Solo Leveling vs. The Beginning After The End: Which Manhwa Is More Powerful?

Solo Leveling has emerged as one of the most popular recent animes. The series showcases a fascinating premise of skill augmentation, is full of battles, and has stunning animation, making Solo Leveling’s Season 2 one of the best upcoming animes.

The key to the series’ success was the popularity of its original manhwa, both in its country of origin, South Korea, and in many other territories. However, it was revealed that Solo Leveling’s manhwa has been surpassed in the U.S. by a big hit, The Beginning After the End.

Solo Leveling’s manhwa was a true mass phenomenon, considered by many to be one of the most popular. It also greatly boosted the manhwa industry, with a broad base of readers that only increased after the anime adaptation.

Despite these achievements, Solo Leveling has been surpassed in the U.S. as the most successful title on Kakao Entertainment’s webtoon platform for North America, Tapas, by its considered successor, the popular webcomic The Beginning After the End.

The Rise of The Beginning After the End

In an interview shared by the Chosun Daily, Kakao platform’s Global Story Business Division’s Head, Kang Jung-goo, recently highlighted Tapas’ top three webtoons by cumulative transaction amount, with the most successful title being The Beginning After The End, followed by Solo Leveling and A Business Proposal.

The Beginning After the End has over 36 million views on the platform, while Solo Leveling has over 23 million views. The fact that TBATE has gained that incredible amount of followers without an anime adaptation like Solo Leveling or Business Proposal, which had a popular live-action version, proves the incredible potential of the series.

Fans have often compared The Beginning of the End to Solo Leveling, and some even claim that this is its successor in popularity. While Solo Leveling takes place in a modern time and differs from The Beginning

After the End in that the main character isn’t reincarnated, they share many similarities, with both being fast-paced fantasy-oriented series with a charismatic main character, Sung Jinwoo, and Arthur Leywin, who seeks to get stronger, eventually becoming a powerhouse.

Also, both series manage concepts like magic, mana, beasts, and mages, feature intense battles, and are based on web novels. Solo Leveling was pivotal for Manhwas to gain international recognition for its simple yet engaging story that makes even beginner readers fall in love with the medium.

Also, Solo Leveling and TBATE stand out among other manhwas for their well-defined power systems where the protagonists become progressively stronger with dedication, avoiding the cliché power-ups present in other stories.

Jinwoo and Arthur rise thanks to their intellect and willpower, transforming into someone who can challenge everything established but still feel grounded, being easy to relate to their struggles. Additionally, Arthur’s journey is appealing because it allows the reader to discover a different time and world alongside him by being reborn as a baby.

But what both series do best and have guaranteed their success is that they leave the reader craving for more, as Solo Leveling includes numerous cliffhangers and TBATE features mind-blowing twists throughout the story, making them the perfect series to binge-read.

Cultural Influence and the Future of Manhwa Adaptations

While Solo Leveling is still unmatched as the top manhwa internationally, even after its finals, having over 14.3 billion cumulative views worldwide. The reason behind The Beginning after the End surpassing it in the U.S. is most likely due to cultural preference.

American readers have always shown enjoyment of heroic fantasy novels like The Lord of the Rings and The Kingkiller Chronicle, which had popularized western epics and is a genre that had shaped TBATE. Also, while Solo Leveling excels at hype battle scenes and stunning art style, TBATE engages on a story level due to its more mature plot and character dynamics.

This is due to TBATE adding another level of complexity to the story by developing more emotional connections between Arthur and the side characters, differing from Solo Leveling, which is more focused on Jinwoo.

However, even though Solo Leveling’s true successor is set to become an even bigger success once it’s officially released in English, TBATE still has a long road ahead, and with a renewed artist in season 6 and the recent popularity of the Isekai genre, the webcomic’s popularity could skyrocket in the future.

Although it is referred to as a manhwa by fans and readers, The Beginning After the End is an original English-language webcomic that follows a manhwa style. Based on a web novel by the Korean-American writer TurtleMe, the author’s influence crafted The Beginning After the End’s story to not be the typical isekai, mixing elements of Western and Eastern literature to resonate more with international readers.

In 2023, TBATE’s author shared on X that the series reached third place on Amazon’s bestsellers in the action and adventure fantasy category, reflecting its popularity in the U.S.

What makes The Beginning After the End especially even among its contemporaries is that it proves how distinct the aesthetic and storytelling style of manhwa is. The medium’s tropes and look are so codified that even an English-language original webcomic can be read as a manhwa, suggesting the medium’s definition is broader than fans might initially think.

Regardless of whether the series is or isn’t a manhwa though, its success is undeniable, especially given that it has already surpassed Solo Leveling, one of the medium’s true juggernauts.

Manhwa is growing huge across the world, and that dominance is easy to see in anime. Series like Solo Leveling, Tower of God, and Why Raeliana Ended Up At The Duke’s Mansion are all huge anime series with massive fandoms.

The fact that manhwa adaptations are competing side-by-side with adaptations of manga and light novels is proof that the medium has serious legs. The best anime adaptations of manhwa are proving quite successful for both mediums, bringing the stories and look of manhwa to a broader audience that might not have given those stories a chance otherwise.

Given the success of several big manhwa anime like the Tower of God, Viral Hit, and Lookism, more webcomics are being adapted, like Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint and Tomb Raider King, meaning that more titles could be announced in the future.

The Beginning After the End is increasingly being acknowledged and enjoyed by western readers, and it has already accumulated millions of views. If it gets an anime adaptation, The Beginning After the End could even surpass Solo Leveling worldwide and become an ever bigger international success.