Changes made to content
... humanize him a bit, make him less of aMarryMary Sue than he otherwise would in a power fantasy anime...
... light of a far more dangerous level of society.⏎ James Beckett ⏎ Rating: 2.5 ⏎ The first season of Solo Leveling started out with a lot of promise, featuring stellar production ⏎ values and a fairly strong vision for its interpretation of the “Humans from Regular Earth Explore ⏎ RPG-Styled Fantasy Dungeons” routine. Jinwoo Sung also made for a relatively compelling ⏎ protagonist, as we spent more than the standard five or so minutes with him in his life as a ⏎ pathetic E-Rank Hunter before his reawakening grants him his silly RPG Stats Menu and his ⏎ new, godlike powers. At the time, I felt like the show was establishing itself as a kind of platonic ⏎ ideal for what this sort of anime can be, especially when it isn't setting out to rewrite any genre ⏎ conventions or attempt any particularly exciting storytelling. ⏎ Sadly, as the first season went along, it squandered a lot of that potential, and eventually those ⏎ consistently excellent production values were the only things distinguishing it from its many ⏎ mediocre competitors. The first episode of the show's second season shows no signs of ⏎ reversing this downward slope in quality, either, which is a damned shame. Solo Leveling could ⏎ have easily become a staple of reliably exciting fantasy spectacle, the kind of thing that you ⏎ watch every week simply because it's too much fun to ignore. Instead, it's become yet another ⏎ anime that will likely find its most enduring legacy in YouTube compilations of its best action ⏎ scenes. After all, it's not like anything happening in between those cool bits is worth watching in ⏎ the slightest. ⏎ The biggest issue that is bringing Solo Leveling down so low (heh) is its main character, Jinwoo ⏎ Sung. Simply put, he's devolved into the most somniferous, robotic, and two-dimensional kind of ⏎ anime protagonist, where he speaks almost every line as if he's some exhausted ASMR ⏎ influencer who is only even doing the job because he has literally no other marketable skills, ⏎ and every other character in the show exists on some level just to validate his confidence and ⏎ lack of effort. The one mildly interesting plot development of this whole episode is the return of ⏎ Jinah's E-Rank friend as a kind of mentee for Jinwoo, and while I was interested to see if she ⏎ could provide even a little bit of friction or meaningful character interaction that might make ⏎ Jinwoo seem more recognizably human, it quickly becomes obvious that she's only around to ⏎ be the starry-eyed NPC that leaps into the hero's arms at the first sign of danger and gets head- ⏎ pats for being such a good little girl. I'm 90% certain that the show doesn't even bother ⏎ reminding anyone of what her name is, just in case you were wondering if we're even supposed ⏎ to care. ⏎ Speaking of things we cannot be bothered to care about, the premiere continues the first ⏎ season's other unfortunate habit of constantly cutting back to the dozen or so ancillary ⏎ characters that exist on the margins of Jinwoo's orbit as government threats and evil mafia ⏎ types, only for them to do literally nothing but stall for time and talk a big game until the episode ⏎ ends. Maybe the one good thing I can say about Solo Leveling at this point: It ⏎ doesn't suck, exactly. It's merely boring as hell when it isn't sporadically providing you with ⏎ something shiny to look at.