Anime & Donghua

Like, I'm not saying the RoK directly funded the production of Solo Leveling, but I do wonder if there's more to it all.

Subsidizing it to try to shift some of their animation industry from just quietly being the backbone of the broader animation industry to having their own original series does seem plausible. I almost wonder if there's not something similar going on with the Chinese animation industry, with how absolutely gorgeous things like To Be Hero X (which looks better than Solo Leveling and is also very well written with like an actual story and characters and themes, when Solo Leveling has none of those things) are.

Jojo has lots of problems and I think it's reasonable to find Phantom Blood almost all lame (aside from Dio being funny sometimes), but I would still compare it positively to OPM.

I just remember seeing people praise OPM season one as being a standout in the way jojo was in terms of creativity and how fight scenes played out. I don't think that actually holds up fully, but I do get why someone would argue that it was closer to something like jojo than to the generic shonen slop of the 00s.