Discussion Novels/Mangas being called Solo Leveling ripoff

So first of all this is possibly my first post despite being having been on this platform for 6 years now so I still don’t know if I’m posting this in the right place.
SKIP THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH IF YOU WANT
So it’s over a year now since the Solo Leveling manga was first released (or at least translated into English) and since then the novel has also been fully translated and completed. This is one of the few mangas which I haven’t lost interest in despite having completed the English translated novel several times due to its amazing art style and it deserves all the praise and recognition its been receiving in the manga community. Recently, there’s been many more new manga/webtoons which share a similar style to solo leveling, possibly having been inspired by its success and popularity. What I find problematic about this however is that every new KR manga/novel now is being compared to solo leveling in the comments/reviews section. Ofc since it’s currently the most popular in that genre, every other manga/novel is being said to be inferior, followed by a list of reasons on why they think it’s a ripoff of Solo Leveling. To list a few, world setting (theme) is the same, protagonist has the same personality, necromancy is the same, leveling system is the same, etc.
However, as a novel reader on this platform, I’ve seen tons of other good KR novels which share many of said similarities and were released before Solo Leveling’s manga. Seoul Station’s Necromancer is strikingly similar for one and I remember commenting on how I felt Solo Leveling could’ve been a SSN 2.0.
The cold personality is just all over in CN novels, necromancy has been a popular trend among the Korean novels for as far as I can remember, the leveling system is basically everywhere and shouldn’t even be mentioned.
MY POINT STARTS HERE
One point that I do question however is the theme of awakened/hunters and dungeons/monsters. It’s also been popular in KR novels since like forever, but like I would like to know when this theme even started. Who first started it and when did it get popular? I did some research and apparently Solo Leveling started in 2014 and was published in 2015. Seoul Station’s Necromancer which I felt had many similarities also started in 2014 (Idk the month). If anyone knows any novels which share the same theme and possibly came before Solo Leveling please let me know. I’m tired of every novel/manga being called a ripoff of solo leveling’s ‘unique style’ despite being at the very least translated to English before the Solo Leveling manga was released. At the very least, I don’t feel comfortable with everyone acting as though Solo Leveling was the originator of this whole theme and calling every other webtoon a knockoff. If solo leveling was indeed the first to be published in Korea then please tell me as well.
Also, please tell me I’m not the only one being triggered by this.

 

Too triggered to read this wall of text rn.

 

Why weren't we given permission to skip the first paragraph?!?

 

Meh. I simply ignore those filthy casuals you can find them everywhere getting triggered or mad at them is simply not worth it

 

It should be Memorize released in 2012 started time travel and this dungeon trend for KR. There is a thread in SL subreddit by some Korean guy explaining Korean novels is where it was mentioned and I saw some translators mentioning the same.

For vrmmorpg, it should be legendary moonlight sculptor released in 2007.

 

I think .hack was the one that started the vrmmorpg thingy or at least one of the first

 

For Koreans, the trend starter should be those 2 but yeah I believe they are definitely not the first worldwide just the one which made those genres popular for Koreans. Anything successful gets copied a lot like isekai genre.

 

Solo leveling is like Monalisa of the Manhwa industry ,the art style is simply beautiful ,so why compare them to some trash novel/manhwa

 

People that don't know better will always assume their favorite series is the one to start it all off, and everyone else copied from them... Little do they know that many of the so called ripoffs are much older than their favorite series.

Don't worry too much about it, it's just idiots being idiots~

 

It's just the same old problem with one thing getting popular and then idiots treating that one thing as if it's the original and everything is a ripoff of it, like how Minecraft is a complete ripoff of Infiniminer and yet everything gets called a Minecraft clone.

Anything else I could say on the OP has already been said by others, probably started with LMS.

 

Just because Minecraft is a rip off of something else doesn't change the fact that a lot of the later rip offs are clones of Minecraft if that is their direct inspiration.
A rip-off of a rip-off doesn't necessarily count as a direct rip-off of the original.

 

Well, this thread is one big ripoff

 

Huge rabbit hole here if your trying to search for the original stuff. Everything started being inspired by something else and with a little added difference. Plus now a days with the internet what isn’t taken from something else...

 

To list a few of the mangas being called Solo Leveling copy: I am the Sorcerer King, Solo Auto-hunting, Solo Login, Kill the Hero, Tomb Raider King (I heard same artist but I’m not sure), Survival Story of a Sword King in a Fantasy World (honestly how are they even similar for this one)?! I don’t even know where to start with some of these... so for I am the Sorcerer King there’s the sick mom but then again doesn’t almost every Korean LN start like that? And the hunters/awakened system together with the monsters/dungeons is already in so many light novels like arrghhhhhhh!

This is probably the same as me going to go to a huge fan of Lord of the Rings and call it a knockoff of something like Goblin Slayer or in fact any random Isekai novel. Like WAT? What do you mean it’s a fantasy world with dwarves, elves, goblins and orcs??? What do you mean it’s such an overused stereotypical genre? I personally haven’t read LotR and honestly more interested in something like Goblin Slayer but at the very least I know that it’s one of the largest influencer for the modern day concept of a fantasy world. To compare them to one another is simply preposterous.

 

1/2 Prince is from 2004... Dream Park from 1981...

 

It'll be complicated to find what started this sort of theme, since it seems to be heavily based on games/gaming, which is big in Korea. So there might have been more than one novel written with a similar theme to solo leveling at the same time.

Another thing is that the theme of real world awakenings and dungeons is it's own thing now. Just finding the first novel with gaming elements wouldn't be the right answer, you need to find the first ones with this specific theme. And maybe they were never translated into english.

 

t's just the same old problem with one thing getting popular and then idiots treating that one thing as if it's the original and everything is a ripoff of it, like how Minecraft is a complete ripoff of Infiniminer and yet everything gets called a Minecraft clone.

 

I was about to rant on this exact same thing, but then I saw this post. Good to know I'm not the only sensible person here.
The reason I felt this way because on some manga apps comment section, those comment 'it is solo leveling rip off' almost always managed to get to the top comment.

 

This is like saying every Isekai that exists and will exist are SAO knock offs.

This doesn't bother me though, how exaggerated they might sound but they do have a point. Besides, it would be hypocritical of you to complain about something you've probably said before too.

"Every Xianxia is basically just the same"
"Oh a JP LN! I bet it has a beta male MC like the rest of them"

The only difference now is something you like is being compared to something mainstream, that you somehow felt obliged to hate for some unexplained reason.