Summary
Manhwa like Solo Leveling and Viral Hit shed light on Korean culture through unique character designs in anime. Viral Hit's Korean-looking characters challenge traditional anime styles, emphasizing the importance of cultural representation. The language bias in anime adaptations of manhwa such as Solo Leveling and Viral Hit emphasizes the need for more realistic representation.
Level up alone clearly resonated with a large audience thanks to its epic battles and stunning artwork, but it played a more important role in that it helped spread awareness of manhwa as an entertainment medium Asian from outside Japan, coming from Korea. However, another manhwa named Hit viral accomplished the same thing in a way that even Solo Leveling couldn't. The characters really look like Koreans in Viral Hit while Solo Leveling adheres more to the distinct styles of the characters in the anime and manga, this somewhat removes them from their origins.
Of course, the fact that the character names in Solo Leveling (as well as Viral Hit) can be easily distinguished from the names of commonly mentioned Japanese characters is probably the most effective way to demonstrate that their series is not imitative. started with manga. After all, the main characters of Viral Hit and Solo Leveling, Hobin Yoo and Sung Jinwoo, are not usually heroes in what most anime call them.
However, Viral Hit presents the whole package compared to Solo Leveling: the characters in Viral Hit look and sound Korean, and this is important to help casual anime viewers recognize the true origins of the series.
Viral Hit's Korean-looking characters shed light on the common “problem” with Anime
The anime characters don't look Asian even if most of the stories are set in Japan
Ironically, people easily realize that the source material from Korea is different from the Japanese manga. Manhwa uses a distinct style associated with the webtoon, where the content is not only in color, but when used online, it is also read vertically, which changes the reading experience. This differs greatly from black-and-white panels that are almost always read from right to left, although there are some rare cases like Ghost Reaper Girl that closely follow Western literature.
This is ironic because – although manhwa still has an impressive audience, especially in the unique case of Solo Leveling – anime will always get more recognition, as will manga. Therefore, it is important that anime adapted from manhwa be more recognizable because of its Korean origin. Outside of Viral Hit and even manhwa, the importance of “appearance” can also have an impact on how viewers perceive the setting.
Sometimes setting is extremely important in anime, especially when the story takes place in Japan, where viewers can easily appreciate the Japanese culture shown as they feel like they have been transported there. , especially places that fans can easily recognize, like Shibuya from Jujutsu Kaisen. However, when people look like anime characters, whose appearance is not actually associated with an Asian country, it can reduce this effect.
Solo spread and leveling is still a big problem that Anime should fix
Truth be told, the topic of realism in anime actually sheds light on another problem with the industry, specifically series outside of Japan. Despite its reputation for being far superior to its dubs, native Japanese-language anime often suffers when the story takes place in other countries because of imitating the different dialects and accents of the languages. Other languages in Japanese are more difficult. Meanwhile, English-dubbed anime often thrive in this regard, most notably in series like Hellsing, where some characters need to sound like they're from England and Ireland to feel more authentic.
Coincidentally, language plays another important role in manhwa anime adaptations, and it is one of the main issues that persists in both the Viral Hit and Solo Leveling anime adaptations. In fact, the original subtitle language of both anime is still Japanese. So even though both anime still maintain a linguistic bias, Viral Hit is at least one step closer to being described and identified as Korean. Of course, all thanks should really go to the original creators, writer Taejun Pak and illustrator Kim Junghyun, who portrayed them as such.
Regardless, it is extremely important for fans to realize that manhwa anime are adaptations of Korean origin, as the industry is more easily associated with Japan. understand. Fortunately, Level up aloneand even Hit viral although less common, is helping to spread that awareness.