Season 2 of Solo Leveling is more of the same; more irritating pseudo-chuuni sophistry, more interchangeable sakuga-interested fight scenes designed to be reposted rather than enjoyed, more characters with increasingly similar names we have to pretend care about, procedurally generated “TOP TEN COOLEST ANIME ENTRANCES”-ass entertainment wrapped in a layer of undeserved pretension. Clearly something’s working, though, because this is currently the twenty-fifth highest rated show on here and one of the most viewed series ever on Crunchyroll. Streaming sites crash whenever a new episode comes out. I’ve seen more people talk about Solo Leveling in the past three months than the most recent MCU flop. You won’t have to force me to name something people actually like about this show, because I’m not deliberately obtuse enough to pretend the flash over substance angle isn’t exactly what thrives in this modern viewing environment where everything has to be as concise as possible. But flash over substance implies the existence of any kind of substance at all. It’s just under 300 chapters worth of Timmy’s middle school Wattpad ego trip about beating up the mean kids at school after getting bullied for the last time, Tails Gets Trolled if the ironic self-awareness was feigned. This is not the kind of work that deserves a full-scale anime production, but you can chalk it up to corporate suits who keep throwing money at D-grade internet fanfiction until it becomes the “next big thing”. You wouldn’t be reading this if not for them, because Solo Leveling as a concept wouldn’t have advanced past the dumpster of the online serialization where it belongs.

The characters are still one-note and unlikeable. I don’t even know what Sung Jinwoo’s goal is anymore. The impetus for his transformation into an emotionless RPG slave is resolved by the halfway point of the season when he wakes his comatose mother. The moment where he heals ger is the single best moment in the entire show, because as SJW cries tears of relief, he begins to feel like a real person, someone you can sympathize with and relate to, if only for a minute (elevated to tearjerker levels by Taito Ban’s vocal performance); it comes as no surprise that this is the most disliked episode of the season. Apparently having the self-insert main character show any sort of convincing human emotion signifies that he “lost his aura”, because the only thing that matters now is how an anime presents itself and not what it stands for or how it conveys ideas. I’m not sure why fans prefer that Jinwoo be an emotionless Gary Stu so badly like it’s a good thing if a character never feels or reacts to anything going on around them. Make him cry more! Even a smile or two would be enough! I can’t believe I’m defending fucking Solo Leveling – from its own fanbase no less – but the moment the show threatens to become watchable, they all seem to turn on it.

The story seems to bend over backwards to make SJW the strongest and most competent character in any given situation, which makes for an exhausting watch experience. His biggest trial this season is getting grazed by one of the bosses he’s fighting. He either defeats every single enemy without breaking a sweat or he lets his shadows do all the work for him. I couldn’t take any aspect of the narrative seriously after Jinwoo easily killed a supposedly unbeatable monster as everyone looked on in shock for tenth time in the span of five episodes. The only other times Jinwoo shows any appeal is when he foregoes his job as an S-rank monster hunter to hang out with his mom and sister to compensate for all the years of bonding his family didn’t get to experience and then go stand around on the roof of his apartment. Yet this somehow manages to undercut Jinwoo’s appeal even more as it takes place during a battle that involves several innocent people dying horribly, which could’ve been prevented had he been there. There’s layers to Solo Leveling’s incompetence – even when it’s doing something right it’s at the cost of something else like some kind of narrative equivalent exchange. RDCworld did a pretty funny video about it.

Put a gun to my head and ask me to name five Solo Leveling characters and what their personalities are beyond surface-level archetypal traits. It’s impossible. Anyone who isn’t Sung Jinwoo barely services the overall narrative and I’m convinced that if you removed 75% of the supporting cast this show would be at least five episodes shorter. This season alone introduces like fifty equally terrible new hunters, monsters and civilians who all have the memorability and personality of a rock. You already know none of these unlikeable, incompetent, superficial dipshits aren’t going to matter by the end of the season because Jinwoo does all the heavy lifting for everyone else while they stand around verbally fellating him. This season even brings in a staggeringly uninteresting future love interest whose loyalty towards SJW is only justified by the fact that she thinks he smells better than everyone else – I actually paused the episode here and had to go watch an entire episode of Medalist just to get my mind off how embarrassing it was that a grown adult could write something so insipid. The only good character in this season is Esil, a demon girl who shows up as a sidekick for one episode and she is the cutest goshdarn thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t complain about her minimal presence because she’d probably be ruined if she stayed around any longer than that.

The other S-Rank hunters are just as useless as they were in the manhwa. There’s this annoying nerd who looks like if Aizen was drawn by a fujoshi, some guy who turns into a werewolf, a really big dude with an afro, all of whom exist to stand around either monologuing, killing fodder enemies, or getting fodderized by the actual threats so Jinwoo can come save them – but only after standing around and letting a few of them die so he can look cool, of course. The Japanese hunters have it even worse; this is a Korean franchise after all, so anyone who represents a foreign nation is either a weaselly little bastard with no sense of honor or the most pathetic jobber on the face of the earth. And you’d better believe Solo Leveling will cut away from the fights multiple times per episode in service of another scene where these dweebs stand around in an office to deliver exposition as if they haven’t wasted enough time doing that already. The show’s pacing is dreadful to the point it keeps bringing back old plot points and then not resolving them until a later arc. Remember Wang Dong Suck’s brother who vowed to avenge his death in season 1? He gets offscreened by Jinwoo’s dad and his plotline gets dropped until the next season, where he’ll inevitably get folded again because nobody in Solo Leveling gets to do anything other than job unless they’re Sung Jinwoo.

This show isn’t just derivative, it blatantly lifts storylines from series I would rather be enjoying instead. The major focus of this season aside from the endless meandering and dropped subplots is a shameless rehash of the Chimera Ant arc from Hunter x Hunter, which suffers the most from the show’s terrible pacing; despite being the selling point of season 2, it gets condensed down to three episodes which is indicative of the season’s detrimentally rapid pacing. Instead of a complex and nuanced antagonist like Meruem, the character he was derived from, Beru is just another obstacle for Jinwoo to curbstomp. SJW could be fighting some fodder enemy for all I care, because there’s no tangible conflict here like there was in HxH. I think this perfectly summarizes everything wrong with Solo Leveling; it copies better works at a surface level and retains none of the underlying themes and exchange of viewpoints that make them what they are. I mean for God's sake there’s a scene halfway through the season where Jinwoo has a flashback of his mom getting burnt to save him and it’s lifted shot for shot, word for word from one of Shinichi’s flashbacks in Parasyte. I’m not sure how Chugong even got away with this, because it’s not exactly subtle.

When I was reviewing the first season, I noted that the technical competence was one of the few saving graces of the show, but now it feels like A-1 Pictures started experiencing budget cuts midway through the production. Season 1 wasn’t coming close to Dubu’s art from the manhwa, but it wasn’t constantly flipping between rejected character drawings from One-Punch Man season 2. I actually went back and compared episodes to their respective chapters, and it wasn’t even a contest between the two mediums. I can say with confidence the anime looks like a Deviantart user trying to recreate their favorite anime screencap in comparison, especially now that the overwhelming amount of off-model character art can be spotted without having to pause mid-scene like in the first season. The professionally constructed paneling and framing of certain events in the manhwa was woefully underutilized a lot of the time this season, if not outright butchered for seemingly no reason; there’s a moderately iconic panel where a villain rips off a character’s arms and walks away towards the viewer in the next panel with their opponent bleeding profusely in the background. I was baffled that such a clear-cut panel to adapt wasn’t included; rather, the director opted to show it at a different, less striking angle that made what could’ve been an effective moment of intimidation look boring in comparison. Little things like that make me wonder what the fuck is going on at A-1 Pictures and if they have any quality control in their studio.

I already mentioned last season how unmemorable and samey Hiroyuki Sawano’s score for this series felt to me, but it doesn’t even sound like him now. The opening is the best sounding track of the show so far and I’m not even sure if Sawano composed it or it’s another artist trying to imitate his style. It depresses hearing such a legendary composer phone it in to this extent. Even the fight choreography feels lazier than before. The twelfth episode is painfully inconsistent in terms of consistent animation fluidity, bad anatomy and lazily rendered CGI environments, which is made even more insulting by the fact that there are some genuinely great shots when the incomprehensible direction isn’t drowning everything else; stuff during the fight like the bug’s claw hovering inches away from Jinwoo’s eye, or Jinwoo staring down his reflection on a wall of ice are visually phenomenal. It's clear the storyboarders are trying during major sequences, are their efforts are commendable. Contrarily, the final battle between SJW and Beru has them do that thing from One Piece where they turn into brightly colored streaks and fly around in midair interspersed with that nauseating faux-shakycam thing anime directors do now. I had a hard time keeping track of what was going on at certain points because the camera was moving so fast it felt like I was watching on 2x speed, or even worse, watching a fight scene from Magia Record. Jinwoo anticlimactically dispatches Beruem by slashing him a bunch of times, portrayed by a bunch of looping frames and a lazy panning shot complete with speed lines. I’m not sure why this episode was so highly praised considering how glaringly obvious the flaws were, so I have to assume most viewers were probably too disoriented from the fight scene to notice.

Giving this season a 1/10 would be dishonest because compared to the first, the positive aspects were more abundant. Unlike the previous season, there were moments that felt like they made me see what fans see in this show. Episode eight looks fantastic aside from being a genuinely enjoyable experience compared to the rest of the show, mostly in part to Yoshihiro Kanno’s storyboards. Jinwoo punches a demon in the face so hard it creates a nuclear explosion. I liked that one moment significantly more than anything else that happened this season. And as previously mentioned, episode twelve has fantastic storyboarding at times in contrast to the overcomplicated scene direction. I rarely have anything good to say about this anime, because when there are positives they hardly last more than a few minutes and make you wish you were watching something else.

This review contains spoilers.

**〈 𝗔𝘂𝗿𝗮 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗯𝗲 𝗳𝗮𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗱 𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗹𝘆... 〉**

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Ah, Solo Leveling... how I have yearned for you!

No, scratch that—I have not missed it in the slightest. It has barely been a year since the first season concluded, but it feels like neither I nor anyone else has truly escaped the series' slimy, stinky clutches. ****The thought that a sequel was more inevitable than death itself loomed over my head like a thundercloud, and, well, here we are.**** But I will do us all a favour, and skip the monotonous, flowery introductory paragraphs and cut straight to the chase.

I want you to think of this write-up as a companion piece to [my previous review of this oh-so-fantastic anime](https://anilist.co/review/24005). What does that mean? **It is simple, really—each and every single criticism I levelled against the first season still neatly applies to this new, shiny sequel.** The plot? What plot? The characters? Who? Nothing has changed, not even a little bit. So, in the true spirit of *Solo Leveling*, I will be as redundant as a broken record and bore you to tears with the same points all over again. **Once more, I shall rant like a crayon-eating toddler**.

If the first season of *Solo Leveling* was a limp, soulless, energy-deprived power fantasy masquerading as a meaningful, witty, and action-packed romp, then Season 2 is the same damp, smelly fart—**only somehow even more rigid, more lifeless, and totally incapable of producing anything that even remotely resembles entertainment, interest, or—heaven forbid—tension.** Whatever cheap illusions and deceptions the first batch of episodes used to feign grandeur and thrills have since been completely eviscerated, leaving behind an absolutely preposterous slop where [Jin-Woo](https://anilist.co/character/129928/JinU-Seong)'s infallible awesomeness is not just the norm—**it is a full-blown religion that is revered at every turn.** This universe is still his personal playground, where all living creatures exist solely to slobber over him, kneel at his feet, admire his magnificence, and hand him an endless supply of power-ups and ego-stroking moments. Anyone foolish enough to doubt his capabilities or character, be it out of scepticism, stupidity, or just because, is speedily proven wrong, usually via swift execution, brutal humiliation, or, better yet, by becoming yet another one of his silly shadow minions.

One of the best examples of the show's ridiculous mindset, mantras, and messages is the Jeju Island Raid arc—a so-called epic, monumental operation where Korea and Japan join forces in a last-ditch effort to finally reclaim the island from an infestation of ant-like magical beasts. On paper, this whole scenario should be a near-ideal recipe for high stakes, tense alliances, gut-wrenching sacrifice, and international tension. Well, that would be the case in any other series. But this is *Solo Leveling*, and nuance is about as welcome here as a cockroach in a five-star restaurant. What do we get after several episodes of build-up, countless exposition dumps, and constant callbacks to past failed expeditions? A pitifully pathetic, predictable pseudo-spectacle that, of course, our glorious protagonist conveniently sits out at first because—gasp—[his mother](https://anilist.co/character/209396/KyungHye-Park) has just awakened from her Eternal Slumber. Indeed, it is a touching, deeply personal reason that any person could and would get behind... if only the bastard actually spent time with her during the raid. **But no, he simply does not do that. Instead, he just loiters around elsewhere, perching atop skyscrapers and twiddling his thumbs until the plot gets desperate enough to summon him like some genie to swoop in and clean up everyone's mess.**

And what a mess it is. The top Korean hunters are a bunch of disposable mannequins who may fare well against the smaller ants, yet the second [the Ant King](https://anilist.co/character/159849/Beru) steps in, they are swatted like flies. The same applies to the supposed crème de la crème of Japan's guilds, as most of them do not last more than a few seconds, their collective screen time being so minuscule you would be forgiven for mistaking them for random extras. **Basically, the entire battle is nothing more than a setup to cull seemingly strong characters for the sole purpose of manufacturing a non-existent, fake sense of dread and seriousness, just enough to trick you into thinking the show understands suspense.** We are supposed to believe the Temu version of [Hunter x Hunter](https://anilist.co/anime/11061/Hunter-x-Hunter-2011/)'s [Meruem](https://anilist.co/character/23277/Meruem) (minus the depth, complexity, or any semblance of autonomy) is an insurmountable obstacle no one is able to take down. When Jin-Woo finally makes his grand entrance, the fight lasts about as long as a sneeze, as he flattens the insect in record time. **Naturally, he is rewarded for this effortless bullying session with yet another overpowered shadow soldier, because *Solo Leveling* adheres to the revolutionary philosophy of "not struggling should be rewarded with even more power."** In other words, the arc desperately wants to be like [Togashi](https://anilist.co/staff/96893/Yoshihiro-Togashi)'s Chimera Ant Arc, but lacks the ideological conflict, the character development, and, frankly, the brain cells to pull off even a fraction of its intensity or wit. **There is nothing interesting or fun about any of this—just more bodies to stack, more flamboyant but meaningless skirmishes to gawp at, and more proof of how little the show has to offer beyond its shallow power-tripping.**

And, of course, this dreadful formula does not only rear its ugly head in the final arc—**it is hammered into your skull, episode after episode, until you are ready to claw your own eyes out.** In the Red Gate Arc, a group of hunters gets trapped in a dungeon and—to no one's surprise—they are hopelessly outmatched by the monsters inside. The team splits into two groups: one made up of cartoonishly evil jerks who mock Jin-Woo for being an E-rank, and the other composed of our beloved protagonist and his ragtag band of low-ranked nobodies, who get to bask in the glow of his greatness and reap all the benefits of his unlimited power without lifting a finger or having to worry about little things like starvation, freezing to death, or getting torn apart by the ice bears. I think you do not need me to tell you how it all plays out—**the arrogant hunters pay for their sins with their lives, while the weaker hunters get dragged to safety simply by existing in Jin-Woo's orbit.** And, as always, he walks away with more power (i.e. levels and troops) because... well, he just does.

The Hunter's Guild Gate Arc follows the exact same script down to the letter. A guild's second-string team enters a dungeon, gets demolished by a horde of orcs that should not even be there in the first place, and just as all hope seems lost—right when they are about to perish at the hands of these terrifying monstrosities—**who else but the ever-flawless Jin-Woo decides it is time to quit standing around like a twat and wipes the floor with these brutes.** [The orc shaman](https://anilist.co/character/184957/Tusk), his generals, and his army are slaughtered with laughable ease, and, naturally, they get converted into yet another batch of fresh, mindless pawns for Jesus-kun to boss around. Why would the series refuse to hand its poster child even more might for coasting through life on easy mode, without a sign of opposition in sight? Why should these tremendous battles be any less than one-sided massacres? Why should the System's golden boy ever be forced to struggle, strategise or suffer actual consequences? Why should a power fantasy be anything other than a power inevitability? **Why should the story strive to be more than a cretinous checklist of predictable, drab nonsense designed to maximise Jin-Woo's self-aggrandisement?**

But by far, the most mind-numbingly hilarious part of the entire show thus far has to be the Return to Demon Castle Arc. **Not only is it an absolute slog to sit through—thanks to its headache-inducing, everything-is-on-fire setting—but it is also so laughably empty, flimsy, and toothless it feels like a sick joke.** Jin-Woo carves his way through hundreds upon hundreds of demons like a hot knife through butter, never once breaking a sweat, and when he finally reaches and faces off against [Baran](https://anilist.co/character/306643/Baran), the final boss of the entire thing, the show really, really wants you to believe that this fight is different—that this is a genuine challenge. **Except... it is not.** *Solo Leveling* tries its darndest to fabricate some sense of resistance, pretending like Baran is a threat that will not go down easily. However, as we all know, the main character of this shitfest has never faced a challenge in his life after the first five episodes of the first season. There is never a moment where he is actually outmatched, never an instance where he is forced to genuinely fight for survival. And just when you think the show could not be any more farcical, [a random demon girl Jin-Woo picked up earlier](https://anilist.co/character/164675/Esil-Radiru) chucks a sword at Baran, and—poof—the fight is suddenly over. This minor inconvenience is what our hero apparently needed to overpower the devil and beat it into a bloody pulp. This is the big, climactic showdown we get to experience at the end of this piss-poor, miserable excuse for a storyline. **At this juncture, filing a tax return would be more unpredictable and suspenseful than watching the anime's pathetic attempts at meaningful action scenes.** Sure, they look cool, but what is so impressive about flashy animation and pretty colours when there is not an ounce of personality behind them? Why should I care about what is happening on the screen when the outcome is always, always predetermined? **Where is the fun I was promised?**

None of it should come as a surprise, though, because *Solo Leveling* has never been about being authentic, impactful, or well-thought-out. Remember Jin-Woo's mother, I mentioned earlier? The woman whose Eternal Slumber was his biggest motivation, the emotional anchor of his journey, and the reason he desired to be stronger? **Yeah, that turned out to be a load of sun-scorched crap.** In reality, it was nothing more than an afterthought, a checkbox, a convenient plot device trotted out whenever the narrative needed to pretend that he had a more serious objective beyond accumulating absurd amounts of levels, showing off his reality-bending abilities, and toying with cardboard-cutout-like characters. And now that she is no longer in a coma-like state? What is his motivation supposed to be now? More aura farming like a dipshit? More one-shotting pitiful weaklings left, right, and centre? More self-congratulatory scenes to fuel his already sky-high ego? His entire worthless existence boils down to being the strongest guy in the room—hah—the whole wide world, and that is an undeniable fact. **There is no tension, no personal stakes, no growth, no introspection, no dilemmas, and no hardship—just a never-ending montage of him mowing down everything in his path, and an ever-growing pile of defeated losers who never stood a chance, to begin with.**

What about the rest of the cast? They surely must have gotten better over time, right? Can we call them "characters" now without insulting the very concept of storytelling? **Bzzt, wrong.** They are still a massive collection of glorified toys for Jin-Woo to play with; human-shaped obstacles for him to trample over; exposition-spouting dispensers; bootlickers designed to sing his praises; and whatever else the sick and twisted series can come up with. The "strong" hunters exist solely to be one-upped by yours truly—every single S-rank in existence, without exception. The baddies/monsters are moustache-twirling caricatures who are introduced exclusively to be humiliated and destroyed in the most banal manner possible. The female characters are dense love interests with about as much depth as a paddle—case in point, [Cha Hae-in](https://anilist.co/character/138789/HaeIn-Cha) falls in love with him because, unlike everyone else, he does not smell like shit. The allies are a cluster of personality-deprived yes-men who live to admire him. The countless clueless background-filling nobodies question him just long enough to be crushed under the weight of his overwhelming epicness—looking at you, [that one cocky cretin from the Retesting Rank Arc](https://anilist.co/character/184535/MinSung-Lee) who thought he was important before getting reality checked. **When all is said and done, these props do not matter because nothing in *Solo Leveling* is allowed to matter besides Jin-Woo.** Therein lies the problem—he is the story. If you cannot stomach his actions or character, you might as well call it a day, since there is nothing else here. Everyone and everything merely facilitates his ever-expanding empire of shadow minions. The world does not change, react or resist. Stakes are non-existent. Character arcs are dead. Conflict is ridiculous. The script is still doing the tutorial. **This is not a narrative that will stick with you for longer than a week. It is not just terrible—it is repetitive, thoughtless garbage that does not even have the decency to make you feel something.**

You know what? This time, I am skipping the bit about pitchforks or torches—or any goofy spiel about how this review is not some grand ploy to stop you from watching the show. At this point, you are either fully on board with Jin-Woo's antics or, like me, just really into wasting your time. **Either way, you already know exactly how much this series is worth.**

As for me, it is that masochistic mindset that keeps dragging me back to *Solo Leveling* every time it crawls out of the woodwork. It is neither well-written nor particularly enjoyable, yet somehow, I am unable to escape its stupidly intoxicating presence. **I hate everything it stands for, everything it is trying to peddle—and yet, I feel nothing but apathy for the product itself.** And so, I will keep consuming this brainless, tasteless mush for as long as it continues to be churned out at such a breakneck pace.

*🌭 hot dog 🌮 taco 🍔 hamburger*

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**〈 ...𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗮𝗻 𝗮𝘄𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗽𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝘂𝗽. 〉**

Attention: this review may contain spoilers!

So, we reached another season conclusion and I think this season had animes that stood out, but it's unimaginable not to have to recognize that Solo Leveling was the best anime of this season. I remember watching 3 episodes of the 1st season and I wasn't getting to like it and I ended up dropping it, but I decided to give it a second chance and saw that the anime had something that caught my attention again

I was so excited about the next episodes that I decided to read the manhwa while the episodes were coming out. I didn't expect this to happen, and I think it was really worth it and I think the experience improved by 100%. For some I think it would be different, the person would wait for the anime to finish to be able to go read the original material. But I preferred not to wait!

SL's success was so great that it ended up not pleasing some people, why when something is super hyped it starts to get hate? Today half of the otaku community is full of people looking for trouble in something.

What's wrong with an anime that is being commented a lot positively?

Even with the problems that the industry has been facing over the past few years, it is impressive how good this SL adaptation can be, even with some things that have not been adapted, but this is super normal to happen.

•Soundtrack

A good anime deserves a soundtrack in the best possible way and in terms of quality Sawano manages to surpass himself with every job he does. It is not today that he delivers everything good and the best to make the viewer even more enthusiastic with a fight scene or a more melancholic part.

• Sung Jinwoo vs Baruka

It was in this fight that I decided to give SL another chance and when I saw some images and takes of this fight I had to watch the anime again. This fight is very good, the soundtrack along with the choreographies were amazing. But, I think the fight could have lasted a little longer.

So, we arrived at one of the most important moments of Sung's journey that was to be able to heal his Mother of eternal sleep, this part is incredible and highlights even more for so many difficult moments that Sung went through and how much pain he had to endure to be able to reach that moment.

I think anyone would do everything to do their best or go beyond their limits to be able to bring back a family member.

• Sung Jinwoo vs Beru

This was definitely one of the most hyped fights I've ever seen and that pleased many people and didn't please others, but if we analyze this fight manages to deliver everything in the best possible way, Beru was one of the strongest enemies until that moment and that for sure the meeting between the two would yield a high-level battle, I think we can say that Solo Leveling delivered another insane episode, the animation was absolute cinema and they lived up to the original material.

• Final considerations

Solo Leleling is a very interesting anime to watch and without a doubt I will be even more anxious to see the direction that the anime will go. I think that for the success it had I have no doubt that a 3rd season will be announced as soon as possible.

I could extend this review a little more, but as I am a person with little time I decided to write a little about my experience with Solo Leveling.

See ya.