The Solo Leveling anime has exclusive scenes, which were added by the studio in collaboration with the webtoon’s author, Chugong.
Solo Leveling was announced as one of the most notable anime of the year, and it must be recognized that the series lives up to it. Adapting the famous Chugong manhwa, the story features humans-turned-hunters who fight inside portals to protect the contemporary world.
The original story was first written as a light novel, published from November 2016 to October 2017 and spanning 13 volumes. It was then transcribed into a webtoon in 2018. The popularity of Solo Leveling, already high, then took another leap forward thanks to an international publication.
Obviously, given such success, we had to expect adaptations for the small screen. And that of the studio A-1 Pictures in anime is a hit. The storyline, characters and sensational scenes obviously play a big role in the success of Solo Leveling. But adding scenes exclusive to the series also seems essential. Especially since the author himself participated in their creation!
Solo Leveling author Chugong helped create new scenes for the anime
In the latest documentary on Crunchyroll, titled The Leveling of Solo Leveling, the director of the anime, Shunsuke Nakashige, explained the process of adapting into anime. He then revealed that Chugong was often consulted for the series.
The director explains: “We were able to discuss, for example, the characters present in the novel, but not in the webtoon.” In the English version, the documentary translates the director’s words, specifying that the discussions between the A-1 Pictures studios and Redice were also held with the participation of the author, Chugong.
The anime director continues: “You have sentences [in the novel], but there are no images. We ask for information on the characters in question. Finally, we ask questions about what the secondary characters are doing while the main character is busy elsewhere, and we refine everything in a scenario based on the exchanges. […] We balanced everything by removing and adding things.”
The choice to modify the course of events is also explained by Sota Furuhashi, the producer in charge of the anime Solo Leveling:
“The biggest difference between adapting a webtoon and a manga into an anime is the sense of speed of the story. For example, when we seek to adapt a volume of webtoon, where a classic manga would allow us to produce two or three episodes, the rapid pace that webtoons have means that a volume can only produce an episode and a half, approximately. This was one of the major challenges to overcome. To overcome this obstacle, we expanded the story in several ways while remaining consistent with the original work.”
Divided into two episodes of around twenty minutes, the documentary shares fascinating information behind the scenes of the development but also of the success of the Solo Leveling series.
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