- Last Online3 hours ago
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- BirthdayAug 6, 2005
- LocationPhilippines
- JoinedMar 7, 2020
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May 19, 2021
Oyasumi Punpun is an ineffable manga.
To fully describe how psychologically impactful this manga was is extremely difficult, as it was not only a series that evoked emotion, but it also felt very personal and relatable. The story revolves around protagonist Onodera Punpun from childhood to adulthood, and every step of the way his innocence slowly degrades as he realizes how cruel the world can be. His simplistic depiction as a sketchy bird (along with the rest of his relatives) emphasizes the effects of the story itself, rather than connections to their physical appearance. A senseless reality, the depressing storyline puts the reader into a
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trance that makes them reflect on their own lives, on their own relationships, and on their individuality.
As little Punpun travels through heartbreak, distance, and isolation, the characters around him are valuable (even if they hurt him) in teaching what it means to let go and teaching that it's ok if you can't forgive someone. Although admittedly Punpun did not have his fairytale happy ending, the rest of his life became open and forgiving, because along the journey of his life he discovered the importance of being happy with yourself amidst the pressures of everyday life.
Asano Inio is godlike in being able to pull such strong feelings from the reader, as he tackles realistic examples of daily causes of depression, abuse, heartbreak, suicide, perversion, peer pressure, sexuality, and broken friendships. Not only that, but Punpun's way of dealing with these issues is not what normal manga characters do, as usually they face the problem head on and eventually solve the problem. But Punpun absorbs all the pain within himself and rarely tells anyone about it, other than the occasional violent outbursts as a result of his bottled up feelings. Many individuals in reality do this as well. Even when Punpun had found his love, their toxic relationship consisted of mutual abuse and the wish to kill each other to relieve the pain.
Oyasumi Punpun, though showing all this in the most relatable human way, is still a very uplifting series as it still ends on a pleasant note, showing that life goes on after all. Art wise, I thought it as extremely creative and strategic to use a simplistic bird to represent the main character. Why? Because by doing so the protagonist is not liked for aesthetics. And he "does not talk". The reader can easily relate themselves to Punpun because he has no specific characteristics that sets him largely apart from any other person that may read it, other than the fact that he has gone through pain and despondency. Also, he is a very obvious character as the rest of the book is drawn extremely realistically, which goes on to show Asano Inio's amazing and expressive talent. And even aside from the art, the dialogue is amazingly developed. It deals with varying personalities and is descriptive in representing each character in their spiritual and emotional beliefs.
In my opinion, its a story where its less on making you feel sad about punpun's life and more on making you realize about your own depressing life that you indulge yourself in escapism which is the intention of the manga; making you realize and fight against reality by changing and/or improving your perspective on life.
The series should be read by mature (not necessarily older) individuals. Not only due to the fact that the depressing examples and allusions to God and suicide should never be read by one who has not yet understood these dangerous emotions, but because the reader is learning alongside a growing boy. Many scenes are suggestive or blatantly inappropriate, but in the end are important in contributing to the realistic atmosphere of the manga, so should not be shown to younger individuals.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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May 18, 2021
Solo Leveling is a junk food, delicious but no nutritional value
The story follows our main hero, Sung Jin-Woo, as he lives out the zero-to-hero trope, going from the weakest at his job of Hunter to the strongest Hunter ever seen (that's not a spoiler, just the premise of the manhwa). Hunters are how this world calls people who "awaken", receiving powers beyond any normal human. Even the weakest Hunters are physically more powerful than any human could be. That's because the enemies they face are not regular humans, but monsters that appear inside "gates", portals leading to different dungeons and mini-worlds where a group of
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monsters of different types lives in, having a boss that needs to be defeated to close the Gate.
That is by itself a pretty basic premise, many times done before, with minor differences but the same overall structure. Monsters attack, they have ranks of power, a "hero" or "monster hunter" association arises and people take on killing monsters as a profession. One Punch Man did it masterfully with its satirical take on the over-saturated super-hero genre. So did Pacific Rim, taking on the Mecha genre, and with a much more serious, although not less badass presentation. Just from these two examples, you can see that the base upon which Solo Leveling is built is not the most ground-breaking one, even having a direct reference to Saitama's training routine built into it. Which is okay, to be fair. You don't need to create a new narrative setting every time you want to tell a story. The problem comes after you read 10, 20, 50, 100 chapters of it and realize that... It's just like any other fighting shounen gamer power fantasy with super-heroes ever made. Narratively, it does not create anything that would make it stand above its peers, or even stand out from them. It blends in, silently, with not a notch of uniqueness attached to it.
Why, then, has it gained such popularity? The art. It's because of the art. Solo Leveling is a studio produced manhwa based on an already written novel. Being drawn by a bunch of talented artists, inked by another bunch, colored by another and lettered by yet another, it comes as no surprise that the thing looks amazing, even releasing on a weekly basis. Which only serves to make the critical failures in it's writing seem worse. The character designs, the monster designs specially, the background art, the dungeons, the fighting choreography and flow, the framing, basically everything that makes this a great read, are all just surface level, a beautiful skin covering a decaying, poorly written, poorly paced story full of tropes and clichés, and characters so forgettable I could not tell you the name of a single one of them without pulling up google first.
Since the art is universally praised and known, I will not critique it. Instead, lets dissect the real bad shit below it, starting by the least outrageous flaw, the pacing.
The pacing in this thing is a mess. It goes extremely fast in certain aspects, and sluggishly slow on others. The power scaling is outright broken. You go so quickly from a weak good for nothing guy to a baddass that it becomes numbing. The last actual tough fight is around chapter 40, and from there, you have just firework shows and long lasting fights that look good to make up for how easy and unchallenging they feel, so much so that they start feeling boring after some time, namely once he gets so many powerful shadow servants he himself barely has to fight. He is basically already a demigod half-way through season one. Any challenge, any tension that would make the fights feel much more intense and compelling, those things are gone. It's just a matter of how long will he take to beat them?" instead of "how will he beat them?" or even "can he beat them?". The fights feel dumb-down and even tiresome in the later chapters, and no amount of badassery from the MC can save them.
At the same time, the pacing of the story is abysmally slow, contrasting heavily with the break-neck pace of the power scaling. The story presents all those threads, but follows on none of them. There isn't a scent of an over-arching plot, and it just feels like the author is throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks. It feels sluggish, messy and chaotic, like it knows it has to move, but just keeps changing lanes and running around in circles. The story finally progresses a bit in the end of season one, but by that time, just about 7 possible paths were opened, and not one of them was closed. The super powerful hunter that came from america to face Jin-Woo? Just left. His father coming out of a dungeon after over a decade? He is there, somewhere. The system that gives Jin-Woo his powers? whatever, never explained. The hell dimension that overlaps with Seoul? Takes you nowhere and is solved in less than 10 chapters, leaving that big dull feeling of having created hype for nothing. The ant infestation on the island is solved, but just serves a finale to show off cool fights, and has nothing at all to do with any previous plot.
If you have a bad pacing, that's okay. Maybe the story really makes up for it when it picks up! But what if your story is not that interesting and does nothing to pay-off any slow build-ups? Well, at least you can have interesting characters there, so the reader doesn't get bored right? Pull them in with a little investment. I'm sorry to say, but Solo Leveling's most grave failure is exactly that - the characters are so uninteresting it hurts.
Not only are they painfully forgettable, bland and uninteresting, some are just bad written characters. Not a single one of them has a believable motivation, engaging backstory or captivating personality. They are 2D cardboard cut-outs of generic anime tropes. The cute healer, the clumsy rich kid, the OP bad guy, the wise master, the annoying stubborn teenager, the little sister, the sick mom, the missing dad, the semi-badass love interest, so on, so on. Just from making this list, I could think of two or more other characters from other animes that fit the bill for each one of those. I will not care to search for any names besides the MC because they don't deserve my 10 seconds of googling. You could just swap each one of them for any other generic anime character and not lose anything at all. You don't care about their struggles, you don't care about their lives, and so any tension a fight could have is completely gone, since them living or dying wouldn't matter anyway (not that they even die, since the MC just always saves them last minute).
So when you get a Main Character that is just boring edgy isekai trash, secondary characters so bland a smooth white wall has more personality than them, a plot so broken and disrupted that you don't even know where the story is going (and it really isn't going anywhere), what else can you say but that this Manhwa is just looks, no substance? The writing is atrociously boring, uninteresting and generic, the fights look good, but they don't feel good because the illusion that the MC could lose is not there. The tension is not there. You don't have a reason to care about these fights, you don't have a motivation to like the characters, or dislike the antagonists, or even care at all about the MC getting stronger. It's like a pasture of fake grass. Looks good, but feels awful.
In conclusion, Solo Leveling had a chance at being a great fighting Manhwa, with such a good art and fights, and a world open enough to add any interesting plot the author could want. But it follows up on nothing, resolves poorly and just feels dry of any real emotion, power, punch or hype it could have. It is generic shounen trash, and should be remembered as such in the future, unless it brings a major shift in direction and actually follows up on the paths it sets for itself. And I mean a really big change. Otherwise, I don't see any reason for it to keep existing at all.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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