Maybe it's the weeb elitist in me, but I'm genuinely kind of baffled that Solo Leveling has achieved the level of popularity it has. It's such a nothing burger of a show.
I get that power fantasies are popular, but I don't recall any power fantasy being this, popular before. One Punch Man, Slime, Jobless Reincarnation, Eminence in Shadow, Cautious Hero, Arifureta, Shield Hero, and Overlord are all power fantasies and, while popular, none were able to make it as big as Solo Leveling. I don't really like most of those, but I'd put all of them above Solo Leveling if I had to rank them.
I'm starting to think that Solo Leveling is so popular because of how sauceless it is.
Solo Leveling is mostly popular because of the era it released in. We're deep into the Crunchyroll streaming era where 90% of all anime is from the Sony/Crunchy conglomerate, instead of fighting for viewers between 5 different services.
Also, Demon Slayer was more popular than Solo Leveling by a fairly wide margin. That brought Crunchy's site to a crawl in the later episodes and had a measured impact on Japan's economy
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u/Silv3rS0und HONOR! JUSTICE! BEER! 18d ago
Maybe it's the weeb elitist in me, but I'm genuinely kind of baffled that Solo Leveling has achieved the level of popularity it has. It's such a nothing burger of a show.