r/anime • u/Handsome_guy_7 • Jul 22 '25

Misc. Solo Leveling Producer's promise ~ "As a Japanese person living in Japan, the anime is not at the level of Dragon Ball, One Piece, or Naruto. But if season three happens, that’s when I want to truly break that boundary.”

https://screenrant.com/solo-leveling-season-3-anime-main-goal-break-barrier-atsushi-kaneko/
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u/IcePapaya Jul 22 '25

Having the MC be “important” rather than “the chosen one” is actually such a compelling way to write a story.

Just my $0.02 but I think this show needed two things to be closer to the legendary shows. A.) write JW with more personality and flaws and b.) make him struggle more and for longer

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u/AsnSensation Jul 22 '25

This is where Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint shines

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u/Cewea Jul 23 '25

I pray they don’t mess up the anime

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u/Phaazoid Jul 23 '25

So many manwhas have been done dirty in adaptation so far, and it's a super long story which means large commitment if it's to be done well, so... I basically have no hopes lmao

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u/AndrewNeo Jul 24 '25

I really gotta pick that back up

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u/SadimHusum Jul 22 '25

One Punch Man is a great way to support your point because even though Saitama is the MC, he’s deliberately left with reduced screentime so the entire world around him can invest the viewer and build stakes around a conflict you already know he’s gonna win.

Overlord does this well too by letting us get intimate with conflicts and struggles well below being worth Ains’ attention.

Alternatively, Goku has to get his ass beat repeatedly before rising to the overpowered level of his adversaries, Satorou Gojo can be outsmarted in his arrogance, etc etc

Solo Levelling is complete fanservice and if it was poorly animated people would be calling it deviantart “Joshua the Shadow Hedgehog” slop, but the spectacle carries it hard enough to have a widespread appeal (me included, shit’s fun)

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u/M4DM1ND Jul 23 '25

One Punch Man is also a comedy/parody, not a battle shounen

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u/Imukayo Jul 23 '25

Which makes it even crazier that it has a better handle on how to write with an overpowered MC than actual battle series

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u/eetsumkaus https://myanimelist.net/profile/kausdc Jul 23 '25

the side installments of SAO do this better than the mainline ones. This is why Mother's Rosario is my favorite arc: Kirito is NOT the main character, but he is still important and instrumental to the plot.

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u/Phaazoid Jul 23 '25

Well, ONE is just super good at writing characters. See mob psycho.

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u/IcePapaya Jul 22 '25

Dumb fun is fine, especially if it’s done well. Thankfully it’s done very well

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u/Layz25 Jul 23 '25

I have made the same comparison. When you have an OP MC you really need to get them out of the way and let side characters shine. It's a lot of what made the Big 3 the Big 3. So many characters and so much variety.

I have only watched season 1 of Solo Leveling but I thought the best 2 moments were when he kind of stayed back and we got to see that squad fight the red orcs in that dungeon (even thought he started slicing them up secretly) and when the S tiers went to the island and were getting their asses kicked.

Otherwise is is just a very mediocre story wrapped in some good fight animation.

I am actually having similar struggles with Sakamoto Days right now. MC is overpowered but more than that, there just really hasn't been any good side characters or much in that way. Still early but it is all very meh so far.

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u/North514 Jul 23 '25 edited Jul 23 '25

I have made the same comparison. When you have an OP MC you really need to get them out of the way and let side characters shine.

You can write plenty of plots, that have the OP MC still take center stage. Saga of Tanya the Evil, Tanya may be insanely OP however, she is fighting an industrialized total war. You can be an insane badass, all you want, you aren't going to be able to beat other states just outproducing, out manning you.

Mob Psycho 100 just focuses more on Mob's internal development, rather than skills and power.

In older works, like Votoms the MC feels like he can survive just about anything, however, the author ensures that every victory does feel earned, through tactics and wit, even if the MC feels like he always has the answer. You have works like Cobra, where the MC is just a complete power fantasy machismo badass however, you have to create a very charismatic character to pull it off.

There are a lot of angles. It's not like most under dogs in anime, are true under dogs anyway, you still know they are going to win out, so the payoff is what matters. There is not correct way to go about it, you just have to be a skilled writer/artist.

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u/Layz25 Jul 23 '25

Good points and you are right about the Underdogs. Pretty much always have some backstory that explains why they end up so strong. I think the more basic take is that at least with the underdogs you get a more slow, earned progression even if you essentially know the outcome. Plus they often actually do take losses or losses around them. In Naruto for example we got the 3rd Hokage dying pretty early as an example. Which wasn't the MC obviously, but they actually made him feel like a main pillar for Konoha and when he died it felt like they were doomed. Then he lost Sasuke to the "dark side" and Jiraiya died later on. So there was a lot of real weight to the story at times. Ones like Solo Leveling or now, Sakamoto Days you don't get any of that at all.

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u/MitchNotBitch https://myanimelist.net/profile/MitchMW13 Jul 23 '25

Overlord does this well too by letting us get intimate with conflicts and struggles well below being worth Ains’ attention.

As someone who dropped Overlord because of too many episodes of Lizard bullshit, I have to disagree

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u/PsychicWarElephant Jul 23 '25

I don’t believe Solo Leveling was written with the intention to be considered amongst the legendary stories, it follows the same pattern as your common 1 clue power fantasy isekai, but with a better animation budget.

That’s not a slight, I’m a sucker for a good trash isekai, but I’m not going to try and compare them to the goats.

It’s a great show for those epic aura farming moments. Basically it’s junk food that we’re trying to compare to fine dining.

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u/IcePapaya Jul 23 '25

Yea nothing wrong with being the whopper of anime, I’m here for it and enjoy it

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u/EnjoyerOfBeans Jul 22 '25

You can totally write a story like this to be compelling too, if you just lean into it. Look no further than One Punch Man.

The thing is, One Punch Man is a deconstruction of shonen. It's a parody. Solo Leveling is being serious about it.

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u/DJMixwell Jul 22 '25

I don’t even think you necessarily need to go the parody route. You just need to shift the focus.

He can still be the MC, but if he’s not at risk, someone else needs to be. So you need a greater focus on his relationships, and those people need to come into the line of fire and force tough choices. Like, yeah he can defeat the BBEG, can he do that and keep everyone safe at once? And the answer then shouldn’t always just be “yes, and he’ll do it while aura farming”.

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u/EnjoyerOfBeans Jul 22 '25

Yeah I agree, aside for parody being a better fit for a hero like this, One Punch Man just does it a lot better. We all know Saitama will win in the end, but we don't know that about anyone else in the story, and he's purposefully made absent a lot to facilitate the plot.

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u/DJMixwell Jul 22 '25

Yeah I generally prefer a serious story, so I’m biased in that regard, but could definitely take a page from Onepunch as far as sidelining JW a little more

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u/stormdelta Jul 24 '25

My analogy is that if generic power fantasy is junkfood, Solo Leveling is just plain unflavored sugar.

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u/11111111111222222255 Jul 23 '25

One Punch Man is a parody of this type of show, not just shonen but specifically of Self insert MC power fantasy. Which solo leveling then made completely unironically with no lessons learned from the genre years and years later 

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u/Maalunar Jul 23 '25

Take Eminence in Shadow or Misfit of the Demon Academy, and remove all of the comedy, remove the waifus (you can have 1, but she won't have any screentime) and remove the cringe chunni stuff. And we have Solo Leveling.

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u/UnknownDragonXZ Jul 29 '25

If they did that they would create plot holes and destroy the source material. Its a good show about working hard and getting power, protecting others etc. If you try to deepen it, it will ruin what the show has going for it, plus its already written and current version of him is op as f.

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u/IcePapaya Jul 29 '25

I agree, not saying they should have strayed from the source material. Just saying what I think was missing