Why you shouldn’t miss out on Solo-leveling’s anime adaptation.

By Manas Ravulapalli

Spoilers Ahead. Please Watch Solo-Levelling before continuing.

Seriously! If you are not convinced about watching it, please go ahead!

Arise.

Hopefully by the end of this article I will have convinced you to watch solo leveling, and when you do watch it, please do come back to get goosebumps. For those of you who have watched the anime till the latest episode, please read Webtoon too! It deserves the popularity that it gets.

Solo-leveling in some ways is the ray of hope that many urban-action-fantasy anime fans have been looking forward to. The ray of hope, which is adapted from the webtoon of similar name, which is extremely popular in the webtoon community for its insane action sequences and the charisma that the main character exhibits. Long time anime fans would agree to the fact that the genre that is urban fantasy has been slowly decaying and has only revived with the help of Jujutsu Kaisen. However, since the end of season two of Jujutsu Kaisen the genre has again started dipping slowly. Making good anime in this genre is hard: animation is the easy part, but finding a good story is difficult. Fortunately, the industry found a solution, by adapting solo leveling into an anime.

Solo-leveling is set in modern day Seoul where the entire world is overrun with scary monsters from fantasy coming to earth via dungeons, and to protect earth humans evolved to hunters. There are rankings of hunters based on their power level, and it is not possible to increase power level.

Our Main character Sung Jin Woo or SJW as commonly called is the ‘weakest hunter in the world’ and for the first few episodes we see him struggle through even killing the weakest mobs and being a complete burden to the team of hunters only assisting in collecting loot and in general being a burden.

Honestly, it's painful to watch, because every time we expect him to have some secret power to overpower the monsters, we are just disappointed. However, the anime highlights the more underlying reasons which solidly set the character that SJW is. In the way, he is resilient due to the responsibility on his shoulders of taking care of his mother’s hospital bills and educating his sister due to losing his father. It shows us a human side of character that is relatable due to happening in the modern world, it helps the watchers sympathize with him. The author sets it up in such a way that from the beginning we get rooted in the character that is SJW and motivate us to believe in him.

Lo and behold, due to some exceptional circumstances and facing a near-death experience, our KJW finally awakens a secret power. Ultimately, he aims to defy his doubters and assert their rightful place—a common storyline. Yet, disappointingly, the scene is set with a man committing to a daily regimen of running 10 kilometers, coupled with 100 push-ups, 100 pull-ups, and 100 sit-ups—a subtle reference to One Punch Man. Even when he gets the opportunity to fight stronger enemies, he fails and struggles heavily. However, as he gains experience throughout the fight, the action just builds up and up until it reaches this point where when he kills the monster the satisfaction is just immaculate.

Okay so the fights are satisfying, the plot is good? Is that it? Well, what solo leveling offers is a bit more complex. An offer to follow a journey of a hero who becomes overpowered in a way where we still see how much he struggles and works hard to reach the position. We see his human side, how much he cares about his family and companions, and his reaction to experiences which put his family in danger. Since, the story progression is usually slower than other anime, it gives us time to bond over him and his cast of companions. Eventually you might be able to get the satisfaction when he finally succeeds in his goal if he does.