Both of the anime I watched recently, Kaiju No. 8 and Solo Leveling, felt rushed in some way. While watching Kaiju No. 8, my theory was that this was the new format of anime in an era of increasingly shortening attention spans. Or perhaps it was an anime for people who have watched so much anime that they can fill in the gaping holes in its character development with their favorite aspects of the common anime tropes each character represents. My latest theory is that these anime exist more as fan service for people who read the manga than as anime that can stand on their own. Considering I haven’t read these manga, this is speculation, but Kaiju No. 8 may have felt rushed because it was composed only of highlights from the manga.
Solo Leveling stands a bit better on its own and, overall, the pacing feels more natural. The protagonist Jinwoo Sung has a nice character arc across the two seasons. Where Solo Leveling falls short is its side characters. A classic anime like Naruto might spend multiple episodes on a side character’s or an enemy’s backstory (to the point where I just want the show to get on with killing them off). Solo Leveling, however, introduces side characters with just enough detail to make me want to know more but not so much that I can say I like or even know them. Side characters frequently appear in one or a small number of episodes for a few minutes, hinting that they might become important, only to never have any further importance. Even if they do become important later, some are forgettable enough that I wouldn’t recognize them. For example, I’m still not sure if the blond lady Sung saved in the final episode was the same lady who’s only trait was that she thought he smelled nice several episodes earlier.
From what I’ve heard of the manga, the side characters received more development, perhaps even chapters dedicated to explaining their backstories or showcasing their personalities. The anime might have cut even this relatively large amount of development out because it recognized they don’t matter. In the final episode, Sung states he would like to start a guild, perhaps one composed of all the side characters we’ve met throughout the series, and then the story ends.
This might be by design. Jinwoo Sung begins the series by lamenting how unfair life is and condemning everyone as heartless, selfish traitors. He spends the rest of the series focusing on his own development and the two people, his sister and his mom, that are important to him. He saves other characters not because he cares or has any emotional attachment to them but because he can and it’s the right/fair thing to do. In the video game-like world he inhabits, the side characters are NPCs that exist only to increase his sense of justice in a brutal world. As an anime, it’s dissatisfying to viewers for not developing the potential its side characters have, but this lack of focus reflects Sung’s disinterest in everyone well.