Solo Leveling Season 2 is arguably the peak show of the Winter 2025 season, as fans are eagerly tuning in every week to see Sung Jinwoo use his overpowered Shadow Monarch skills to defeat whoever stands in front of him. The series has become an international phenomenon, akin to the levels of Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer, despite having a fraction of the episodes of the two longer-running shows. While the series is immensely popular, the entire fan base seems to have the same complaint about the new season.
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Solo Leveling is far from perfect storytelling. At the risk of igniting the wrath of the fan base, many of the side characters are severely underwritten, many of the battles lack any real stakes as we know Jinwoo is one of the most powerful people on Earth, and some of the power scaling among the S-ranks makes no sense. But that’s not what the fans are fixated on. Instead, we’re going to analyze a strange phenomenon that has occurred with the show’s second season, and it’s making fans mad: the
Solo Leveling Fans Have One Major Complaint: Pacing
Picture the scene: it’s Saturday, you’ve got your snacks, the newest episode of Solo Leveling has just been released and you sit down to watch it. You can’t help but bop along to the OP by LiSa and Felix and are gearing up for Jinwoo to get even stronger. Then, within a single heartbeat, that aggravating end credit sequence rolls. Where did the episode go? What happened to the last 20 minutes of your life?
Throughout Season 2’s run, many fans have taken to social media to discuss and share the Solo Leveling phenomenon. Over the past few weeks, the internet has been ablaze with influencers sharing their frustration and memes about the speed at which the newest episodes fly by. From the perspective of A-1 Pictures, it’s a good thing that the episodes are so good that time flies. But, fans are angry, especially because each episode ends on a MAJOR cliffhanger, like a glimpse at the Ant King’s eyes.
animecorner on X recently shared a post (above) about the Solo Leveling phenomenon with the iconic disappointed face meme. They’re not the only ones, as dozens of fans online have created their own memes and shorts about this effect. On TikTok, users like mario_nehmeh have created much longer videos expressing the range of emotions they feel when a new episode is released. That video has over 200k likes, with thousands in the comments agreeing with him, shown below:
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Why Solo Leveling‘s Episodes Feel So Quick
We’ve all had the experience of sitting down to watch the newest episode of our favorite anime, and it feels like it’s over just as quickly as it began. But, in the case of Solo Leveling, that feeling has been expanded tenfold. So why do the new episodes feel like they’re flying by so fast?
The most apparent factor is the nature of Solo Leveling’s story and its structure. A-1 Pictures’ anime is based on the light novel by Chugong, with an emphasis on the word “light.” The series doesn’t strive for any grand philosophical storytelling, nor does it slow its pacing down with quieter, more intimate character moments. Solo Leveling has back-to-back action that emphasizes the rule of cool. Each episode jumps from one epic scene to another, with a lot happening in each episode, both in terms of the overall story and the action. Because of this relentless narrative pace, it can make the episodes feel much faster than a slower anime with more subtext.
The reason why the episodes feel like they race to the finish is so frustrating for fans boils down to two main points. Firstly, fans watch each episode with the knowledge that Season 2 will only run for 13 episodes, meaning we’re already getting far fewer episodes than we want each season. Secondly, and most importantly, the series has perfected the art of the end-of-episode cliffhanger. Season 2, Episode 10 is easily the most egregious example, as it cut the credits when the Ant King decimated his first S-rank hunter like they were powerless. The show infamously sets up the coolest action scene yet and then pulls the rug out from underneath us with another week-long wait.
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