The Solo Leveling Anime Isn’t Canceled; It Got Rescheduled! Here’s What Happened!

Solo Leveling is a South Korean novel series written by Chugong and published online at KakaoPage, before being published by D&C Media under its Papyrus publishing imprint. The series consists of 14 volumes and 270 chapters. A webtoon adaptation, comprising 179 chapters was completed on December 29, 2021. An anime television series adaptation by A-1 Pictures was also announced, with an initial release date set for 2023. But the year is almost over, and Solo Leveling still has no release date. Is the series canceled? Luckily, no! It has been rescheduled, and we will reveal what happened in this article.

Solo Leveling is not canceled; it has simply been rescheduled

Solo Leveling began serialization on July 25, 2016, on Kakao’s digital comics and fiction platform KakaoPage, and was first published by D&C Media under the fantasy fiction title “Papyrus”. The novel has been read by 2.4 million people on KakaoPage since 2016. A webcomic adaptation made its KakaoPage debut on March 4, 2018, and its first season ran until March 19, 2020. D&C Media released the first collected book on September 26, 2019. Solo Leveling debuted on the manga and webcomic platform Kakao Japan Piccoma in Japan, where it amassed a viewership of more than one million.

Also, it was chosen as the best manga of 2019 by Piccoma. The severe ridicule of Japan in the original work led to variations between the Korean and Japanese versions of Solo Leveling. The original play’s country of Japan has been replaced with the fictitious nation “DFN,” and South Korea has been replaced with Japan as the setting. The characters’ names have also been altered. The Korean gaming giant, the company Netmarble Games is making the game. In the US, a dramatic adaption is now under production.

The announcement of Solo Leveling‘s anime adaption was made during Anime Expo 2022. It will be produced by A-1 Pictures, directed by Shunsuke Nakashige, written by Noboru Kimura, with character designs by Tomoko Sudo and music by Hiroyuki Sawano. The anime was initially scheduled to be released sometime in 2023 but with no release date in sight. At least not a precise one.

So, 2023 came, and fans have been waiting for a release date. We know that 2023 was marked by the second cour of Bleach‘s Thousand-Year Blood War saga, as well as the final episode of Attack on Titan, and we’ve also had some surprise hits like Oshi no Ko, Heavenly Delusion, and Frieren, alongside the well-established long-running classic, One Piece. But, the months have passed, and there had been no updates regarding Solo Leveling, which is why a lot of fans became fearful that the series had been canceled and that the anime will never hit the screens.

But, with a trailer present and a lot of the animation already done, cancelation was always an unlikely option and we can, here, confirm that Solo Leveling has not been canceled and that the series is going to air, and from what we know – very soon. Namely, during 2023, it was announced that the anime’s premiere was simply rescheduled, for the first half of 2024, and it was later specified that it would premiere sometime in January 2024.

An exact release date has not been given yet, but we expect it to be revealed soon if there are no further delays (and we hope there won’t be any). Why was the series pushed back? Probably because of the hectic production schedules. This anime season has been rich with content, and studios are working hard to deliver the best possible content for the fans. Solo Leveling promises to be a big project, and it makes sense that A-1 Pictures, the studio behind the adaptation, wants to deliver the best possible series.

We also have to say that A-1 Pictures suffered a major setback during 2023 when its staff was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, so a lot of the shows produced by A-1 were delayed and/or postponed. Speaking as a fan, yours truly can confirm that the release schedule of Nier: Automata Ver1.1a, also an A-1 Pictures series, was quite hectic with several delays, but the series did air, and we confirm that A-1 Pictures did a great job and that Nier: Automata Ver1.1a lived up to the hype. Despite all the delays, a second cour has been announced, probably for a 2024 release.

So, you can actually imagine how 2023 was difficult for A-1 Pictures and with everything that’s happened, it shouldn’t really come as a surprise that Solo Leveling has been postponed. Knowing how A-1 Pictures work, we can expect them to produce a high-quality product, but that takes time, and since they did not want to rush or half-ass the adaptation of Solo Leveling, they delayed it until they could be sure that they would be able to deliver a brilliant final product.

So, fans of Solo Leveling can rejoice – the series is still on track to air in January 2024, and knowing that this is a big and very much anticipated project, we expect A-1 Pictures to have a major hit next year.

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