Animation producer Atsushi Kaneko talks about keeping his morale up on Season 2 of A-1, Aniplex and Crunchyroll’s award-winning anime in which Sung Jin-woo, once the world’s weakest hunter, must battle to obtain the Elixir of Life to save his sick mother.
Nominated for 13 Crunchyroll Awards and winner of Anime of the Year, Best New Series, Best Action and Best Score, Solo Leveling is also eligible for Emmy nomination voting, which began yesterday, June 12 and runs through June 23. Utilizing Sony's Mocopi motion capture system for most of the animation, the show is packed with action, gore, and mystifyingly beautiful animation. So, it makes sense to learn that the production hours for the artists were packed as well.
For A-1 animation producer Atsushi Kaneko, he had two personal remedies to keep his morale up for the last two seasons.
“Personally, what I need to do for myself is listen to music and drink alcohol,” says Kaneko candidly. “Those things make it easy to maintain my motivation. But in terms of extending that upkeep of motivation to the creators, the animators, designers, directors and the artists, a mindset that I try to keep as a producer is that this is all about establishing an environment of trust.”
Directed by Shunsuke Nakashige and produced by A-1, Aniplex and Crunchyroll, Solo Leveling is adapted from Chugong’s South Korean fantasy web novel of the same name. The story takes place in a world where “hunters” – human warriors with supernatural abilities – must battle deadly monsters to protect mankind from annihilation. Protagonist Sung Jin-woo is among the weakest of the hunters and, despite his endless struggle for survival, continues to hunt to support his younger sister while their mother is in a coma. One day, after Jin-woo barely survives a dangerous assignment, a mysterious program called “the System” chooses him as its sole player, giving him a unique ability to level up in strength.
Enjoy the Season 1 trailer:
… and the Season 2 trailer:
Knowing how many combat sequences were in store, and how the show's animation would also need to be “leveled up,” Kaneko intently looked for artists he knew could handle the pressure. But he also knew it was his job to foster an environment where their skills could soar.
“I'm recruiting these people, and my job actually begins the moment I approach them and say, ‘This is the project. This is what we want to do,’” says Kaneko. “Among our team members, there’s a really talented artist who will walk up and say, ‘I need to take a walk,’ then he’ll disappear for three hours. I try to make sure that the studio environment enables and empowers that type of behavior but also enables creative flow and conversation.”
One key animator, Atsushi Yonezawa, even programmed a Nintendo Switch controller to work with his animation software so he could access various tools and shortcuts left-handed while he worked. Three-hour walks and animating via Switch are not common methods of production but Kaneko says, if he’s done his job correctly, and recruited the right people, “that kind of trust pays off.”
“All I can do is trust and help create as much time as possible for the creative team to be able to extend their minds,” he says. “And, hopefully, it all comes together.”
There also had to be trust between Kaneko and the show’s other producers: Sota Furuhashi from Aniplex and Kanako Takahashi from Crunchyroll.
“There were many times where I would have a drink with Furuhashi-san, and he would act as my counselor or sounding board,” shares Kaneko. “I think there were a lot of moments where Furuhashi-san was worried because he had to trust me. He's seen me in many different states and to still trust me through all of that and trust that we would be able to deliver the anime at a high quality, speaks to his resilience.”
Takahashi adds, “And then I had to trust Furuhashi. This is one of the first joint ventures between Aniplex and Crunchyroll and it was my first time working with Furuhashi-san.”
Furuhashi admits that, to Kaneko’s point, he did have worries of his own, but not because of Kaneko.
“When I read the original source material for Solo Leveling, and I came up with the idea of adapting this into an anime, it was terrifying and humbling to see so many people moving to create this anime,” shares Furuhashi. “But now there's also a sense of relief, because everyone ultimately turned it into something that was so well received and I'm able to bring this reception back home to the people that I helped put into motion on this anime.”
Each episode of the anime took several months to animate with nine key frames equating to less than two seconds of animation. Part of the reason the process was so tedious was due to character design.
“I believe the character design was very difficult for animators to go heavy into that action, because the characters are very stylish, especially our protagonist, with long legs and everything,” explains Kaneko. “So, to make him and the other hunters run, jump, and perform action is really difficult. The creative team that was assembled had a lot of different individual perspectives and sensibilities. But it was the coming together of that collective force that resulted in the solution to create very dynamic, action-oriented, heavy movement in those battle scenes, with deformed, stretched out bodies and facial expressions so you could feel the momentum while watching.”
Takahashi adds, “By the time Crunchyroll got involved, there were some visuals at that point, and a trailer. Once I saw the trailer, the quality spoke for itself. That helped build a foundation of trust, and everything beyond that only served to increase the amount of trust Crunchyroll had in Aniplex and the animation team at A1.”
Once production was rolling on Season 2, there was enough comfortability within the creative team for Solo Leveling’s line producer to request something a bit out of the box: for one key animator to produce all the first stage key frames for Episode 19.
“That rumor is true, but there's a nuance to it,” says Kaneko. “One person didn't animate everything. In our production pipeline, there are three stages of animation: the first key animation, the second key animation, and then the third stage where you create all the in-between frames. But, yes, one key animator did all the first key animations for Episode 19. This happened because the line producer, who is in charge of making sure production stays on time and on budget, had a very long-standing relationship with this particular animator and trusted their abilities.”
A good portion of Episode 19 does consist of more mellow, everyday life events but wraps with a good amount of action as Jin-woo once again enters the demon realm to fight one monster after the next in hopes of gaining an elixir that could heal his mother.
“This line producer negotiated with me, ‘Hey, since we have some more time, I think we can try something where this single animator can do all the first keyframes for an entire episode,’” recalls Kaneko. “And given all the challenges that we were taking on with this project, I thought, ‘Well, you know what? If you're going to go this far and negotiate with me, let's give it a shot.’”
Later, for Episode 21 when Jin-woo’s mother eventually awakes from her coma, director Nakashige took it upon himself to do the keyframes solo. Pun intended.
“One of the peak dramatic moments across Season 1 and Season 2 is when Jin-woo’s mother recovers and the conversation between the two of them is the first time we actually see tears from Jin-woo,” notes Furuhashi. “Director Nakashige-san put a lot of effort into making sure that scene came together. He did the keyframes to make sure none of that drama was lost in the translation from source material to animation and to acting.”
Amazingly enough, for some episodes, like Episode 18 where Jin Woo faces off against the orc shaman Kargalgan, the voice acting performances that were so good the animation was adjusted to match the level of the performance.
Kaneko’s personal favorite performance goes back to Season 1, Episode 8.
“There’s a scene in there where Lee Joohee, the B-class healer and first romantic interest, is on the phone with her mom and she's thinking about quitting and going back home,” notes Kaneko. “Before this scene, in the Japanese version, Joohee’s been speaking in a Tokyo-style accent this whole time. But in that moment, when she's on the phone with her mom, she speaks in a Western Osaka dialect. That's a moment where we see her being very vulnerable and raw. There's something interesting about a young woman trying to find her way in this world and almost overextending, trying so hard, but still able to be vulnerable in front of their mom. It makes for a very strong, dramatic moment.”
Solo Leveling is the first award-winning show Kaneko has produced, and though he doesn’t want to jinx it, believes, at this moment, the anime is “the highlight of my career.”
“I feel like we've achieved something great and I'm very humbled and honored to have come this far,” says Kaneko. “But a reality that comes with that is I don't know if this type of movement or phenomena can be recreated, not through me anyway. Of course, I love doing what I did, but looking at my future career, I think I'm a little nervous about if I can make this happen again. But I am very proud of what we’ve all achieved.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
