“Humanity was caught at a precipice a decade ago when the first gates—portals linked with other dimensions that harbor monsters immune to conventional weaponry—emerged around the world. Alongside the appearance of the gates, various humans were transformed into hunters and bestowed superhuman abilities. Responsible for entering the gates and clearing the dungeons within, many hunters chose to form guilds to secure their livelihoods.
Sung Jin-Woo is an E-rank hunter dubbed as the weakest hunter of all mankind. While exploring a supposedly safe dungeon, he and his party encounter an unusual tunnel leading to a deeper area. Enticed by the prospect of treasure, the group presses forward, only to be confronted with horrors beyond their imagination. Miraculously, Jin-Woo survives the incident and soon finds that he now has access to an interface visible only to him. This mysterious system promises him the power he has long dreamed of—but everything comes at a price.” – MAL Synopsis
Solo Leveling was a series that to me came out of nowhere and took a lot of people by storm when the manwha started releasing in 2018. Two years later, another very popular manwha, Tower of God, got a long awaited anime adaptation that I enjoyed enough to dedicate a week of my life to just eating, reading Tower of God all day, then sleeping, then repeat. After I caught up with that this series was always on my radar and even though watching anime fell to the wayside for me for about a year, I was excited when I saw this was getting released and after finishing it, I’m pleasantly surprised and excited to see it continue.
This anime scratches that itch that really only Sword Art Online has ever done for me in the past. It does a lot of what that anime did just as well or a bit better. I love the premise of this story with the gates popping up and hunters having to clear them. The video gamey aspects are already present in the world, so when Sung Jinwoo gets his powers, nothing feels out of place. All the deliberate game aspects feel right at home in this world. And it’s just cool to watch. I also enjoy how it doesn’t shy away to show the messed up logistics and hierarchy the hunter system creates with S tier hunters being so few and far between but desperately needed that they are essentially above the law. How most hunters do this to make a living but it’s a super dangerous job that can permanently alter someone’s life in every way, and also a point that’s hammered home multiple times is how in a dungeon there are no laws. I enjoyed how this anime dived into all of those aspects.
The main aspect that I didn’t like about how the world is established is the fact that people generally can never rank up, it just kind of bothered me as a gamer and someone who likes to progress in things in life, but that general hard cap on people’s abilities makes it even better to see Sung Jinwoo level up, to know about the possibilities of other’s potentially getting a second awakening, and also it makes hunters hone the skills that they have to perfection so the hard cap ultimately ended up working for me and is a solid done plot point.
The main plot focuses on Sung Jinwoo learning about his new powers, leveling up, physically and mentally changing, and honing his skills and navigating the world as this new person, really. I love the internal struggles he has with gaining this new power and the situations that the system forces him into. Multiple times it’s shown that he still has this “weakness” inside of him and as he levels up, he loses more and more of that, but the question is also asked that is it really weakness at all and is he losing himself? It’s interesting, I love his character, Aleks Le puts on an S tier performance brining out a wide range of emotions. Overall, the story mainly focuses on these aspects and it’s a great time.
The main side plot kind of gets a bit more focus as the season goes on, but there’s a whole mystery around an operation on Jeju Island, which I’m assuming a gate broke open and monsters are running wild. The beginning of the first episode shows part of a battle on the island and we’re slowly drip fed more info on the upcoming operation as the season progresses. There’s a revelation at the end of the season that’s kind of interesting. I’m more interested to see how and when these two plot lines merge and the fallout from that.
The action is chefs kiss. I hope this level of quality can be sustained throughout the upcoming seasons. It was a joy to watch all the action scenes unfold. The animation was clean and every hit just had that weighty impactful feeling, along with all the cool blood and gore. While the animation is clean, all of these fights are not. There are body parts getting chopped, sliced, shot through. People getting disintegrated. There are a lot of cool skills on display here and different types of enemies that are fought, so the variety was nice as well. Everything about the animation and fight scenes again tickled the right part of my brain that used to really love this stuff.
So yeah, Solo Leveling scratched a particular itch for me. On the surface, it is a really cool power fantasy that the teenager inside of me still loves to this day. But there are aspects deeper than that and I like how this show deals with them. It does teeter, and go over, that line of being edgy quite a few times, but it never really bothered me or was ever too much. And it takes the proper time to flesh out the pretty messed up logistics of this world and the dangers of being a hunter. How it can permanently affect people physically and mentally. I had an absolute blast watching this, and it’s taking everything in me to not read the entire series this weekend. Can’t wait for season 2, cause this season was a fun time.
Solo Leveling – 9/10
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