Solo Leveling

I'm not typically the type of channel that does straight reviews but I've got to pay the bills the bills so here we are Can't Remember to Forget little boy who lost the bet now I'm raking up the kills I've got to pay the bills the bills be grateful what you get is a way to hit reset give you more than just a leg off the hook I'm God Lev solo leveling premiered to Great fanf Fair during the winter 2024 season it was called good fun good anime and good fun anime by far the most popular

show of its season on Mal solo leveling brought its adrenaline fueled fight scenes and oo Innovative video game aesthetic to a throng of ravenous nerds and said lo my child Su of my breast and be saded in your wants based on the web tune of the same name solo leveling continues in the tradition of tower of God by providing the viewer with an intriguing world full of fun characters who are thrust into the background so that we can focus all of our attention on possibly the most boring super special boy protagonist to ever grace my

television screen for more than 40 minutes you may think that that is me overstating my displeasure with the series in order to create engagement on YouTube which is my job no despite a remarkably strong opening in a world that is brimming with potential for fans of all kinds whether your fancies get tickled by complicated political webs or distressingly large spider webs solo leveling quickly Falls victim to rampant power scaling and sacrifices every part of its story that could hold any emotional weight so that special boy can cut his way through an improbably boring list of

generic monsters I would never begrudge anybody going into this series because they they want to watch Kito fight big snake get new power fight big dog but no going in that that is the only thing this series is interested in giving you because it will try to trick you it'll say look at this tense and engaging dungeon design don't you want to see more of that look at all these cool characters with conflicting motivations who are imp positions of power don't you want to sit through this boring SLO in hopes that our protagonist somehow stumbles

his way into their orbit so you can at least see more of them but you do not see more of them because you give up on the show around episode 6 when it becomes clear that it only cares about sucking on special boy system until he levels up all over the casting crew here are the numbers you care about if you want a more in-depth review listen on I'll try to make it funny failing feeling all those days are dead there's no railing ceiling let's get it in a world where the conveniences of Modern Life

are often disrupted by the inopportune appearance of portals to a dimension full of monsters Kirito s is trying his best to eek out a living by raiding these portals killing the people there stealing their things and returning home with his life he is part of an Elite Class of human beings called Hunters yes really who have awakened magic powers that allow them to fight the monsters in the portals who are immune to Conventional weaponry and face punching problem is that Cito has garnered a rather unfortunate reputation as the weakest Hunter of all mankind since he

has all the special powers of a regular human who just so happens to be physically capable of poking a goblin in the eye with a knife when Kyo becomes part of a strike team that unknowingly decides to take on a dungeon well above their paygrade he acquires a new ability the ability to acquire new abilities and also to level up video game style he has a stat screen that only he can see and killing enough monsters gives him points that he can put into all the usual DND stats except for Charisma because even Supernatural augmentation

cannot fix this personality this beefs him up and gives him the power to support his ambitious sister and ailing Mother by punching goblins to death and stealing their lunch money but there's a catch no other hunter in the world is able to change their power level it is fixed from birth which means that Kito has to hide his ability lest he be cut down in the prime of his life by stronger Hunters who want to head off the competition before it becomes a problem let's talk about this Central conceit for a second portals popping up

everywhere boring morning commute on the highway portal picnic in the park with your kids portal romantic night in your bedroom with your arange partner as you desperately follow through on a misguided attempt to claw your way back into their good graces when both of you know full well that your relationship has run its course but you're too afraid that years of acclimating to this specific person have left you inherently unlovable to risk the cold and dissatisfying comfort that you currently feel with them to have the chance at finding a better life with someone else who

may or may not actually exist portal it's such a drag and it is treated like a drag which I do love there is nothing quite like seeing a swirling electric anomaly of physics magically appear in the middle of the interstate knowing that strange beasts and monsters lurk just beyond its borders and seeing people react with annoyed indifference because great now they're late for work it's always a treat for me when shows explore how quickly people can acclimate to downright Miracles and this show does at least try to show how the appearance of these gates to

the Nether world has affected daily life but it mostly goes at that from a very highlevel perspective the most interesting thing that solo leveling does with its Prem is play with the idea of dungeon rating as a business after all when our entire knowledge of the physical world is upended and it's confirmed Beyond a doubt that we are not alone in the universe the next logical question is how to make money off of it the politics involved as the white tiger Guild and the blue bonobo Guild VI for control of the various Gates the hunter

association yes that is what it's actually called wanting to use the Mana crystals within as a source of infinite clean energy plot threads that could lead in any number of enthralling directions that I hope you find thoroughly disinteresting because the only thing this series seems concerned at all with focusing its camera on is Kirito sung soullessly and efficiently slicing through human and monster alike in his unending quest to shed any part of his character that could make him in any way engaging or fun to watch nearly everything cool that happens past episode 2 of this

season takes place outside of a dungeon and that is a problem because it spends 57.5% of its runtime inside a dungeon I counted so let's forsake everything that this show even tries to do well and talk about so giving you're giving yourself the best shot giving yourself you're giving yourself the best shot there is nothing wrong with a show not wanting to focus on political Intrigue if that's a background element in Solo leveling then it is and I have to begrudgingly turn my criticism toward the thing that it is actually trying to do which is

be an exciting high octane Edgefest power fantasy where hero kills monster and gets explicitly stronger in an easily accessible number go up sort of way when you look at it like that instead of expecting High r or intricate character interactions or fun it still is not very good high points the animation is great where it counts although you can also clearly see the corners they cut to make those Great Moments possible the fight choreography is usually exciting and high energy even if it is a bit simple and overly flashy but the real issue that keeps

solo leveling from excelling as a boss fight simulator is the dungeons themselves the importance of terrain in crafting interesting fight scenes is severely underappreciated and solo leveling Falls prey to this sin hard these dungeons can be anything ancient castles creepy churches subway stations office parks that are on fire why are so many of them caves boring caves that don't have so much as a stalagmite for a goblin to hide behind with a crossbow why do so many of these fights take place on flat ground in open rooms there is one fight against a giant snake

in a flooded subway tunnel that is fantastic Cito gets smacked around by an enormous reptile that he doesn't know how to deal with he gets dunked underwater has a train thrown at him this good monster fight the closest we get to that in the rest of the season is the fight against Cerberus where he gets thrown into some buildings he's surrounded by fire but only because fire spooky there's never even a hint that he might actually get burned by it and that is the second most fun fight in the season pretty much everything else boils

down to Kirito standing around trying to figure out the best way to knife something and then knifing it in the eye until it dies and speaking of the things that he knives the monster design here is almost comedically uninspired we've got goblins goblins wolves werewolves giant spiders giant snakes Giant centipedes goblins Panthers kind of cool Golem thing that shows up for 2 or 3 minutes before getting knifed in the eye three-headed fire dog named Cerberus and a final fight of the Season against an endless horde of generic empty suits of armor controlled by generic faceless

Mages led by a slightly cooler suit of red armor inexplicably named egis the blue dread it would be one thing if we were watching boring fights in corridors where our Kito at least gets to stab his knife into the eyes of cool monsters but made an abyss this is not so content yourself with a managerie of beasts that your dungeon pulled out of her ass because she had to work three double shifts this week and didn't have time to plan a proper story so yes Greg we're fighting Cobalts again this stretches all the way up

to juu Island the ultimate failure of the hunter Association the infamous battle where the most powerful hunters in all of Korea were brought to their knees and forced to retreat the great dungeon raid that the entire series is building up to its ants its big ants it's big white ants not fire breathing ants not two-headed ants just really big ants who are revealed in an after credit scene at the end of the first season to be evolving the hunters are fighting evolving ants so get ready to stop watching next season halfway through I guess and

that's an enormous shame because the series starts so damn strongly the first dungeon that gin raids with the initial Strike team is exactly what I think people are looking for when they go to this kind of show it starts off with boring goblins but that's fine because while everyone else is cutting these goblins down like Twitter users in October of 201 2018 Gino is getting the spleen kicked out of him by trash mobs to show the viewer exactly what the weakest Hunter of all mankind looks like then we get to the double dungeon and we

see exactly what this show is capable of a tense frightening battle of wits against a giant creepy puzzle boss who is more than willing to laser you down to your shoes in half a second if you dare break the rules that you haven't figured out yet watching genu slowly solve this high stakes puzzle is gripping the people surrounding him are emotional they're begging to get out of this alive and go back to their families which is what G wants as well and at the end of it when G is counting on the other survivors to

back him up so that they can all walk out of this dungeon alive not only do we feel G's betrayal when they can't bring themselves not to run away but we understand their feelings too not only is it a highly entertaining dungeon to watch it is an excellent setup for a protagonist with trust issues like ginu winds up being unfortunately neither the dungeon design nor the character writing that make these episodes so engaging is even remotely present for the rest of the season the dungeons themselves are nothing but slugfests that requires so little brain power

to figure out that remember to put a joke here later and the characters well go reach out to get you got to go reach out to get you just go reach out to get you get get out get on to it this is gusa with a younger sister aspiring to be a doctor and a single mother who is unconscious in the hospital ginu has shouldered the responsibility of providing for his family by raiding dungeons as the weakest Hunter of all mankind gin puts his life at risk to fight for the people he cares about ginu

is a victim in many ways he is a victim of Fate having been given a power that is canonically seven times weaker than the average low rank Hunter he is a victim of society being forced into a dangerous career because it's the only way to make enough money to pay his mother's necessary medical bills he is a victim of this giant sneering statue thing stomping his leg off and he is a victim of other people prioritizing their own personal needs over his life ginu has to Grapple with his weakness and find ways to succeed in

a world that prioritizes physical strength over nearly anything else and he has to learn to balance his inability to trust people with a career where work is legally required to be done in teams he's complicated compassionate damaged practically disabled and he's been given the chance to rise above his station and become stronger which finally gives him one advantage one opportunity to succeed in a world that seems determined to make him fail and I hope that doesn't sound at all compelling to you because ginus is not the protagonist of solo leveling this is a man who

also happens to be named jusung and he kills things and people and fights with a knife and Garners inappropriate attention from his nurses in the hospital he speaks with no affect feels nothing but rage and will occasionally mention that he has a mother whenever the show needs to give him motivation to go into another dungeon I am not exaggerating when I say that he is the most boring protagonist whose show I have ever been caught up on what solo leveling forgets very quickly is that interesting characters are not made of strengths they are made of

weaknesses all stories but especially especially fight based action heavy stories like this are based around conflict and conflict comes from what characters can't do not what they can do to be fair it's not like ginu can just effortlessly do anything every opponent puts in a token struggle there are fights that he comes dangerously close to losing but the problem is that the fights that solo leveling tries to feed the viewer after the first two episodes have no Intrigue to them the first dungeon is fun because everyone is too weak to take it on point blank

and they have to figure out a strategy to solve it indirectly every fight after that is just a question of whether there is a sufficiently small gap between gin's numbers and his opponent's numbers and if that Gap is too large then he'll just teleport away and come back when he gets bigger numbers unless his opponent has knocked his teleportation Stone out of his hand again if that happens then he'll have to spam healing potions until he realizes that the secret is stabbing them in the eye newu also feels absolutely no conflict or remorse about killing

humans he says he does a little little bit but then he just does it and doesn't worry about it killing people in self-defense and having to deal with the Fallout of that is the kind of thing that can actually make an EDG Lord character enjoying to watch but ginu doesn't care not really he is as dead on the inside as his victims are on the outside and I know what you manwa readers are going to say about that in the comments so let me just head that off cool idea horribly boring execution we'll get to

it after season 2 probably that said I guess ginu has no reason to feel guilty about killing the people he does considering their stereotypes of anime villains who EX exist only to be greedy and evil and Dead killing people for money is a fine motivation for an antagonist especially in a show that seems to have a slightly anti- capitalist or at least anti-g greed bent to it but I wish some of these guys were at least going to use the money to put their kids through college or something build an animal shelter gin's first fight

against humans goes so smoothly that the only thing that makes it stand out even a little bit as being important is the fact that his opponents are humans so it's kind of sad that the show seemingly goes out of its way to dehumanize that entire group none of them are reluctant to be there none of them express any uncertainty about the morals of leaving two rookie adventurers to die so they can steal their share of the loot and then when they don't die to monsters and the group will have to actually murder them to get

their share of the loot they just go along with that because yeah part of the job these guys are not characters they are not people they are just monsters exactly as uninteresting as every other monster in this show also this man's name is dong suck Wang and that's really funny the remaining characters are varying degrees of boring the absolute coolest ones get very little screen time and are mostly being set up to be important later I hope although I do want to point out that this badass female Hunter is introduced by doing a kick flip

over a motorcycle while the camera gives us a very tasteful crot shot to make sure we know exactly why she's here Gino's sister Gina half of his motivation for going into dungeons in the first place is nothing a sacarin ball of energy who exists only to cheer lead and wag her finger at her brother for putting himself in danger all the time I expect that she'll be kidnapped and sexually assaulted at some point so that g can bravely Slaughter the people responsible the characters who go into the double dungeon with G are the jewel of

The Supporting Cast they aren't top shelf characters by any means but in this show you take what you can get and slowly working with these people over the course of his career could give gin the opportunity to learn to trust people again while each of them grapples with these specific character flaws that led them to leave ginu alone in the dungeon in the first place they make for a pretty good core cast with a lot of potential and charm and all but one of them are dead or retired before the end of the season because

why would the show care about any of those things this is ey knife and time get with the program they are replaced by gho Yu an exuberant rich boy who wants to lead the hunter Guild that his aristocratic father is creating he's more of a plot device than a character for now but at least the bits of the plot that he devises are the most interesting bits that the series has to offer the bits that have to do with the economics of hunting Gates is a business corporate sabotage you know the 42.5% of this show

that takes place outside a dungeon he's grading naive and Rich but at least he actually has a character Arc and he's a man so the series is willing to explore it instead of sending it to live with its parents in the country because it couldn't get over watching its friends being turned into viscera puddles a whole week after the fact very few characters in this show have any kind of personality but it absolutely cannot stand the thought of allowing a woman to have one there are five female characters this season who either matter or are

being set up to matter later one is unconscious one is a crot shotting Jos Weeden badass with no emotions who's praised for her loyalty to her superiors one is ginha who exists only so that ginu has something to to care about one is this Gruff Panda looking girl who will hopefully be important later but whose only personality trait at the moment is getting mad when people accurately call her a child and the last is Jui Lee Jui is the only one of these five who actually has anything going on she sees herself in a very

negative light to begin with dealing with self-doubt and anxiety issues that are only exacerbated after watching nearly a dozen people get stomped to death and being unable to use her healing magic to help any of them before the double dungeon she sees herself as gen's protector making sure that he gets out of these dungeons alive and trying her very best to convince him that this whole career isn't worth it because he is a small little soft boy who needs protecting Jui has to struggle to retain her self-confidence all while dealing with survivors guilt PTSD impostor

syndrome and her parents trying to convince her to give up and come home which of course she does because riding her out of the show gives us more time to spend watching g game over but they gave him all the cheat codes little kitty in the gutter with the bloody nose on the cover but he doesn't even read those the headlines the headlines to sum it up solo leveling offers nothing special to anyone who is looking for anything if you are intrigued by the implied politics of the world and the potential for characters actions having

far-reaching societal implications do not be maybe they'll get to that in later Seasons but for now there is nothing for you here go watch chainsaw man or the first season of jiujitsu kaisen if you want interesting dungeon design where characters have to make plans to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles then I hope by characters you mean one Edge Lord and his puppy and by make plans you mean stab things in the eye with a knife go watch delicious in Dungeon or so I'm a spider so what if you want engaging high octane fights against cool monsters

that'll get the 12-year-old boy in you screaming about power attacks on the playground that is what this show is best at and you have significantly better options but that's not really the kind of show I watch all that often so I can't tell you what they are shangrala Frontier leave options for those people in the comments it's so frustrating because this show clearly had potential in the beginning and it just ignored it in favor of doing the same thing that everything else is doing just as badly as everything else is doing it it might have

been Charming if not for the existence of so I'm a spider so what and the fruit of evolution and remonster and reincarnated as a slime and rising of The Shield hero and those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head where the protagonist specifically gets new abilities by killing things that previously had those abilities and then manages their powers with a video game stat screen if the show had continued on the trajectory that it had in those first two episodes I could be giving solo leveling as high as an

8 out of 10 right now but unfortunately I'm going to have to settle on a six or even a very high five with the rating being brought up by highquality Art Direction a funcast of Side characters and the potential for interesting story arcs down the line I hope you all enjoyed this new style of video for my Channel please share it with a friend if you did because YouTube does not like it when channels do new things and it's going to need help getting views there's a post on patreon detailing my strategy for what I

hope will be an unprecedented Resurgence of content for this Channel and the Crux of it revolves around doing more review-based opinion pieces the exciting thing about it is that all patrons of all tears will have a say in what those reviews are about this video was the result of a poll that I did on Discord where they voted very strongly for me to do delicious in Dungeon and then I realized that it wasn't finished yet and shouldn't be on the poll so I did solo leveling instead the next poll should be up right now with

the contenders being freein Beyond Journey's End Apothecary Diaries shanga Frontier and Undead unluck if you have a strong opinion about which of those four series you would like to see me cover next make sure to go to patreon.com explanation point Link in the description and make your voice be heard for those of you who are worried about the future of Hardcore analytic content on my channel do not be this is in no way replacing that I will continue prioritizing the release of those videos whenever I have anything interesting to say this is just something to

fill time when I don't have anything particularly original or insightful to say about anything so that I can continue you know doing my job and not letting my channel Fall Into Obscurity again a special thank you to all of my patrons especially the ones whose names are listed here especially today's lucky Patron m moic toasty tub they have been around at the $1 tier for around a year thank you for staying toasty and I hope you enjoyed this video to anyone else who is thinking about joining this list of lovely people please do I got

married and don't have health insurance anymore and if that's not enough to sway you you can join our Discord server which is increasingly active these days join our weekly video game Hangouts and monthly Anime Club discussions read my notes and scripts sometimes get early access to videos before they're released on YouTube and have your creative projects critiqued by Yours Truly let me know what you thought about this new style of video in the comments below and hey keep leveling up you until next time this has been explanation point signing out so Jack but he hasn't

got an ego local boy but he came up from a zero every battle we can watch him as the power grows and grows let's get it