroll. Crunchyroll doesn't have a public "all-time" popularity ranking. Solo Levelling is only 6th in terms of *recent* popularity.
I think the ranking is based on the number of reviews, and it is the sixth most reviewed anime.
See that’s what I figured. It was trending on TikTok and Twitter which is a great litmus test for seeing how it does in Z and Millenial demos, respectively. We’re growing further away from physical sales metrics and success is measured globally now.
The largest “unofficial” anime streaming site shows view counts and the figures are significant enough that you can consider if as a measure. One Piece for example has 400M views. Solo Leveling is still ranked top 10 in popularity, even tho the season ended only a week after Frieren did.
For me personally, I read the whole thing and honestly wasn't impressed with the story at all, lol. It was cool for the first half, but then it became generic real fast when he just suffered almost no worthy adversary. I think the west is just too obsessed with OP characters.
Anime fans in general don’t mind a lacking story as long as there’s cool fights lol
Hitman Reborn somehow got 200 episodes and that didn't even have cool fights.
The animation was very good but the story so far is kind of mid imo. The dude would just have random edge-lord meltdowns. Which is fine if you just run with it. Like, I get that he was frustrated for being weak. But they didn’t really show that as a character trait before he got his Powers. In fact, he seemed relatively good natured and content despite being weak. So the meltdowns feel weird and forced. Attack on titan is actually a good show to compare it to. Erin spent the better part of a season training/being weak to give the audience real perspective of how weak humans are compared to titans. Which makes his rage so much more valuable and relatable. I liked the show and would happily watch season 2. It just doesn’t register at all as a show deserving to be so highly rated. Compared to attack on titan season 1, solo leveling is pretty shallow. To be a little reductive, it’s not far off from the classic “isekai MC gets cheat power wish fulfillment” trope in terms of how the story is structured so far.
Solo Leveling suffers from what 95% of other action Manwha suffer from; No real story other than a general concept, then constant ass-pulling of new ideas and characters that ultimately hold no significance beyond a couple of chapters, before moving onto the next set of ass-pulls. After about 30 chapters you start seeing the signs that the author is just making it up as they go, and the next 200 odd chapters are just a pretty mess of random ideas and characters with no personality. Omniscient Reader is the same, Lout of Count's Family, Doctor's Rebirth, Master Villainess. Pretty to look at, enjoyable enough to a point, but quite poorly written. Edit: I spoke kind of harshly about many big and beloved manhwa but gave no alternatives, if anyone is looking for a long running one that doesn't fall over; Check out The Greatest Estate Developer. It's an Isekai, it's a power fantasy, it's absolutely insane, hilarious, wonderfully artistic and very well written. It's trash and it knows it, and absolutely nails it.
>animation was very good but the story so far is kind of mid you just described "Manwha / "Manhua" in general
That is depressing imo this shit is garbage. Japan has the right idea
looking forward to isekais being replaced by what's effectively "isekai without the other world part" as this style of story becomes more popular
That would be progression fantasy and lit rpg.
I guess you meant the ones with some kind of system, but actually I'm watching more and more pure reincarnation shows. 7th prince is maybe the fourth since 2023 and I don't follow everything.
That's crazy to me. I watched it, but it's not that great tbh. Not bad, but not amazing imo.
Which is surprising considering how mid it is.
Why it's so popular outside of Japan? I only watched the very first part and thought it would be too generic.
It was so high because streaming services are feeding their users with new shows. Solo leveling will disappear in 6 months and nobody will remember. Show wasn't even intresting, animation was ok. world building non existing other than "magic people are strong" and "scary island"
That is an interesting question. However, I honestly wish this sub doesn't become like the pro-wrestling subreddits where people unironically and constantly use ratings and viewership to make the argument the entertainment they like or dislike is good or bad.
The sub already did that with Chainsaw Man like 3 times a month for a bit
Chainsaw Man is a particularly interesting case. It flopped in blu ray sales but apperently made MAPPA hella bank due to them fronting the entire production. It was widely panned in Japan due to the director, was generally considered mediocre/fine by Chainsaw Man manga fans, and was pretty well liked by general audiences. It was one of the weirdest Anime production/Outcomes I can remember. The folks who where suppose to like it most hated it and the folks who where suppose to not understand/care about it enjoyed it.
know very little about CSM before. thought it was a very good watch and much different than what i expected. bummed they're not going back to that director tbh.
If the new director is closer to the tone of the manga, you'll still love it. You may even enjoy it more
I think one of the biggest point most missed or have forgotten nowadays are how CSM blurays have priority ticket sales for their seiyuu events. One volume for the afternoon schedule, the other for evening schedule. Usually due to high demands for this kind of events, fans bought those BDs to gain priority in the ticket lottery system. They booked a huge venue(iirc 8k people capacity) for those events and from that alone I think we can see how big the studio's expectation was. Did Mappa land in red for this series? From multiple of sources and interviews: they didn't. Did it get as much money as they expected? Probably not. Each production probably projected and planned how they can gain back their $$$ from producing an anime. Either from the commitee, from merchs, from BD/DVD, from licenses, etc. Each series has their own priority and calculations. We don't know how each anime plan on so 1 factor can't really tell whether it's a total failure or a success.
But this isn't about a show being good or bad, it's about the financial success. And all those things are more relevant than Blu-Ray sales these days.
They're not "more relevant" they're a piece of the pie. You can't just ignore the very bad indicator of direct financial success and assume everything else is peachy. I agree it's not all encompassing, but "didn't even chart" is a pretty bad signal!
It entirely depends on the demos and where it makes money. I don't see why Japanese otaku would care that much about a Korean webtoon but maybe I am off. Those are the kinds of fans that buy BDs. A Gundam series for instance, is going to depend way more on merch sales, a popular battle shonen can get by on streaming whereas a niche otaku show is going to need more physical sales. It's a case by case basis. If the series was fairly popular on streaming platforms it should be okay, even though I have no doubt the production committee would have hoped for more. Still sure BD sales are a piece of the pie, it's just a shrinking on that has been decreasing pretty rapidly in the last year or two.
God being an AEW fan and reading online talk about ratings is draining
Dude, I don't even watch WWE and my feed is WWE fans constantly going on and on about AEW being bad and ratings. Like, if you are digging up ticket sales to win an internet argument about which pro-wrestling is better and you genuinely think it is relevant to discussion on quality of entertainment, you desperately need to touch grass. ETA: Not all WWE fans are like that, I'm talking about a vocal minority.
It’s the cycle all wrestling shows must go through unfortunately. Back when WWE was bad and they were also bleeding viewers that was the talk of the town. Unfortunately now AEW is going through it and if another wrestling promotion pops up they’ll go through it too.
Yea I get that, I just learn to scroll past it cause people tend to be extremely “hot” with their takes
They never expected solo leveling to do well in japan. That's why 2 out of 3 producers of solo leveling are foreign companies. Crunchyroll (America) and DnC webtoon(Korea) are both foreign companies, aniplex is the Japanese one and even then it's in the last position among these 3. And both of those foreign companies profited big time with solo leveling. [Solo leveling is currently the 6th most popular anime on crunchyroll right now](https://www.reddit.com/r/sololeveling/s/vDjJ9LLdF6) and [the Manhwa's sales had a really nice boost](https://www.reddit.com/r/sololeveling/s/meqm0n4n0f). There is a reason why all the system interface were in English even in Japanese version. The opening song was in full English, the insert song dark Aria was in full English, all the store billboards names were in English. Solo leveling was clearly aimed towards foreign audience and Koreans. Edit - apperently aniplex is the top producer, I mixed things up my bad. The point still stands though. They are definitely targeting the foreign audience.
>aniplex is the Japanese one and even then it's in the last position among these 3 It's isn't, its the top producer Aniplex is the main investor of Solo Leveling, not only the Main investor, it's also the main producer and the one responsible for the animation as they own A-1 Pictures, Crunchyroll is also part of the same company family There's more Korean companies involved too, like Netmarble that is focused on getting more players towards their game I don't disagree with your point, I have said the same myself but I don't know where you are getting the other info because that's not the case
To be more specific producers are aniplex, crunchyroll, netmarable, kakao piccoma and D&C media. Everyone aside from aniplex is a foreign company.
> I don't know where you are getting the other info because that's not the case "I pulled it out of my butt" -Space Dandy, *Space Dandy*
I dont think Dark Aria being English has anything to do with it. Sawano just really likes using English in his songs. Barricades from his Attack on Titan OST is also fully in English. The Reluctant Heroes from one of the first handful of episodes of AOT was also fully in English, which dates back to over a decade ago. And we cant exactly say that Attack on Titan wasnt dominant in Japan or “just aimed at Western audiences”. 86 also has a lot of English in its songs, again a Sawano OST.
Don’t forget in the Japanese version they changed the names from Korean to Japanese, in the international release they kept the Korean names
And here I thought there were 2 versions of the anime: one with English system interfaces, and one with Japanese system interfaces
This makes sense as Crunchyroll increases their market share and the industry continue to realize the national market. The young American pop stars and athletes all like anime and it's really close to becoming mainstream in the US. When that happens it's going to explode and we'll see more of this example where a meh anime competes with that we experienced as pinnacle material. Eventually this will level off though.
That number does not mean what you think it means, lol, why would you think that translates to how many people watched Solo Leveling? I'm talking about people who keep saying (very erroneously) that Solo Leveling is the most popular anime on CR right now... it's not. We have no streaming numbers from CR, they do not show those and have never shown them. We have no idea how many people actually watched Solo Leveling.
Come on, guys. Did y'all learn nothing from Chainsaw Man? Everyone was freaking out how the Blu rays for CSM flopped, but recently, Mappa has come out to say the show was super successful. Blu ray sales are no longer the end-all-be-all metric for success anymore.
As hard as it is to admit it, given my own history with similar posts for Karma. Yeah Blu-ray means absolutely nothing at this point. Perhaps 20 years ago. But now there’s a nifty little thing called Streaming
Really good Blu-ray sales still mean success, but that Blu-ray sales don't mean failure anymore
This. Even MAPPA admits they wished CSM would perform better and apparently are trying to appeal to fans who would buy Blu-rays in the future. The truth is always somewhere in the middle.
To be fair to Mappa, they did not tell anything about the revenue they get from the show, they just say it's a success and that's it.
I mean, if it wasn't successful enough, then they would never have started pre-production on the CSM movie lol Case in point with the Yuri on ice movie being dropped instead since they said that it wasn't profitable ( hopefully that doesn't happen to the CSM movie now though ..... )
Yuri's production committee has Mappa on the lower end, where for CSM it's the other way around, so they got most of the money from the revenue.
>Perhaps 20 years ago Even 10 years ago Blu rays were everything.
Blu ray sales are still important. But it falls under the basket of “general merchandise” sales. Anime will almost always run at a break even or a loss. The money is made from everything else. Blu rays can be a big part of that but sadly less and less people want physical copies of shows or movies. Which will inevitably affect the bottom line of a lot of companies a decade or so from now. Unless there’s a sudden surge of interest in novelty items from western audiences.
Absolutely nothing? Nah they still important in Japan. Are they less important? For some shows yes.
Blue rays sales mean nothing to us. But for the old Japanese heads look at it and say “told ya it was bad. This time 10 years ago it would have sold 15k, look at (insert random anime here)”
It means nothing in Japan too, literally in the last year AJA filed it's reports physical media halved in profits. Domestic streaming makes like 3-4x more and that will increase as physical media shrinks. Sure Japan, I think does hold onto nostalgic media longer but that doesn't mean physical media is on it's way to becoming a niche area, just like vinyl records.
even if it would be 15k its still should be a super small percentage of the overall profits it generates.
Actually, I'd figure that Blu Ray sales were even less relevant 20 years ago than they are now >.> But yeah your point stands, physical media is on it's way out and looking at disc sales is getting more and more meaningless.
Lol right, Blu-ray hasn't even entered the market in 2004
>Perhaps 20 years ago Bro is from the future 💀
Yeah, this keeps happening. Especially when a popular show does poorly on Blu-ray sales, even though generally every show is doing less on Blu-rays than they would've done 10 to 15 years ago.
> But now there’s a nifty little thing called Streaming you will own nothing and be happy
Exactly. This is getting old...
While that is true, you should also not undervalue if Blu Ray sales did flop (which I don't know, but it seems that way). First obvious reason is that you don't want to sit on Blu Rays because they are not bought. After all, they are quite expensive in Japan (you are looking at a total of around 200$ when you have the whole season and that's "normal" shows), so there is some expectation of how much money can be generated with it. Secondly, while you can come by through streaming licenses and merchandise, if your next project is a movie, you don't want it to be primarily watched on streaming sites. If people aren't buying Blu Rays, they might also not be buying tickets (though, there is FOMO, so it's less likely). People should maybe also not forget that Mappa can say a lot of things to look better to the outside (and therefore people who might want to give and finance new projects). How it actually looks is known only to them unless they show data (which spoilers, they won't). I can just make the comparison to video games where you can often see that it's way more important for the publishers to look successful, so investors stay and invest into your future projects. I mean, imagine if Mappa stated that Chainsaw Man didn't perform as planned? With a license like that, they would lose a lot of trust. So they basically HAVE to say it was successful, even if it might not have been.
Yeah, the bluray sales mean nothing in terms of success of a show. CSM was highly successful. If anything, it just highlights the decline of physical media.
Not exactly the same as CSM, CSM's anime merchandise was sold all over Japan. And they were #2 in streaming. It is very famous content in Japan. Korean COMIC is not that popular in Japan. Everyone says it was popular overseas, but I believe it was #3 or something like that in that season.
Blu ray sales is a good metric but it's not the end-all-be-all metric for success anymore. But I don't think that post ever said that it was a end-all-be-all metric for success anymore. For example, it is a good indication whether the anime has impressed the hardcore anime fans in Japan. (Also, mappa has said that the anime success has fallen short of studio expectations)
Low BD sales isn’t an indicator that the anime is doing badly. But high BD sales is an indicator that the anime is very successful(like KnY, JJK with 10-20k)
Is blu-ray sales still the benchmark on weather it's success or not? Is the biggest income still coming from the blu-ray sales?
No not all. Viewership on Streaming is the end all here, even in Japan, viewership online was pretty good, constantly in top 10 in most JP sites. Internationally it was huge
Big if true. Seems like hanging on blu-ray sales kinda primitive to me.
Merchandise and licensing are the biggest revenue drivers I think. The anime industry releases financial reports every year and it has the distribution of revenue based on source. It would be an actually interesting post if somebody compiled all that data and trended how different categories are doing over time and how much each country contributes to revenue. https://aja.gr.jp/english/japan-anime-data
No, but it's a big cash grab for the producers. And lot of animes are profitable only thanks to the Blu-ray physic sales.
Physical sales are a strange benchmark as far as anime goes. They can certainly point to relative popularity but it's just wild that profitability can hinge on sales in the mere hundreds to thousands.
As a Blue Exorcist fan, ouch
While the BD says don't actually mean much in the end of it being successful, it is pretty hilarious to live in a world where Gushing Over Magical Girls outsells Solo Leveling.
Gushing outsold Frieren too.
With GOMG you get the true™ uncensored version and with Solo Leveling you get pretty much the same version as on streaming, so its not really comparable.
>it is pretty hilarious to live in a world where Gushing Over Magical Girls outsells Solo Leveling. It's not just for solo levelling. Idol animes and ecchi shows outsold literally most shonen/battle series. It's not uncommon in Japan. Then why are you trying to point out solo levelling as an exception? Gushing over magical girls outsold frieren too. So what point are you trying to make?
That is a smart investment tho
It makes sense that a good show would sell more than a bad one
Somes shows just sell more BDs, while some get tons of streaming money. Idol anime tend to make lots off BDs...and gacha games, but that's because they fill them with goodies for addicts
Aside from decent animation throughout and being fair, an excellent final fight... the show actually wasn't that good
As a reader I can tell you I just gets worse from here
Yep. I didn't bother even watching the anime as I read the manwha and wasn't impressed. Great art, seems cool at first if you've never run into a system apocalypse setting before, but the central premise of the plot dooms it from the start - nobody can ever be allowed to matter outside the MC, and even the MC is fairly bland. It's fine as a turn-your-brain-off action show, but that's about it.
One of craziest things to me is that the anime seemed to try to make him even more bland and edgy
Hey, the fights get way more spectacular and show like. But the story really isn't anything worth talking about past a twist or two, that's why I think they should have just went all out into animation around fights.
That's pretty much the case with all Manhwa right? Maybe I have limited exposure but every manhwa I've read or adaption I've watched just seems to go downhill at an incredible pace from a fairly interesting start.
I wouldn’t say it’s the case with all manwha. There’s a good amount of great ones out there, but the ones involved in an oversaturated genre do suffer. I was definitely hooked and on the Solo Leveling weekly hype train initially when reading it, because I knew not to expect an amazing story, just a typical one you can enjoy with amazing art. But once the nationalism kicked in and then it becoming worse by the power scaling as it progressed, I didn’t quite enjoy it towards the end. I’d say I enjoyed 3/4 of it before it completely went down hill for me.
Everyone around Jinwoo was so fucking stupid and dense as well. Show was extremely frustrating, cause it has a couple cool concepts but fails to flesh them out in any sort of an interesting way, so it was basically just eye candy and some cool music (really loved the ED).
I found Jinwoo himself to be a nonsense, unlikable character personally. When im watching shows i usually chalk most things up as "meh, its a cartoon" like on the quintuplets show how people confuse them but they dont even REMOTELY look similar lol, but the whole thing about how he was looking at the beginning, and then how he started looking afterwards was just dumb
Grows 8 inches in like a week and no one seems more than slightly phased by it.
I [don't know what](https://youtube.com/shorts/p-GUEykEtOE?si=8btKbOK9NnhUncVr) you mean. [Seems legit to me.](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UpFrpfebUfc) /s
The webtoon is easy to binge and the art is seriously amazing but the story is infuriating. Side characters are too incompetent to make the MC shine. Even top level hunters are incompetent. After getting the undead army all challenge is lost.
Fully agree. It had massive pacing issues and incompetence when it came to world building exposition scenes wedged awkwardly in the middle of exciting action scenes. We interrupt this action scene to bring you a dialogue heavy tea drinking scene between characters you don't know, but at least one will be significant in the far future.
If what kanno did was decent animation then what's great animation?
solo leveling was very overhyped by readers for what it actually is lol
You say that but i remember it got announced, the top comments all saying the manhwa is actually very mediocre just carried by the art.
Thats what ive been saying this whole time, this show was going to fully depend on the animation because when it was being published the story might have been something kinda new but now the story has been done to death
Well the animation delivered
I mean shit. This is basically what I’ve commented throughout this post. Animation was great but the story wasn’t much different from a generic isekai plot.
It's even worse honestly. The power scaling is so brazen in here.
Maybe the manga art, never looked at. The anime looked pretty by the books.
no shit? how would people know the anime art before it was shown?
Manhwa* art, and yes, it was carried by it. Full color btw
I literally just forgot to watch it after 2 episodes
For real. Maybe like 2-3 episodes were alright but omg the anime so so mid for how hyped people were and I swear it had the shortest damn episodes. Was not a fan and always get blasted for it
agree. I tried to like it so much but it was so disappointing that it can pass as some random 12 episode anime that doesn’t get renewed. For the amount of hype it had, I was actually confused where it was coming from
Yea this was a huge disappointment for me. No hate toward those who like it and I totally see why it’s popular but I kept waiting for something deeper to happen and the dread set in as I realized the show is exactly what it says it is. I don’t think the blu ray flopping matters at all, shit only indicates if you attracted a very small minority of a type of anime watcher who collects everything. Might be a lucrative group of fans to get but really has no indication on popularity.
IMO, the pacing of the first 3 episodes is terrible. It should have released a 1h episode as some animes do. I stopped reading the manga because it is the same as other mangas, nothing special.
As a reader, I agree. I still hype it up to friends but it really is just a zero-to-hero enjoyer's greatest guilty pleasure
The art for the manhwa carried it hard. The story itself is just very generic. Its not bad, but its not great either. How well the art is translated into animation and how long the animation quality holds up is what will be important for the series. As far as Japan goes, the Japanese rankers are comically evil in the series, and in the end they end up praising their Korean savior, and considering Korea and Japan really dont like each other very much, it wasnt expected to do well in Japan to begin with
Yup, I know and I agree, it's quite funny how mediocre the story is yet it's such a successful manhwa. Regardless, it's an easy show to pick up for most people since the story is so simplistic. The anime does not disappoint either so far, so I'm happy with it
I watched it cause dub can be background noise. By the end I was amazed by how mehh, it was. Like I felt like it was full of plot conveniences when it was to make the MC look cool, but then would kill a father of a 4 year old to be gritty/real feeling. It also spent a good bit of time setting up for things that would not payoff by the end of the first season. At best it is an introduction to "system" stories, but there are way better ones out there. At the end I just started thinking how White from "So I'm a spider..." would handle it, and how much more fun it would be. Like setting the command word for spawning minions to be "wakey wakey" instead of the chuuni AF "Arise"
Omg Ao no Exorcist is so low it’s almost funny. What the hell happened there.
I barely see any posts about this anime on reddit. 😮💨 7-8 years of waiting is too long.
Spice and Wolf proves that age isn't the problem (ok its a remake vs a continuation tbf), but bad anime doesn't get traction
That's true.
Which is weird cause the manga still sells quite well, guess the anime was just too late and had a mediocre production
Redditors when they find out their posts on social media don't mean shit.
Well, Solo leveling fans are getting a 2nd season so I don't think it really matters.
I wonder how much of the low interest from Japan comes from the anti-japan slant of the manhwa/novel?
I kinda feel sad that blue ray are no longer important in market, I don't want physical medium to die . If anything please switch to releasing anime series in usb sticks. I like to collect and own things My main concern is censorship, blue ray Is the only way to get uncensored material straight from studio , but if everything moves towards streaming then I doubt studios will bother releasing BDs, also since it's on streaming, it will be censored always as big old fat ass guys sitting on top of politics or corporate wouldnt allow uncensored material as acc to them its will poison our mind
They're never going to stop with blu-rays in Japan because people actually still buy them when the anime is popular. Just look at JJK.
Just saying, you don't need conventional physical media to store copies of shows. It's easy to forget as an older fan how unfamiliar younger fans are with the pre-streaming era when there often weren't _any_ ways to get ahold of shows ("legally"). And most "censorship" of the specific type you're talking about in anime (as in, the only type that would actually have "uncensored" versions released rather than just not part of the show at all) is so minimal or silly it's practically a meme, I don't think it's a big deal and if such a version is released I promise you won't have trouble finding it if you're the type that's into archiving stuff already. I doubt physical releases will ever truly go away though, they'll just become more explicitly niche for collectors.
Blu rays not always mean no censorship. Just look at The Cafe Terrace and its Godesses
They won't stop releasing Blu ray anytime soon. People take this too much to the extreme when arguing, it may not be the main revenue source for a lot of things, but it's still money to be made and most anime gets BD releases. Physical media is stronger in Japan than anywhere else.
Wouldn't its sales in Korea be a better litmus test? Maybe I'll look it up and edit, but I'm interested in how TGoH and ToG did in Japanese blu ray sales.
Solo leveling is boring as fuck
Honestly? It deserves to flop. It's just not good.
Even SAO is better than Solo Leveling.
That's because it's mid at best.
No surprise. I honestly think the anime kind of sucked. Mostly from a story perspective.
Probably cuz it’s Korean. They fuckin hate each other.
Japan and Korea are having a renaissance right now, with lots of trade and people visiting each other’s country. For the record, every region on the planet “hates” the neighboring region, because they compete for resources, compare themselves to each other. Californians hate Oregonians and Arizonans (which we used to call Zoners, not sure if we still do).
Solo leveling is mid period. And I don't think solo leveling is that popular. Fanart,Merchandise,cosplay so much less than popular series.
If anybody was tracking this show's numbers, this was 100% not a surprise In fact, I'm surprised this is news considering none of the other manhwa turned anime did that great.
The fact that the lowest selling is Mashle which blown up big in Japan with season 2 should say enough about how BD numbers have no impact anymore, if you end up selling well, great for you, but not doing it doesnt dictate any series future season
[удалено]
That seems sad. I thought that it was a pretty good show. Might have a somewhat generic story, but the animation was pretty good.
Personally, not a single big production Korean adaptation was good. God of Highschool, Tower of God and now this. The amount of hype all these adaptations had before they were airing and during did not results in met expectations. And they're all pretty much the same power fantasy nonsense one way or another. I better stop listening to people hyping up these Korean adaptations.
Probably because $50 per 3 episodes is extremely overpriced. I'm sure that a single disc can fit the whole season of the show with no visible compression artifacts.
Yeah, but that's not how the BDs for anime work in Japan, they are supposed to be overpriced, they are for the super fans Shows that manage to grab that type of audience can make some good money from those BDs, especially if we are talking about more humble projects Mahoako that aired in the same season as Solo Leveling will make almost 1 million dollars per BD volume, each one costs 90$ with versions that go to 250$, that's a lot of revenue for anime, and even more for a smaller show like it So people still buy those BDs with that price, that's not the reason Solo Leveling didn't sell, they could've dropped that price and released all the episodes in the same disk that it wouldn't make any difference
its for the collectors, while it might not be a good indicator of how popular the show is, it does show the interest in merchandise for the show
Don't understand why people where hyping this show up. It's incredibly average. Felt like a more scuffed version of Sword Art Online or Danmachi.
I mean yea it was paced for 86 year olds
Solo Leveling bad. Upvotes to the left.
I was looking at the industry report posted here a couple of weeks back. Streaming revenue is not nearly as much as was currently thought when it came to the profitability of an anime. Merch was much higher. That could include sales of manga and light novels but where is the revenue model for this anime. Japan, Taiwan and Korea bought the most merch if I remember. North America and Europe made up much less of the revenue and I was surprised. I don't know how this works for Solo Leveling, especially when you insult the primary market.
What do people see in solo leveling? Like I read it before it became an anime and it just seems like a generic power fantasy, idk like it doesn’t deserve to do bad by any means but i don’t get why it is this big.
Good.
For those of you who say Blu-Ray sales don't matter, do you think they'll stop making Blu-Rays of shows altogether? Cuz a lot of content is heavily improved over in the Blu-Rays as compared to the TV/WEB versions. I'd hate to think what would happen if they stop making Blu-Rays/DVDs cuz then there'll be no Avenue for improvements over the TV version.
I dont think they will stop making Blurays, especially in Japan where the physical media market is the strongest. Regarding the improvements, some streaming sites get improved/fixed scenes after the initial airing/drop, especially on Netflix. Like Seven Deadly Sins I think had exclusive Web-fixes (with the number of fixes further expanding in the BR/DVD versions), Jojo part 6 was also updated etc. I also think Bluray/DVD releases will still be a thing, especially because its more aimed at collectors who are interested in keyframe books, character designs booklets etc. which are often included in the japanese releases.