Throughout 2025, a gray cloud haunted Solo Leveling's success. Even though Season Two broke the internet and crowned Sung Jinwoo as the king of action on Western platforms like Crunchyroll, there was a persistent narrative: "They don't want him in Japan." Low Blu-ray sales and out-of-context commentary suggested that the work, which originated in South Korea, had been ignored by local audiences.
That perception has been shattered today thanks to official year-end data from U-NEXT, one of Japan's largest streaming platforms. According to its official 2025 ranking, Solo Leveling was crowned the third most watched anime of the entire year on the service. This achievement is monumental, as it means that the series surpassed local heavyweights such as Dandadan, Kaiju No. 8, and Dr. Stone.
The only two anime that managed to surpass Jinwoo's adventures were Sakamoto Days and The Apothecary Diaries (Kusuriya no Hitorigoto), two massive cultural phenomena. This directly contradicts the pessimistic narrative that emerged when producer Atsushi Kaneko mentioned that the series was "not yet at the level of Dragon Ball or One Piece."
It is clear that, although the Japanese do not buy so many physical records anymore, they are definitely watching the series massively. The supposed "coldness" of the Japanese public towards adapted manhwa seems to be a thing of the past.
