Anime: Ore dake Level Up na Ken

Solo Leveling is your basic and generic wish fullfillment teenager story, but taking that premise to the extreme. The main character doesnt have a personality and the whole idea around him is the same as your usual +18 doujin, self inserting. There is no story, just a bunch of fights. Gotta say the animation is really nice but we are in 2025, even some comedy anime have really good animation and in a few years it will the usual.

Aside the good animation and cool fight scenes that the studio bring to the work there is nothing good about Solo Leveling. A random loser becomes a demigod with insane plot armor and smacks the ass of every bad guy. There are a few secondary characters like the girl that likes to smell Jinwoo, your mc. Jokes aside this girl is one of the most relevant side characters but she is empty, she and the rest of characters only exist to show how strong is the next mosnter that Jinwoo is gonna beat with ease. So basically the story revolves around him, but he isnt a good character, is almost impossible to connect to him and want to follow his journey. I just cant describe him , he is just a doujin mc even his face looks similar.

I cant say a lot about this show because there is nothing to say. If this is considered the best manwha i understand why the people disrespect the genre. If you are a teenager/kid that didnt watch any piece of media ever i recommend this show because i always recommend starting with bad shows. If you want to turn off your brain and watch some eye candy I also recommend it. There are no emotions, no romance, no slice of life, no strategies, no nothing is just an average novelty shonen storyboard. Not recommended if you want a good show and kinda scary to see this in a high spot, but is suposse the manwha kids are in this page too, truly a shame.

"On the outside, there's this awesome image, but on the inside, there is filth."

This series was fairly entertaining at first, but it got old real fast. To start with the positive aspects, it has great art and paneling in the manhwa, especially when there's a fight scene going on. Oh, and Cha Hae-In's design is beautiful. In this adaptation, they hired Sawano Hiroyuki to compose the soundtracks and A-1 picture's animation and art is beautiful and well animated. There's also the well animated fight scenes, which is a shame since the fight lacks tension due to reasons I'll mention later. However, it's a vapid piece of shit series.

This series combines two deadly things for me; style over substance and little to no enjoyment. A anime/manga doesn't need to super deep like Shakespearean lit., but at least enjoyable or fun to watch/read, something SL doesn't have decency to do. It starts with the MC being a weakling and eventually becoming stronger and finally the overpowered sigmalord. My main problem is that the plot is the same shit over and over again: level up and get stronger, level up and get stronger, and level up and get stronger....again, making the series also repetitive and dull. At the end, I got real tired of reading it that I felt like quitting.

As for the characters, Jin Woo is the only one that matters, which ruins Solo Leveling even more. A lot of battle shounen have trouble managing huge casts (Naruto and Jujutsu Kaisen for instance), but at least the mangakas put some effort into making them relevant and having the strong and competent characters actually be strong and competent. This series on the other hand makes the S-rank hunters useless and incompetent in the face of actual threats in order to make Sung Jin woo have the spotlight to himself. A shame, since Cha Hae-In for instance would be special in a better series. Jin Woo is also an extremely vapid character. He only serves as wish fulfillment for the viewer and there's zero characterization or more dimension to him. I cannot recall any significant trait of his that isn't being a gigachad sigmalord, because who needs depth, characterization, or any potentially interesting traits when you can easily generate hype and kewl fighting scenes?

Worst of all ,Jin Woo being immensely overpowered also ruins fights. Outside of the first arc where he was an under-leveled scrub, there was actual tension and a sense of danger he faced, which quickly goes out the window. How can they be engaging when every single one of them results in Jin Woo easily overpowering the enemy? All in all, I do not recommend this. Spend your time watching an actual good action series instead.

To give proper justice to Solo Leveling anime, the animation must be top notch. The action scenes are the main attraction here and one would it’s the only one.

So the first episode set quite a rough start. Somehow, A-1 Pictures managed to turn everything more… bland. And I’m not just talking about how they Kiritoized Jinwoo. The whole setting just screams generic, the lightning is all wrong and dull. And it’s not just the first episode, the fights aren’t engaging for a good half of the series. Now to give credits where due, the fight against Kang had a few good moments and the final fight against Igris was all good. But here lies the problem the level of quality the studio finally managed to achieve in the last to the final episode should have been the bare minimum for all fights to even have a chance to be a decent adaptation.

Okay, I get it, I’ll stop with only comparing it to the original. So, how fares just the story? Very obviously it’s a power fantasy, and not very inspired one. The absolute most weakling gets chosen by the system, steroided up and suddenly he’s getting more and more overpowered, desired by the women while sticking to the sigma grindset (can’t show him actually pursuing the girls as that would break the literally me immersion). Not great, but not exactly terrible. It clearly aims for the younger teenager audience and if you belong in that demographic and enjoy Solo Leveling, you’re not wrong doing so. However, the audience that already had their fill of this kind of storytelling is unlikely to get satisfied with just that. It certainly doesn’t help that some parts of the already unsatisfying worldbuilding got cut off to simplify the anime.

I’ll be honest, I’m not anything like a diehard fan of the original – but the potencial for a great action packed series was certainly there, especially if they go off by the novel rather than the webtoon. What it needed was some change to the ambience and framing to make the tone more sinister and dangerous, and slap some really good storyboarding on the action encounters. There are plenty of moments that could be great if they got some classic ufotable treatement. Or really at least more sakuga moments in general.

Talking about changes, the Japanese localization is silly. It’s usually Japan that gets localized, but they are the perpetrators this time. Changing the character names to random Japanese names makes no sense. Like, not even on surface level of “there is no reason to do this”, there is actually a large story significance to the main cast being Korean while some other characters being Japanese. At first I thought this meant the studio would for sure have no plan to adapt that part of the story and we’ll only get one season. But 2nd part was already announcent, so this might be… interesting.

Basically they took a work that already desn’t have the best of stories and gave it the generic isekai seasonal treatement. It's mediocre, but there is an audience for it. Though personally I think the overall ratings would be much lower if this didn't have an already pre-eexisting fanbase.

Preface
Solo Leveling is the most eagerly anticipated anime of Winter 2024, mostly because it faced minimal competition from new releases. Hype aside, it still got eclipsed by the ongoing success of Frieren from the previous season and it is a fairly standard power fantasy that got fervently praised by fans of the web comic. As is usually the case with fans they want you to believe it’s some subversive masterpiece, although it does nothing that its predecessors haven’t already explored, often with superior execution. Furthermore, its glaringly apparent flaws provide plenty of reasons for the average watcher to disengage.

1) It’s needlessly padded out
Something everyone who seeks a good power fantasy will notice early on, is that it doesn’t begin as one. It takes its time in establishing the setting and the rules and the major characters before becoming a power fantasy after 4 episodes. This deliberate pacing may prove off-putting to audiences desiring immediate gratification through seeing the protagonist doing cool stuff right from the start (think of One Punch Man for example). Also, despite the slow buildup the show falters in establishing the basics of its premise.
- The setting is an augmented version of our mundane reality, infused with isekai portals and superhuman abilities. It doesn’t differ in the slightest despite a decade of constant monster invasions and people walking around with the ability to demolish concrete walls. Beyond the superficial addition of a hunter association, it doesn’t reflect any substantive shifts in geopolitics, the global economy, or societal norms. It’s lazily made and doesn’t deserve any time in elaborating how it functions.
- The mechanics governing videogame powers and superhuman abilities, along with the hierarchical ranking system, are conveyed with no nuance. They are the most basic representation of an MMO or a D&D player’s handbook, which might have been cool to follow in the early 2000s along with other titles doing the same such as .hack and Gantz, but now it’s ever-present in our pop culture. It became understandable through mere osmosis and there is little reason to explain its most basic features.
- The characters are as one-dimensional as they get. They are all defined by a singular character trait, such as the hunters only caring about hunting, or the protagonist’s sister being a worrying sister. They have no life outside of the single idea the author bothered to have when he conceived them, so once again they don’t deserve any elaboration. Then the director opens his own can of worms and persists in interrupting action sequences to afford glimpses into the inconsequential activities of minor characters somewhere far away, thus needlessly diluting the narrative focus.

2) Its explanations work against it
The series’ sluggish pacing works against it, and the more it tries to explain its world and powers the more it exacerbates the shortcomings of its world-building and power system. It would be a more satisfying viewing experience if no explanations were given and more screen time was allocated to the action scenes. You know, the main appeal of the show? The revelation that hunters must personally finance their equipment and they undertake perilous dungeon delves merely to pay the bills (it’s literally mentioned on the intro song), can make you wonder why would low-ranking hunters, such as the protagonist in the beginning of the show, persist in risking their lives when more lucrative and less hazardous employment opportunities exist. Flipping burgers or gathering trash would earn them more money and there would be no risk.

3) The action is constantly interrupted
The best parts of the show are, as you can imagine, the dungeon battles. They have all the pulse-pounding action and captivating moments anyone would be watching such a show for. Regrettably, these highlights are marred by constant interruptions just to explain new mechanics or to show us inconsequential characters in faraway locations, thus ruining whatever hype you might be experiencing at that moment. They are also filled with a lot of questionable moments, such as the complete lack of safety protocols that result in an unacceptably high casualty rate. They just deploy a bunch of people, completely unprotected and unmonitored, thus it’s very easy for anyone to die because he does something risky or, even worse, to kill his fellow hunters and run away with their gear and loot without anyone questioning what actually happened.

4) The videogame terminology works against it
The infusion of videogame terminology can cater to gamers, yet unwittingly creates a jarring dissonance for everyone else. Having statistic screens with levels and numbers and abilities may lend a certain allure within the confines of a virtual world, but when applied on the real-world such elements become a detriment. The reason we need statistic screens in videogames is because we can see and hear, but we don’t experience pain, emotions, or hunger as we do in reality. That is why numerical indicators for health, emotional state, and fatigue serve a vital purpose. However, when we are in the real world these metrics become redundant since we do feel pain, emotions, and hunger. Such videogame mechanics make sense in, let’s say, Sword Art Online, but not in Solo Leveling. It’s why the protagonist’s incessant monitoring of his health bar or fatigue gauge was making me eye-roll. It underscored his detachment from his own bodily sensations, as if he had no idea if he was tired or not. Also, being heavily injured is simply more natural than saying ‘My hit points are down to 18%’.

5) The protagonist lacks agency
Beyond its superficial appeal, the videogame aesthetics employed in Solo Leveling also strip the protagonist of free will and agency. His actions are dictated by the videogame system, rendering him a mere pawn in its machinations. Choices presented by the system are illusory at best, since they simply ask him if he accepts to do something or be severely punished. Do your daily quests or get chased around by monsters! Complete this special quest, or die! Your health is down, so buy potions! There’s nothing to actually choose in any of that. By extension, the protagonist’s accomplishments feel staged and unearned, since he would have never done anything without the enforcement of the system.

6) Character development is sudden and artificial
Any changes to the protagonist’s personality are artificial for a similar reason, since they too are imposed by the system rather than arising organically from within. They are also fairly sudden, which comes off as extra jarring when the pacing is overall glacial. The protagonist literary becomes a different person in an instant.
- His motivation changes from making money to hiding his power that would earn him more money by going to harder missions.
- The animators go as far as changing his facial structure completely.
- The voice actor speaks with an entirely different tone.
Then the viewer is expected to be fine with all that. How about no, since they were both artificial and sudden?

7) Moral dilemmas are hollow
Any attempts at moral dilemma also ring hollow. Scenes where the protagonist has to choose between killing people or dying himself have no real choice, especially when the people he had to kill were already about to kill him. Furthermore, said people were portrayed as one-dimensional evil bad guys, made to be hated. The animators went as far as giving them demonic eyes and sadistic smiles in case you missed how obviously evil they were. A leader’s name was Sucks Dong, in case you weren’t given enough reasons to hate this guy.

The writer wasn’t even trying to make these guys redeemable, yet he expected the viewer to take such scenes as life-changing. When you portray people as monsters that deserve to be killed, there is nothing for the audience to consider and therefore there is no real dilemma. The so-called loss of humanity the protagonist undergoes whenever he kills people means nothing since, as stated before, he made no actual choice, and on top of that he did it all for money.

8 ) The protagonist is not an underdog but a cheater
Down to it, the protagonist was designed to be a blank slate for gamers to project themselves onto, but this inherent lack of agency detracts from his appeal, rendering him a bland archetype devoid of genuine depth or charisma. Undoubtedly, there is an audience for bland-looking self-inserts who get constantly betrayed by society and then get constantly more powerful so they can extract their revenge. The main issue with this bland-looking self-insert in specific is that he is not an underdog or a victim as many fans like to portray him as.
- He is the only one who can level up in this show, so you can’t call him something that can’t apply to anyone else.
- He is not a victim when the hunter association allowed him to be a hunter and all his teammates (including the ones who wanted to kill him) were very welcoming. Nobody denied him the chance to participate or to prove his worth through his accomplishments.
- In reality he is a cheater, since he doesn’t tell anyone how he gets stronger and he has several unfair advantages over everyone else. No other hunter is given a life-saving full recovery in the middle of the battle, or the option to buy potions as he is dying. It’s not the system giving him the chance to get stronger. It’s the system being rigged so he will be the only one who gets favored by it, thus becoming stronger while everyone else is kept in the dark (and dies because of it).

9) Grinding and training are filler
The portrayal of training within the series serves as further evidence of its narrative inconsistencies. There is a portion of anime fans who get motivated by seeing characters training and getting stronger, as if they are gym rats. This show in particular should have the opposite effect, since training sequences in Solo Leveling lack significance. The protagonist’s exclusive access to leveling renders the efforts of secondary characters futile. Gym rat scenes, intended to evoke motivation and empowerment, not only contradict the in-story rules but also come off as useless filler. Even if it wasn’t so, training scenes in general are looked down upon by most fans of power fantasies. They tend to find them boring and they skip them, aiming to get to the outcome right away for that sweet dopamine fix. That is why most power fantasies begin with the protagonist being the most powerful since the very beginning. Nobody cares to see him grind. They want to see him being awesome. In this regard Solo Leveling fails spectacularly by not delivering on the genre’s expectations.

Conclusion
Solo Leveling is nothing special when it comes to power fantasies. Its badly implemented videogame tropes, coupled with intrusive interruptions to its action sequences, diminish its overall impact. Furthermore the nonsensical claims of the webcomic fans are just icing on the cake of how blatantly obvious the seasonal hype over this nothingburger series is, during a season with no real competition. And even then it still pales in comparison to Frieren, a cozy slice of life about an elf gmilf. Solo Leveling is not unlike anything we’ve seen before, it’s not the best power fantasy, it’s not the best webcomic, and it doesn’t have the best written characters in human history. It’s junk food, a forgettable time-waster at best, gassed up by people who don’t read or don’t care about quality writing and just want to self-insert into a cheater who uses the most generic videogame mechanics imaginable.