Solo Leveling was one of the best series this year, new or otherwise, and one that I had the distinct pleasure of covering while it aired. As we look forward to Season 2 and beyond, we got the chance to sit down in conversation with some key members of the series staff at this year’s Anime Expo. Namely, this included Taito Ban, Japanese voice of Sung Jinwoo, Aleks Le, English voice of Sung Jinwoo, and series Producer Atsushi Kaneko. All three had great insight and thoughts about the premise of the series, why it’s become so popular, and different elements of their roles.
Impressions and Reactions
While it’s not at all uncommon for manhwa or anime to take place in fictional worlds where ordinary people find themselves with powerful abilities, the way Solo Leveling executes its spin on the premise is fairly unique. There aren’t too many series where most people in the world are at a fixed level of strength, and Solo Leveling is, to my knowledge, the only one that has the distinct premise of one person in a world of fixed-strength fighters being able to level up.
On top of that, Solo Leveling puts forward a main character that lacks some of the standard selfless, go-getter qualities of the typical shonen story. He has a layered personality and isn’t afraid of being selfish or cursing others for harming him. I started our conversation here, asking the two voices of Sung Jinwoo and the series producer what their initial impressions were of both the series premise and of Jinwoo as a character.
Kaneko-san: The first thing that came to mind was that he’s very life-sized and that he has a weakness that is very human. That was the biggest impression.
Ban-san: I felt there was a sense of inferiority and that some very negative emotions came to the forefront of him. But at the same time, I really resonated with the character.
Mr. Le: Gonna have to agree with both of them. What I found engaging was that, unlike a lot of other shows, he [Jinwoo] did try to be the hero, but he immediately regretted it, which I find to be a very realistic depiction of somebody’s range of emotions. So I found that I think we all connected with this darker side of him that shows what it’s like to be a flawed human being.
The premise and its main character turned out to be a massive hit, becoming one of the most popular manhwa adaptations and one of the most popular series of its season in general. I wanted to know what each of the guests felt it was that made and continues to make the series as popular as it is.
Ban-san: It feels like it’s just a combination of the whole production process. The visuals, the music, the voice acting, including our great talent here (gestures toward Aleks Le). It was a big culmination of the greatest technology and greatest intelligence of the industry working on it that just resonated with all the viewers.
Kaneko-san: I believe I’ve said this in the past, but I never got to meet the author of the manhwa. But when I was reading it, I felt like all the aspects of popular titles, whether it be manga or anime or gaming, basically all converged. You can tell how he was influenced to create the series. And at the same time, he was able to consolidate all of the great aspects from all kinds of different media genres into one series.
I think that’s why it resonated so well with viewers.
Mr. Le: I think story-wise, it has the perfect power fantasy that a lot of viewers want out of a show like that. But at the same time, like Ban-san said, the animation is amazing, the music is great, and they hit all the beats right. And I think it had exactly what it needed to be a successful adaptation with all the work that A-1 Pictures put into adding new scenes and recontextualizing everything. So I think it was just a very satisfying watch, if that makes sense.
On Solo Leveling Anime Original Scenes
Those new scenes were something I also wanted to ask about; they were a welcome part of the first season of Solo Leveling, introducing some characters at (in my opinion) a more opportune time and making sure the pace of the anime never dropped too much. Producer Kaneko-san explained what the creative process was amongst the staff for adding these new scenes while our two voice actors explained how the added scenes modified the way they worked.
Kaneko-san: Before you even start with the animation, you need a storyboard. And to create a storyboard, you need a scenario, the script. So it started with the question “How are we going to write the script?” In the script writing process, we have what’s called a writer’s meeting, where the directors, the script writers, and the producers all get together. That’s Director Nakashige [Shunsuke Nakashige], the series composition, Kimura [Noboru Kimura], and then Producer Furuhashi [Sota Furuhashi] from Aniplex and all the other people together. We’d talk about what happens in each episode. We wanted to make sure that viewers didn’t get bored in the middle of any given episode. So, it was a unanimous decision that we needed to add anime original scenes here and there. But, at the same time, we wanted to keep as much of the original story as possible while adding the new content.
Mr. Le: I guess for me it was having a bigger sense of the story. So I had to refer to later on and re-familiarize myself with the characters from later in the story because they show up so early. But that’s about all the process I had to do with that. The hard work was mostly on their side, on how all the pieces fit together. For me, it was just doing my research.
Ban-san: I have a similar answer in that I read all of the scripts from the beginning to the end first. And then in re-reading from the beginning, you can realize the nuances. To say, “Oh, this is what he actually meant when he said this line.” I incorporate what I know from the end of the series back into the beginning to properly express emotions and everything in the early dialogue.
Performing as Sung Jinwoo
Emotion is one of the most powerful and notable part of Solo Leveling indeed, especially for our Sung Jinwoo voice actors. Both have spoken in depth about how physically demanding (demanding enough to lead them to cough up blood) it is to perform intense scenes with lots of screaming and powerful lines as Jinwoo battles for his life and attempts to keep getting stronger. I was curious about the mental side of this and how both of them bring themselves into the headspace where they’re able to push their voice and its range to its absolute limit.
Ban-san: There wasn’t much mental preparedness in the beginning because, as I mentioned earlier, I really resonated with the character and I felt pretty close to what he was in the beginning. So I didn’t really have to do much preparation for creating my voice early on. But as you know, as the series progresses, his physique gets a lot better. And he gets more buff. So I thought the tone of voice should be matching the physique. So I would start pretty hunched back in episode one. And as the episodes went by and the series continued, I noticed my posture kept getting better and better and better. And the microphone kept getting higher and higher and higher as the series progressed.
Mr. Le: I think I relate to Ban-san in that it was pretty easy to connect with this character. Because there’s a lot of things that resonate with me about his grievances with life and how he’s treated and stuff like that. And I feel like when I was younger, starting out in this industry, I also faced a lot of ridicule for being somebody younger or for being less confident. It was easy for me to connect with those emotions. So working on this series was like kind of like backtracking my whole career because now I’m a lot more confident and I speak with a lot more bravado. But it was kind of like revisiting my memories and bringing each year that I’ve done in this line of work into each episode. So there’s a lot of physicality that comes with that, like Ban-san said as well.
We at Anime Corner would like to thank Taito Ban, Aleks Le, and Atsushi Kaneko for taking the time to speak with us during a very busy Anime Expo. The first season Solo Leveling wrapped up this past April and was ranked as our best new anime for Winter 2024. Season 2 revealed its first trailer earlier this month and you can check it out below.
© Solo Leveling Animation Partners
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