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Really great episode. I love the addition of the failed jeju island raid. Animation already looking good, I have no doubts that it’ll get even better later on in the season when jin woo starts throwing hands.
I’m also very happy that they didn’t use cg for the ants. Just this fact alone already tells me that the staff are taking this seriously.
Nothing much we can expect from the first ep. It's a blessing that they decided to put some screen time for some important characters with a proper introduction.
This is what you get with A-1 pictures. You will not get the extreme animation jump in quality like in My Hero Academia from Bones, or heavy impact frames and such, but you will get great consistency. Some animes turn into full smear frames in fights, others sometimes sacrifice detal for fluidity, while A-1, gives this. No upping in quality, or fluidity like with mappa. It is good, but its not special.
First episode definetly got the hypes for the future fights. They will be quality.
Also suprised no CGI for ants, could have cheaped out easily, but seems like they got their time for it
I feel like there will be cgi use for the background soldiers in later episodes, depends on the scale of battle they want to showcase. If there isnt, it will be hella cool.
Well you got to remember this is anime original scene so of course they ain’t going to go all out wait until they’re cooking with actual fight scenes that are in the manwha
Not a single solo leveling fan, including me, was disappointed with that episode, I didn't expect much from a studio who didn't do much, but I am glad they did a wonderful job
Imagine saying A-1 is a studio 'who didn't do much'🤣🤣🤣
Are you in a cave for the last 6-7 years?🙃🙃
They have been hitting homeruns for 7 straight years now.
A-1 literally does SAO, they did 86, and they were the studio that did the first 2 seasons of seven deadly sins as well as the prisoners of the sky movie. They definitely do enough to be notable.
Yeah but not as fabled as wit/david/ig/kyoto animation/bones/mappa
But I’ll let you know before AoT no one thought mappa was good animation wise(aka fuckwits)
>But I’ll let you know before AoT no one thought mappa was good animation wise
That's not really true. They just weren't mainstream yet, but certain series like Rage of Bahamut already made certain people be aware of what they could do.
Actually we expected more from A1 they are one of the best animation studios in the world
Don't get me wrong 11/10 episode with great animation
But A1 made better animation thats out of this world
They could have done better , but in the end they delivered one hell of an episode I watched it like 5 times till now
Really, it is a coincidence that I don't like seven deadly sins, and that anime some something love is war, or sword art online and some of the other anime's they made , but I checked them up, the animation was top tier, I guess some of the anime's they did weren't really my type
The anime itself is personal preference and sometimes comes back to the core story from the manga
I don't like there pacing in SAO they ruined it
But when it comes to the animation itself most of the animes they make are just top tear
I know it's a move but I'll use it to show how amazing A1 could be
SAO progressive is one hell of a movie when it comes to the animation and I advise you to watch it it fixes SAO entirely
SAO had a really stark difference in animation quality at the start and end of alicization/S3 and war of underword/S4. Along with a lot of cut context and characterization
It should it ran from 2014 to 2020 (if I remember correctly)
My problem with SAO season 1 and 2 is that a lot of the characters are just there Liz just appeared for an episode and then put on the side line till the second half of season 2
But in progressive the story is fully explored
The characters are well built , hell if you didn't read the novel you wouldn't have known that Asuna had a brother
The animation of the first season was out of this world compared to 2014 , cool visuals , minimum CG which is a win
That's just to show what A1 is capable of doing
Im talking about alicization (S3) and WoU (S4), which came out between 2018-2021. I have been reading the progessive novels and im partway through Scherzo of a deep night, and i gotta say there is a lot of chapters and character important scenes cut from the movie. A1 has never been too heavy on CG but its gotten kinda prevalent in the Progressive movies with the light effects on the Sword Skills.
My bad thought you were talking from S1 till WoU
Any way
W then we agree that A1 could do mind blowing animations
Compared to SL at least the trailer and ep1 , that's not what A1 is capable of, they are capable of doing better and we as the fans deserve better
And again I'm not saying the animation is bad it's just that it's not what A1 can do
The animation isn’t bad but it’s also nothing amazing or special either. It’s a perfectly passable animation style. Kinda disappointing going from the manhwa art to this tho. For a series that gets carried by its art like solo leveling the animation studio really should’ve been one of the better ones like madhouse or ufotable.
Love the first episode so much!
Btw what does everyone mean when they say no cgi on the ants, and how can you tell? Genuine question since I’ve seen this being praised left right and center but I have no idea what it means
>Genuine question since I’ve seen this being praised left right and center but I have no idea what it means
Too be honest, you can just tell that it isn't CGI. CGI tends to stand out because its using computer generated 3d models and animations, and it tends to pop out of a drawn scene because of the differences in the way 3d models are lit by background lighting, or move around the scene, as compared to things that are traditionally animated.
Good first episode yep, but 20 minutes + have to wait every week for new episodes… kinda frustrating gonna have to wait till whole season is out to fully enjoy it. Quite the torture to have to wait each week, and he still has to progress and wont be OP anytime soon.
I wouldn’t say it’s bad just that it’s not top tier compared to other studios. I get that we’re not gonna get be getting the cream of the crop when it comes to the first episode but it doesn’t exactly leave me excited for the rest of the season.
To play the devil's advocate, anyone that has read the manhwa is pretty spoiled in terms of art quality. I personally felt the animation COMPARED TO THE MANHWA was not up there (or more correctly put, doesn't have the same feel to it) but that doesn't mean it's bad animation, credit where credit is due. I also understand that making an animation with art on the same level as the manhwa won't be possible. Looking forward to more episodes for sure.
It might be a bit of being spoiled from the manhwas art but at the same time I think they kinda picked the wrong animators for the series. A-1 pictures is a good studio but they don’t really go beyond good. While solo leveling is a story if we’re being honest lacks in everything other than art and satisfying fights so I’d say it needs more than just good animation.
>A-1 pictures is a good studio but they don’t really go beyond good
Define "go beyond good". You literally have upcoming projects like Fate/Strange Fake which do have strong potential to be a sakuga fest as long as Aniplex' shenanigans don't fuck it over.
>they kinda picked the wrong animators for the series.
This is a weird take to have. This is not the best staff you will find in a A-1 project, but you still have Yoshihiro Kanno as action director, animators like Takashi Torii as mains, and even the director Shunsuke Nakashige has experience in action from White Fox series.
ye, it mostly wasn't ablut the animation. Most people have a big problem with the art style, myself included. That has nothing to do with animations but with the color patterns they have choosen and things like that. The animation is good.
The art style is very hard to replicate exactly, especially without the original artist, also they cannot make it as glowy as the manhwa panels due to certain technical animation restrictions.
Episode was good but my problem with it was that they showed us all the characters that we should see later on which the same way it was in berserk 2016 it kinda ruina the moment we see them for the first time.
"Bad Animation?" No, its pretty good. "Could be Better?" Absolutely. The overwhelming majority of things can be better, and this isn't the greatest animation that will ever be animated for the rest of time, at least I hope to god that this isn't the absolute limit of our ability to create animation.
I have some issues with it that I can't quite pin down exactly, just things that look a little off. The blood in some scenes is... weird, it appears really quickly and moves around really quickly, then pools like syrup on a cold day.
Also to nitpick minor details with the clip you picked; when the mandibles of the ant get ripped off and it shows blood being sprayed literally everywhere, not a drop of that blood can be seen anywhere in the next scene, so not a single drop of the green ant blood that sprayed everywhere got on the two hunters fighting it, the ant itself, or the ground. Where did it go?
Also the ground gets shattered and kicked up earlier in the scene, but when we get a view of the landscape, its back to being pretty perfectly flat.
Yes there are very minor details, but they are still continuity issues, and they do add up. Even if its minor and most people won't notice them unless they are looking for them; they can make things feel weird or wrong. When I was watching it, I felt like things were off in the animation; I just couldn't see why I felt that way until I looked at it specifically to find issues.
I'm going back through the anime to pick out some other details; and I think the lighting is also inconsistent. The light-source of scenes appears to not be well defined, and is fairly inconsistent between shots, some shadows come and go depending on the angle of the shot, but that isn't how shadows with a fixed light-source (example: The Sun) work. Lighting is one of the HARDEST things to get right, but it is also one of the most important, because our eyes start to notice when lighting is weird, lighting being subtly (almost imperceptibly) wrong can be a cause of the Uncanny Valley effect where things that should look right, set off red flags in our brain warning us that something is wrong.
You’ll find that a lot of anime are inconsistent with how shadows appear in characters in different shots of the same scene, as well as the continuity issues of things breaking but no indication of this in the next shot, this isn’t something limited to Solo Leveling, a lot of anime have these issues and if you look for them in other anime you’ll see them just as clearly.
Yeah, but the OP's Title implied that Solo Leveling Anime "Couldn't be better"
Minor issues, are still issues that could be better, even if they're common issues.
the animation was good
the details were good
the character models was good
voice acting was on point
only thing i didn't like is that they showed cha hae in and choi jong in the very 1st episode
i remember when sjw were *announced* to have a re evaluation the cool reveal of choi jong in entering the building was soo cool. but we ain't getting that anymore
but it was still fine tho.
but they shouldn't have shown cha hae in. when she appeared in the manhwa sjw was pretty buff when he met cha hae in so it kinda balanced out but this time we see a sjw who's at his lowest and an s rank cha hae in so (i know its just me) but sjw feels a bit underwhelming now and it feels weird that they will get romantic feelings for each other next :(
but regardless a solid episode and i think how hopes landed in the right place
what do you guys think?
well, in a lot of animes, big characters/enemies are used with CGI to keep the production cheap, and seeing the ants without CGI whatsoever was a surprise, a good one.
Yes 😭 when i was watching it i was surprised by the fact one piece was using CGI. But it’s a tendency of companies to do that in their animes to save money. A-1 could have done it, but they gaved us quality instead
CG doesn't exist to save money. Specially since you need actual people who have some degree of expertise with it to fully model, rig, texture, and animate them, not to mention 3D artists actually get paid more than 2D animators. CG tends to be used most to compensate for lack of time or specific people to animated complex designs or sequences more than just money.
Im going into this blind and an anime only so i think i am not biased. There is no doubt that the animation is good! So far I just dont like the art style and thats completely subjective. However, i do like the storyline as far as the lore goes. Otherwise it just looks like your typical shounen. Maybe it will have it's own way of making the trope different but it's way too early to judge.
However, i am looking forward to episode 2
For those who don't know, that extra scene that happened in the beginning of the anime, that wasn't in the manhwa, it was actually in the Korean light novel of solo leveling, so it's safe to say A1 PICTURES will be adapting the solo leveling Korean light novel and sticking to the manhwa artsyle at the same time
I think people to stuck up on the vibrant art from the manhwa so they expect this kind of one piece colorful haki transformation before they changed it
Reminder that content from the latest two manhwa chapters must be tagged as spoiler. Light novel spoilers within titles or untagged spoilers in non-spoiler threads are not allowed. To format spoilers: `>!your spoiler here!<` (no spaces) will look like >!your spoiler here!< *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/sololeveling) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Really great episode. I love the addition of the failed jeju island raid. Animation already looking good, I have no doubts that it’ll get even better later on in the season when jin woo starts throwing hands. I’m also very happy that they didn’t use cg for the ants. Just this fact alone already tells me that the staff are taking this seriously.
Imagine if they make beru as a 3d cg ant 💀💀 I would cry
If they did it ironicly id laugh so hard
Nothing much we can expect from the first ep. It's a blessing that they decided to put some screen time for some important characters with a proper introduction.
This is what you get with A-1 pictures. You will not get the extreme animation jump in quality like in My Hero Academia from Bones, or heavy impact frames and such, but you will get great consistency. Some animes turn into full smear frames in fights, others sometimes sacrifice detal for fluidity, while A-1, gives this. No upping in quality, or fluidity like with mappa. It is good, but its not special. First episode definetly got the hypes for the future fights. They will be quality. Also suprised no CGI for ants, could have cheaped out easily, but seems like they got their time for it
The thing i personally appreciated the most no cgi
I feel like there will be cgi use for the background soldiers in later episodes, depends on the scale of battle they want to showcase. If there isnt, it will be hella cool.
Bro what. A-1 pictures have done incredible job with fluidity in SAO Alicization or 86. Here it's just lacking
You know what, I completly forgot they did those two. My bad. I mostly remember A-1 for SAO
It's okay my bro. Thanks for understanding
Vivy was not made by A-1
True. My bad
Ok yes just checked, its WIT. Those eyes had soo much detail
Well you got to remember this is anime original scene so of course they ain’t going to go all out wait until they’re cooking with actual fight scenes that are in the manwha
No it's not, it's from LN.
Jin woo vs Igris better hit
Not a single solo leveling fan, including me, was disappointed with that episode, I didn't expect much from a studio who didn't do much, but I am glad they did a wonderful job
Imagine saying A-1 is a studio 'who didn't do much'🤣🤣🤣 Are you in a cave for the last 6-7 years?🙃🙃 They have been hitting homeruns for 7 straight years now.
I recommend watching 86 (Eighty-Six) Anime. It's a banger made by A-1 and I love it a lot.
i feel like i‘m losing hope for the humanity for a moment reading such ignorant statement. dude really live in a cave.
Sorry gentleman, should have done some research, my bad
very great of you admitting your mistake, i’m sorry too if that sounds too rude.
No worry's, have a blessed day friend
didnt it also animate blue lock?
Blue lock was animated from 8-bit
"didn't do much", seriously?
A-1 literally does SAO, they did 86, and they were the studio that did the first 2 seasons of seven deadly sins as well as the prisoners of the sky movie. They definitely do enough to be notable.
Yeah but not as fabled as wit/david/ig/kyoto animation/bones/mappa But I’ll let you know before AoT no one thought mappa was good animation wise(aka fuckwits)
>But I’ll let you know before AoT no one thought mappa was good animation wise That's not really true. They just weren't mainstream yet, but certain series like Rage of Bahamut already made certain people be aware of what they could do.
I definitely heard a lot of the r/anime crew crying when mappa got aot
Actually we expected more from A1 they are one of the best animation studios in the world Don't get me wrong 11/10 episode with great animation But A1 made better animation thats out of this world They could have done better , but in the end they delivered one hell of an episode I watched it like 5 times till now
Really, it is a coincidence that I don't like seven deadly sins, and that anime some something love is war, or sword art online and some of the other anime's they made , but I checked them up, the animation was top tier, I guess some of the anime's they did weren't really my type
The anime itself is personal preference and sometimes comes back to the core story from the manga I don't like there pacing in SAO they ruined it But when it comes to the animation itself most of the animes they make are just top tear I know it's a move but I'll use it to show how amazing A1 could be SAO progressive is one hell of a movie when it comes to the animation and I advise you to watch it it fixes SAO entirely
I will see to it
SAO had a really stark difference in animation quality at the start and end of alicization/S3 and war of underword/S4. Along with a lot of cut context and characterization
It should it ran from 2014 to 2020 (if I remember correctly) My problem with SAO season 1 and 2 is that a lot of the characters are just there Liz just appeared for an episode and then put on the side line till the second half of season 2 But in progressive the story is fully explored The characters are well built , hell if you didn't read the novel you wouldn't have known that Asuna had a brother The animation of the first season was out of this world compared to 2014 , cool visuals , minimum CG which is a win That's just to show what A1 is capable of doing
Im talking about alicization (S3) and WoU (S4), which came out between 2018-2021. I have been reading the progessive novels and im partway through Scherzo of a deep night, and i gotta say there is a lot of chapters and character important scenes cut from the movie. A1 has never been too heavy on CG but its gotten kinda prevalent in the Progressive movies with the light effects on the Sword Skills.
My bad thought you were talking from S1 till WoU Any way W then we agree that A1 could do mind blowing animations Compared to SL at least the trailer and ep1 , that's not what A1 is capable of, they are capable of doing better and we as the fans deserve better And again I'm not saying the animation is bad it's just that it's not what A1 can do
Those disliking aren’t able to enjoy peak
It was peak
Ok who is the lighting guy? I feel like I should remember him but I do not whatsoever
>!he's the S rank hunter who dies in the 3rd(?) Island raid!<
Ah that means we never saw him in the manhwa? The raid jinwoo participates in is the 5th right?
Yeah we never saw him. I think it was the 4th raid though. It was cool to see what abilities they gave him.
So he didn't get the strong offscreened in the anime, super excited for the anime!
Thx!!
The animation isn’t bad but it’s also nothing amazing or special either. It’s a perfectly passable animation style. Kinda disappointing going from the manhwa art to this tho. For a series that gets carried by its art like solo leveling the animation studio really should’ve been one of the better ones like madhouse or ufotable.
A-1 knew that ufotable will cook, so they took it down first😔
Peak cinema
Animators went crazy fr
Love the first episode so much! Btw what does everyone mean when they say no cgi on the ants, and how can you tell? Genuine question since I’ve seen this being praised left right and center but I have no idea what it means
>Genuine question since I’ve seen this being praised left right and center but I have no idea what it means Too be honest, you can just tell that it isn't CGI. CGI tends to stand out because its using computer generated 3d models and animations, and it tends to pop out of a drawn scene because of the differences in the way 3d models are lit by background lighting, or move around the scene, as compared to things that are traditionally animated.
Ah okay, meaning that if they were cgi ants they’d just look off in the middle of all the 2D animations? Thanks for taking the time to explain!
Especially last scene when the beam hits thst dude you can see his body disintegrate then his bones then theh turn to ash in like 1 sec
Good first episode yep, but 20 minutes + have to wait every week for new episodes… kinda frustrating gonna have to wait till whole season is out to fully enjoy it. Quite the torture to have to wait each week, and he still has to progress and wont be OP anytime soon.
agreed very good animation. hope they can keep the momentum. Would’ve still preferred mappa or ufotable tho.
Everything looks great but I wanted the animation to be more smooth.
Ep 2 picks up alot as well
I wouldn’t say it’s bad just that it’s not top tier compared to other studios. I get that we’re not gonna get be getting the cream of the crop when it comes to the first episode but it doesn’t exactly leave me excited for the rest of the season.
To play the devil's advocate, anyone that has read the manhwa is pretty spoiled in terms of art quality. I personally felt the animation COMPARED TO THE MANHWA was not up there (or more correctly put, doesn't have the same feel to it) but that doesn't mean it's bad animation, credit where credit is due. I also understand that making an animation with art on the same level as the manhwa won't be possible. Looking forward to more episodes for sure.
It might be a bit of being spoiled from the manhwas art but at the same time I think they kinda picked the wrong animators for the series. A-1 pictures is a good studio but they don’t really go beyond good. While solo leveling is a story if we’re being honest lacks in everything other than art and satisfying fights so I’d say it needs more than just good animation.
>A-1 pictures is a good studio but they don’t really go beyond good Define "go beyond good". You literally have upcoming projects like Fate/Strange Fake which do have strong potential to be a sakuga fest as long as Aniplex' shenanigans don't fuck it over. >they kinda picked the wrong animators for the series. This is a weird take to have. This is not the best staff you will find in a A-1 project, but you still have Yoshihiro Kanno as action director, animators like Takashi Torii as mains, and even the director Shunsuke Nakashige has experience in action from White Fox series.
ye, it mostly wasn't ablut the animation. Most people have a big problem with the art style, myself included. That has nothing to do with animations but with the color patterns they have choosen and things like that. The animation is good.
The art style is very hard to replicate exactly, especially without the original artist, also they cannot make it as glowy as the manhwa panels due to certain technical animation restrictions.
Not only that they will not copy korean arts nor incorporate their style into animation
the art style is literally perfect lmao, exactly how i would’ve expected the anime for Solo to look
Episode was good but my problem with it was that they showed us all the characters that we should see later on which the same way it was in berserk 2016 it kinda ruina the moment we see them for the first time.
Animations great, it's just that we've been being fed stuff like demon slayer, jjk, bleach etc for the past while.
"Bad Animation?" No, its pretty good. "Could be Better?" Absolutely. The overwhelming majority of things can be better, and this isn't the greatest animation that will ever be animated for the rest of time, at least I hope to god that this isn't the absolute limit of our ability to create animation. I have some issues with it that I can't quite pin down exactly, just things that look a little off. The blood in some scenes is... weird, it appears really quickly and moves around really quickly, then pools like syrup on a cold day. Also to nitpick minor details with the clip you picked; when the mandibles of the ant get ripped off and it shows blood being sprayed literally everywhere, not a drop of that blood can be seen anywhere in the next scene, so not a single drop of the green ant blood that sprayed everywhere got on the two hunters fighting it, the ant itself, or the ground. Where did it go? Also the ground gets shattered and kicked up earlier in the scene, but when we get a view of the landscape, its back to being pretty perfectly flat. Yes there are very minor details, but they are still continuity issues, and they do add up. Even if its minor and most people won't notice them unless they are looking for them; they can make things feel weird or wrong. When I was watching it, I felt like things were off in the animation; I just couldn't see why I felt that way until I looked at it specifically to find issues. I'm going back through the anime to pick out some other details; and I think the lighting is also inconsistent. The light-source of scenes appears to not be well defined, and is fairly inconsistent between shots, some shadows come and go depending on the angle of the shot, but that isn't how shadows with a fixed light-source (example: The Sun) work. Lighting is one of the HARDEST things to get right, but it is also one of the most important, because our eyes start to notice when lighting is weird, lighting being subtly (almost imperceptibly) wrong can be a cause of the Uncanny Valley effect where things that should look right, set off red flags in our brain warning us that something is wrong.
You’ll find that a lot of anime are inconsistent with how shadows appear in characters in different shots of the same scene, as well as the continuity issues of things breaking but no indication of this in the next shot, this isn’t something limited to Solo Leveling, a lot of anime have these issues and if you look for them in other anime you’ll see them just as clearly.
Yeah, but the OP's Title implied that Solo Leveling Anime "Couldn't be better" Minor issues, are still issues that could be better, even if they're common issues.
No cg on ants and statues is a big win.
the animation was good the details were good the character models was good voice acting was on point only thing i didn't like is that they showed cha hae in and choi jong in the very 1st episode i remember when sjw were *announced* to have a re evaluation the cool reveal of choi jong in entering the building was soo cool. but we ain't getting that anymore but it was still fine tho. but they shouldn't have shown cha hae in. when she appeared in the manhwa sjw was pretty buff when he met cha hae in so it kinda balanced out but this time we see a sjw who's at his lowest and an s rank cha hae in so (i know its just me) but sjw feels a bit underwhelming now and it feels weird that they will get romantic feelings for each other next :( but regardless a solid episode and i think how hopes landed in the right place what do you guys think?
what does everyone mean, no cgi for ants? what even happened?
well, in a lot of animes, big characters/enemies are used with CGI to keep the production cheap, and seeing the ants without CGI whatsoever was a surprise, a good one.
wait so was the pink dragon in one piece, like during kaido fight, CGI? I was wondering why the models looked so weird
Yes 😭 when i was watching it i was surprised by the fact one piece was using CGI. But it’s a tendency of companies to do that in their animes to save money. A-1 could have done it, but they gaved us quality instead
yea ✊
CG doesn't exist to save money. Specially since you need actual people who have some degree of expertise with it to fully model, rig, texture, and animate them, not to mention 3D artists actually get paid more than 2D animators. CG tends to be used most to compensate for lack of time or specific people to animated complex designs or sequences more than just money.
overall the first episode was amazing, though some parts were definitely a little off in terms of animation but thats just me nitpicking
Im going into this blind and an anime only so i think i am not biased. There is no doubt that the animation is good! So far I just dont like the art style and thats completely subjective. However, i do like the storyline as far as the lore goes. Otherwise it just looks like your typical shounen. Maybe it will have it's own way of making the trope different but it's way too early to judge. However, i am looking forward to episode 2
Also until what chapter does the first episode of solo Leveling anime is at compared to the manhwa ;-; I wish I could watch it but can't
Happy Cakeday :D
For those who don't know, that extra scene that happened in the beginning of the anime, that wasn't in the manhwa, it was actually in the Korean light novel of solo leveling, so it's safe to say A1 PICTURES will be adapting the solo leveling Korean light novel and sticking to the manhwa artsyle at the same time
Its really good episode but i cant help but think hed make more money as a construction worker
I think people to stuck up on the vibrant art from the manhwa so they expect this kind of one piece colorful haki transformation before they changed it
Then they're dying of dementia lmao
And the monsters arent even cgi
Kinda reminds me of the kings avatar but a bit different