Review: Solo Leveling Could Be The Next Big Anime, But It Starts Off Slow
Solo Leveling key art
This weekend, Solo Leveling is set to premiere on Crunchyroll, with The Seven Deadly Sins and Black Butler animation studio A-1 Pictures producing the anime based on a very popular Korean manhwa. Crunchyroll provided us with the first two episodes of the upcoming anime, and while it starts off slow and sometimes frustrating, there is a nugget of potential in there.
The world of Solo Leveling is an interesting one — years back, big portals started opening up, and monsters started pouring through them. As a result of this, though, some humans were imbued with magical energy, and those humans were turned into hunters, whose role in society is to enter the portals – which typically house dungeons – and stop the threat before it can break through into the human world.
Each hunter is assessed and given a rank, from E through to A, with the most powerful few hunters given an S ranking. A person’s power level is capped though, and once they’re assessed, it’s effectively impossible to move up in the ranks — a B rank will never be anything more or less than a B rank, and an E rank will be stuck there for life.
Solo Leveling follows Sung Jin-woo, who’s not only a lowly E rank hunter, but is known by hunters everywhere as the worst hunter of all time. His magical abilities are practically nonexistent, his skills are very much lacking, and he almost dies in every single mission he’s sent on. Basically, he’s the biggest loser of losers, but everyone treats him lightly, because they know if they get sent on missions with him, it’s probably going to be a very easy one.
From the get-go, Solo Leveling introduces us to a bunch of interesting characters, and so far, it seems like that’s one of the strengths of the anime. Not all of those characters make it out of the first episode – sorry, spoilers, but it’s unavoidable – but they are all fairly well written and nicely realized… though so far, its women seem to fall into some frustrating tropes. Hopefully that changes with later episodes.
Jin-woo and his party of fellow hunters are sent on a D rank mission – a little bit tough, but nothing unmanageable – and handily defeat the boss of that dungeon before discovering they’ve actually stumbled on a double dungeon. After taking a vote, they continue further into the dungeon, and just about everything goes wrong.
Crunchyroll
It’s a fine enough setup, I guess, but it’s not particularly innovative. Right at the end of the second episode, it looks like things are about to get a little bit more interesting, but unfortunately I only had access to those two episodes. I do have some concerns, though, and have identified a few nuggets of hope that, with any luck, could see Solo Leveling turn into something amazing.
My first major concern is that too much of the show is focused on shock value. We see people get sliced in half, have their arms blown off, get horribly bludgeoned, stabbed, and maimed, and while that is somewhat shocking the first time it happens, each subsequent time takes away the impact of that a little bit more. By the end of the second episode, I was largely desensitized to the wanton violence, and that means I just did not care when somebody was killed, even when that death is supposed to be important and impactful.
If the rest of the series follows this path, I honestly can’t see myself sticking with it. It’s not as if I don’t like violence in anime, when it’s done well it can be absolutely fantastic, but when it’s all violence from start to finish, I just stop caring. If that’s your kind of thing, then Solo Leveling is probably for you.
That said, there are signs of something cool beyond the violence. As previously mentioned, Solo Leveling’s characters are great, but its monsters are truly fascinating too. The major enemy at the end of the first double dungeon is along the lines of an eldritch god, terrifying and mysterious, able to convey deep terror with so few frames of animation and no dialogue at all. Exploring these kinds of fiends could be an interesting angle — I don’t know if that’s where this is going, but I hope there’s more of them.
Crunchyroll
The animation is also lovely, packed with style and color, despite a somewhat generic art style. The score does a lot of heavy lifting in setting the tone, too, making for an audiovisual experience that feels consistent and cohesive at worst and exciting and energetic at best.
Solo Leveling has a lot of hype around it, and it’s likely to attract a huge audience when it premieres this weekend. Hopefully, that audience finds more that they like than they dislike. Me? I’m still on the fence. I’ve seen some things I like, and a lot of things I don’t, and if the third episode in the series doesn’t hit the right notes, I can’t see myself keeping up every week.
