Solo Leveling

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The manhwa community entitles Solo Leveling along the lines of "Not like the other manhwas" or "Not your typical power fantasy." And although I respect their awareness of the prevalent mediocrity in the medium, the aforementioned descriptions are still false. Solo Leveling is your typical power fantasy. And let's be honest, "not like the other manhwas" or "not your typical power fantasy" is not that much of a compliment to begin with.

It's mediocre, worse even, to be brutally frank. The narrative is brimming with formulas, has one of the laziest character writing, and is overall a terrible story. The protagonist's tale suffers no risk and ... receives all the rewards. No suspense is there to keep the reader at the edge of their seats or in any way to make it engaging. However, Solo Leveling's popularity seems to prove otherwise, and it's understandable.

The author knows how to attract a specific audience; the gaming community. The manhwa is the closest thing I've seen to a game developer playing the video game he made where he knows every exploit there is. It's obvious that Solo Leveling is meant to cater to that specific audience. And they managed to do that successfully for the majority of said audience.

Solo Leveling is a simple narrative. And that simplicity, that lack of depth to its characters, setting, and premise helps the story in a way that would easily be understandable and doesn't create any frequent inconsistencies. However, it still has significant flaws erected from the very beginning that was never fixed and just became prominent over time.

Solo Leveling is very repetitive, and that coincides with its predictability. The beginning does a decent job at depicting the development of Jin-woo's power. His power grew at a very steady pace and there was still tension present in his fights due to Jin-woo's struggle. However, after Jin-woo fully comprehended his abilities and exploited the system, every battle he enters is an automatic win. The initial battle for power made for great pacing, however anything after the Igris fight was too easy for him. Every battle was always one-sided in favor of Jin-woo. No single battle is present where you'd think he would lose. It would be more engaging if there's a difference between how he wins every time using his wit, but he uses nothing but pure power. There is no risk and no suspense. The lack of tension and suspense undermines the engagement of the narrative, ruining the experience for the average reader.

Another flaw that you'll notice the further you read the manhwa is the characters, more specifically, the irrelevance of every character apart from Jin-woo. Not that Jin-woo is a well-written character in the first place. Every supporting character is just there to be in awe of Jin-woo's power, and every villain is there so Jin-woo could flex his power. Spoilers: This is prominent at the final battle where everyone is useless, and only Jin-woo and his shadows are the only ones with the chance to fight. Everyone else is just a liability, and even the most powerful hunter next to Jin-woo just becomes a damsel in distress.

Even from an interpersonal relationship basis, none of the characters served a purpose, whether it was codependency or for his character development. Interaction with his families and friends that is intended to create an atmosphere of suspense never works. The little tension and suspense it tries to portray is immediately undermined knowing the plot is always in favor of Jin-woo.

The sad irony of these poor attempts of character development only made Jin-woo's character worse. Before re-awakening, Jin-woo exhibited the most depth out of any other parts of the story. As he becomes more powerful, he becomes more blank, often confused with developing apathy - it isn't apathy. Jin-woo loses depth further into the story, making him more of a self-insert character than he already was.

I do acknowledge the author's ability to attract the audience, more so than other trite cash grabs. They promised a power fantasy and a power fantasy they gave. It doesn't pretend to be anything it is not and continues to satisfy the audience they meant to attract. And the artist's talent strongly contributed to the success the manhwa has now. Solo Leveling's strongest asset is its art. The vivid drawings and coloring of each panel coincide well with its portrayal of power. Things that don't make sense are present, like many anatomy issues and shadows emitting light, but that's not an issue since, like the story's typical writing, it's only there to look cool. The artist knows how to draw fight scenes and anything in general - making full use of techniques such as perspectives to their maximum effect.

Solo Leveling is just like any other manhwa out there, only that it grew more popular than others due to how it carried its mediocrity. There's nothing special or innovative about it, but it knows exactly what it's doing. If you like power fantasy, then you'll most likely enjoy this manhwa. If you hate these overused formulas, then you'd be wasting your time if you try to read this.

Solo Leveling is the literary equivalent of an 8 year old playing make-believe with plastic toys. I can tell because I used to be one.

It goes like this: DUNGEON RAID START DOOM BOOM LEVEL UP CRACK SMACK BOSS FOUND IT'S THE KING OF VAMPIRE OGRE LORDS WHOOSH WHAT IS THIS BLAM SHAZAM OH NO YOU DON'T BANG KERRANG SKILL USED "ULTRA THROAT SLIT" CRITICAL HIT BOSS DEAD LEVEL UP LEVEL UP LEVEL UP +675 TO ALL STATS YOU'VE FOUND THE ELIXIR OF SUPER IMMORTALITY YOU'VE FOUND THE DARK SWORD OF PAINFUL DEATH +36457165 TO ATTACK YOU'VE LEARNED A NEW SKILL "INFINITE ANNIHILATION" etc.

(No, that's not ... an actual spoiler for Solo Leveling. OR IS IT?!)

But yeah. There are no stakes, no sense of danger, no meaningful character development, no interesting plot, no original mechanics, no dialogue, no personality, no charisma, no maturity. Instead, there is the most quintessential Korean reincarnation power fantasy where the main character immediately goes from a weak shy underdog boy to a tall, six-packed and undercut, stern, poker-faced ladykiller giga-sigmachad who can kill everything by sneezing at it and only keeps getting more overpowered by the minute. Because of fucking course he does. And this is enabled via a faux VRMMORPG interface because of fucking course it is. This cookie-cutter drivel writes itself on autopilot these days. The momentary but overemphasized weakness the MC exhibits in the first chapter is a mere formality to transform him into a completely different person right afterwards, and the moderately tedious grind that he undergoes for the majority of the comic's first half is just as much of a formality to establish him as the most powerful, all-around-capable being in the universe in the second half. The longer it goes, the less it makes you care because there's no struggle and nothing matters. Ever. Plot points are introduced and— oh hey, a kitty is playing with its tail! How cute! Moving on.

As you can guess, Solo Leveling certainly isn't shy of being the most trite thing in existence—quite the opposite: it revels in its own infinitely indulgent tropeyness, it takes pride in being the textbook example of everything that made the genre so boring and predictable over the past ten years and presenting it with the aplomb of reaching the pinnacle of creation. And in doing so, perhaps to its own merit, it outright discards everything that it doesn't want to do. You cannot fail that which you don't bother with, and so what remains is pure shonen battle sakuga with a side of wish fulfillment fluff, with everything else (including everything of literary substance) being decidedly left out. The detailed full-color art serves the goal admirably where it matters, i.e. when characters are striking a pose so that you could marvel at their menacing looks and soak in the edgy atmosphere. As soon as they start moving, however, it becomes a blurry mess where movements are very poorly defined, there's no sense of space, no impact to any strikes—all of which reflects the very nature of the comic perfectly. It has some style and looks great on the surface but is soulless, lazily written, and mediocre by choice.

But to give credit where it's due, at least it knows when to end. So long, leveling.

This my first time writing review so go easy on me.

Solo leveling has great start we have MC that is weakest hunter but still explores dungeons in order to pay medical bills for his sick mother and to help his sister become doctor however after a incident he gains mysterious power that helps him level up his rank and become strongest.
So let's start with good points of solo leveling
(1).Good start
Start of Solo leveling is good like I said earlier story has relatable MC in the beginning but after that it's down hill
(2).Art
Solo leveling has great art it's fully colored and it's easy to read ... it's clean, plus characters are good looking.
Now for what's bad
(1).Story
After the good start of story solo leveling gets predictable and boring
Every time over mc enters dungeon we know that he will defeat the monster and than say his catchphrase "Arise" and add that monster to his shadow army this is same process over and over.
(2).characters
Worst thing about solo leveling is characters,characters of solo leveling are like NPC. They are here for only two reasons either admire the mc or to hate him no in between. Every time new character is introduced they either praise the mc or hate him. New character are disposed after mc's business is finished with them. No character are relevant they only exist to make us feel how great MC is.
(3). Main character
Main character of story is sung jin-woo, like I said earlier he is relatable in beginning but than after gaining his powers he becomes self insert,Overpowered,emotionless. If I have to describe sung jin-wooin one word that is Korean Kirito.

My prediction for this manhwa is that people will know how bad this is in my opinion this series is going age like milk.

I would not recommend this series to anyone with good taste in anime and manga.
If you like power fantasy than read One punch man. It's sad to see this manhwa is ranked higher than manga like OPM

Solo leveling is just a Good looking trash but trash is still trash.