Solo Leveling: how a Korean manhwa conquered the world

In March 2025, Crunchyroll's Anime of the Year award went to a series whose source work is neither Japanese, nor a manga, nor even a book. Solo Leveling is a novel published online by a Korean author under a pen name, turned into a vertical comic, then animated in Japan by a Japanese studio. The prize crowned a production chain that did not exist ten years earlier.

That path is worth more than a trophy. It shows how a format born from the constraints of the Korean smartphone ended up feeding the Japanese animation industry, and why webtoons have become the pool studios look at first.

An online novel, a pen name, a platform#

The origin fits in one line: 나 혼자만 레벨업 (Na honjaman level up, "only I level up"), an online novel signed Chugong, published from 2016 on KakaoPage.

The Korean web novel is a circuit in its own right, with its short-chapter publishing codes, its micro-payment model and its readership on phones. It works as a test bench: a story that holds a hundred chapters and keeps its audience gets picked up by the platform, which then finances a drawn adaptation. That is exactly the route taken here.

The webtoon adaptation began in March 2018, drawn by Jang Sung-rak, known by the pen name DUBU, at REDICE Studio. It carried the story to a completely different scale of distribution, vertical reading and full colour changing the relationship to action entirely. Jang Sung-rak died in July 2022, aged 37, when the series was already an international success; the studio continued work on the sequel.

What the series tells, and why it works#

The story follows Sung Jinwoo, an E-rank hunter, the weakest in a world where portals open onto dungeons and where hunters are ranked by power. After barely surviving a dungeon that wipes out his team, he becomes the only human able to "level up" as in a video game.

The device is explicitly borrowed from role-playing games: an interface appears before the hero's eyes, with quests, statistics and rewards. This setup, called the system genre in webtoon readers' vocabulary, has the advantage of making the character's progress visible, and that progress is the story's emotional engine.

The series then follows a very legible power-escalation structure: each arc raises the scale of opponents a notch, up to a turning point where the protagonist changes in nature. That is not narrative originality, it is execution. The series paces its reveals carefully, alternates fights and progression scenes, and rarely lets three chapters pass without rewarding the reader.

A webtoon's strength lies not in the story it tells, but in the interval between two rewards, calibrated chapter by chapter.

From Seoul to Tokyo: the animated adaptation#

The animation was entrusted to A-1 Pictures, a Japanese studio in the Aniplex group, for a first season broadcast from January 2024. A second season, subtitled Arise from the Shadow, followed in January 2025.

Choosing a Japanese studio for a Korean work is not incidental. Korea has a long-standing and highly competent animation industry, for decades a subcontractor to Japanese and American productions, but its ecosystem of original television series remains narrower. Going through Japan gave access to a complete chain: production committees, broadcasters, worldwide distribution by Crunchyroll, and the music and merchandising markets.

The adaptation's success validated that hybrid configuration. In 2025, Solo Leveling became the first work of Korean origin to win Anime of the Year at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards, a distinction until then reserved for Japanese titles.

The effect on a whole industry#

Before Solo Leveling, webtoons mainly exported romance and office drama, often through adaptation into Korean television series. The series opened a second corridor, that of action and fantasy, with an audience that was not the K-drama audience.

Three consequences are visible in the industry today.

Korean platforms accelerated their internationalisation, with simultaneous releases in English, French and Spanish for titles judged promising, where translation used to arrive years later.

Japanese animation studios now source directly from Korean catalogues, without an intermediate manga adaptation. The webtoon has become a primary source of intellectual property.

Web novel authors saw their position strengthen, since they sit at the root of the chain. An online novel that works is now worth an adaptation option, then potentially a webtoon, an animated series and a game.

What the series does not prove#

A success on this scale always produces hasty conclusions. Two deserve tempering.

Webtoons have not replaced manga. The Japanese comics market remains an order of magnitude larger, and vertical reading is growing in Japan without becoming dominant. The two formats coexist and borrow techniques from each other.

Nor is the exportability of Korean fantasy demonstrated outside the power-escalation register. The Korean titles that break through internationally overwhelmingly belong to that mode, and more literary or more local works remain as hard to export as before.

Read alsoWebtoon: how Korea reinvented the comic

Vertical format, colour, chapter-by-chapter publishing: what webtoons changed in the making of comics.

Solo Leveling completed the whole journey, from a text file posted online by an unknown to a trophy handed out in Tokyo. What matters next is not the view count, it is that the road now exists and is signposted.

FAQ#

Is Solo Leveling a manga or a manhwa? A manhwa, that is a Korean comic, and more precisely a vertical-scrolling colour webtoon. The anime was produced in Japan by a Japanese studio, which explains the frequent confusion.

Who wrote Solo Leveling? The online novel is signed Chugong, the pen name of a Korean author who published it from 2016 on KakaoPage. The drawn adaptation is the work of Jang Sung-rak, known as DUBU, who died in July 2022 at 37.

Should you read the webtoon before watching the anime? No, the anime covers the story from the beginning. The webtoon does offer a different pace and a graphic treatment of fights that the animation transposes rather than reproduces; many fans do both.

Why was the anime produced in Japan? Because the Japanese industrial chain, from production committees to worldwide distribution, was the fastest to mobilise for an action television series. Korea has solid animation studios but a narrower market for original series.

What is the "system" genre in webtoons? A subgenre where the protagonist has a video game interface visible only to them, with quests, levels and statistics. It makes character progress measurable and serves as a narrative engine, which explains its dominance in Korean online fantasy.

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Photo credits: the images in this article come from Wikimedia Commons and are under free licences.