Solo Leveling is not just the most popular recently released anime, it has now set a record that seems almost impossible on its home network of Crunchyroll.
As it stands, Solo Leveling just passed One Piece, which has 1,100+ episodes, by having the most overall reviews on Crunchyroll, surpassing One Piece’s 596,000 reviews with its own 603,000, and it’s still climbing.
It’s an absolutely stunning achievement because again, One Piece has 1,100 episodes spanning a decade. Solo Leveling released in January of 2024, and will have 25 episodes total by the end of its current, second season. For reference, even another huge anime like Demon Slayer, which has run for years, is still behind One Piece with 587,000 reviews. The storied Attack On Titan ended with only (“only”) 354,000 reviews. None of this translates to “hours viewed” as by default, One Piece would have to win that, but the number of reviews directly translates to overall popularity on the streaming service.
Why is Solo Leveling so good? Well, I’d heard so many positive things about it, I tuned in myself and yes, it is in fact really, really good. It tells the story of a world where a certain class of people called Hunters “awaken” and are classified into power levels ranging from E to S-rank. A young E-rank Hunter named Sung Jinwoo may be the worst in the world, but after being killed in a mission, he’s resurrected as “The Player” with access to potions, new skills and most importantly, the ability to level up and increase his power, which is something no other Hunter on earth can do.
This leads to a video game-like existence where Jinwoo’s power just keeps rising and rising as he masters new skills, gaining strength (and speed and intelligence with literal skill points) and fighting some of the most powerful monsters inside “portal dungeons” that Hunters are meant to clear. Killing a final boss inside each closes them, something likely familiar to any ARPG player.
It’s just…kind of the perfect realization of a simple fantasy. What if life was a video game and you could work your way toward having infinite power? Obviously this is not the first game-inspired anime, and the thousandth “guy keeps increasing his power level” one, but this all comes together in a way that just works, and I’m not surprised it’s popular. I am a bit surprised it is this popular, but no doubt this guarantees this show is going to run for years and years. On top of all of this, it’s also a rare series where the English dub is very good, so English-speaking fans may be more prone to watching it than usual.
One Piece will return for more episodes soon, and Solo Leveling is going to end for now, so One Piece may take its crown back. But even if it does, this is a stunning achievement for a brand new series.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
