Well I’m sorry to spoil the party, but after having recently completed reading Solo Leveling I think those above sentiments are misguided and wrong. Very wrong. Sure, Solo Leveling is by far the most successful Korean webtoon to come out, but (in my humble opinion) it is storywise incredibly generic and unoriginal, and I see little reason (aside from the artwork) that it deserves the praise and attention it’s been receiving. Let me explain:
Starting with the plot, Solo Leveling takes place in the not-too-distant future where gates have appeared across the world that have magical beasts, monsters, and items inside of them. Humans with innate magical abilities, called “hunters” get together in guilds and adventure into the gates where they slay beasts and collect magical items to sell. As mentioned above, Hunters have inherent abilities, and are ranked from the lowest (E) to the highest (S). The main character Sung Jin-Woo starts off as an E-ranked as is nicknamed the “World’s weakest hunter”, but because of plot developments he gains the ability to level up, gradually becoming stronger and stronger, to the point in the latter chapters where he is completely invincible.
While that sounds cool, anyone who is even remotely acquainted with anime and/or manga will also realize how generic and overdone this storyline is. Solo Leveling’s storyline is nearly a straight copy of other well-known power fantasies such as “Sword Art Online” and “Danmachi”. Jin-Woo himself is nearly indistinguishable from Tatsuya from “The Irregular at Magic High School” franchise in that they are illogically overpowered, have the same boring expressionless deadpan face, and that they mostly care only about being powerful and protecting their family (especially their sister). And just like in the aforementioned franchises, Solo Leveling is also like them in that there is a steady stream of incompetent guys and large-breasted girls that the protagonist has to rescue.
Most hilariously however is the Jeju Island arc, coming about half way in Solo Leveling, which I shit you not, is utterly, completely, plagiarized from the Chimera ants arc in “Hunter x Hunter”. I mean literally, you have an isolated island full of rapidly evolving giant ants that like to eat humans, with one of them being specifically bred to be the strongest ant of all time, with a team of the world’s strongest hunters being sent out to stop them.
The writing and world-building in Solo Leveling is largely a mixed bag. While there are some nice moments of foreshadowing and a few interesting twists, by and large Solo Leveling is rather predictable, especially in the latter chapters as the protagonist Jin-Woo becomes so overpowered that there is hardly any suspense or tension as you the reader know that he will win anyways. While it was nice to see how the whole concept and economics of hunters and their guilds is expanded not just to Korea but other counties as well, the world building in Solo Leveling is rather weak. There are some notable plot holes, for example why does the world in Solo Leveling resemble the 21st-century world in so many ways, such as for example having hospitals and high schools, when there are humans that through no effort of their own have magical healing powers and can fix fatal wounds with a mere spell. Wouldn’t you think that the healer Hunters would be hired to work at said hospitals instead of aimlessly wandering around gates in search of magical items?
The characters in Solo Leveling are a mixed bag, but as mentioned above are mostly generic. Sung Jin-Woo is very much your typical self-insert protagonist in your power fantasy. The males in Solo Leveling are all arrogant and generally incompetent, the women all have unrealistically large busts. Overall the Chairman was my favorite character. The character designs were also inconsistent, the Japanese Hunters that appear right before the Jeju Island are had some cool designs but some of the others were illogical and generic. There was this one time in the story that Jin-Woo joins this group to raid a gate and I almost burst out laughing, as the Hunters from this guild all looked like they came out of the most generic possible fantasy anime cosplay party. Something annoying the writer keep doing in the story is that they keep introducing new female characters that I guess are supposed to be romantically attracted to Jin-Woo, only for them to disappear after a couple chapters and never to be brought up again. To put it blulntly, aside from Cha Hae-In all the female characters in Solo Leveling are irrelevant. At the very least Solo Leveling does not de-evolve into a harem as most other power fantasies do.
Obviously the most positive aspect of Solo Leveling is the art. It starts off okay, but it gets steadily better after the first 30 chapters. The fight scenes were the best drawn, especially latter in the series, and the panel lay out was competently done. My favorite scenes artistically wise had to be Jin-Woo’s battles with the orcs, with the more varied complex character designs and color pallets.
While Solo Leveling does have a few positive aspects, overall it is far, far too generic to recommend, and the popularity. Not that Manhwas are particularly known for their originality, but with so many aspects of Solo Leveling being identical to other stories, I see little reason why it has achieved such outstanding popularity and critical acclaim. At the very least the popularity of Solo Leveling may have brought the world of Korean webtoons to a wider audience, but even then there are manhwas out there that I feel are better written and have better art than Solo Leveling, but that’s my opinion.
