Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re checking out a new property I was recently commissioned, as we explore the first episode of the currently airing Solo Leveling. To be perfectly honest, I’m not entirely sure what to expect from this one, or how exactly it might be my sort of thing; the synopsis seems to indicate it’s basically a post-Sword Art Online riff on similar concepts, and I didn’t really have anything positive to say about the original Sword Art Online. “We’re growing stronger in a world that’s essentially a videogame” is a concept that has very little appeal to me; I prefer my fantasy worlds to be realized as genuine places, and am of the wrong generation to get a thrill out of watching someone else be excellent at a videogame.
In general, I see these works as the consequence of fans not reading broadly, or really at all; if you only consume videogames and light novels, you are almost categorically incapable of writing something rich enough to keep my interest. As for the staff, neither director nor art director nor series composer have any noteworthy credits to their names, but I imagine we’re in for some bombastic musical cues courtesy of the ever-excessive Hiroyuki Sawano. With almost no idea of what we’re getting into, let’s check out the first episode of Solo Leveling!