‘Solo Leveling – ReAwakening’: Get Ready to Level Up!

Imagine a world in which, out of the blue, mysterious “Gates” connect our world to “Dungeons,” a realm where monsters and magic roam free. Along with the Gates opening, an influx of mana (magic) occurs, prompting those humans affected by this to evolve and become “Hunters.” These Hunters are enhanced humans wielding powerful magic that allow them to disseminate the threats that the Dungeons bring.

There’s a set limit to the power attributed to Hunters when they awaken. The most powerful are the S-Rank Hunters, and the weakest are the E-Rank Hunters. Regardless of their ranks, Hunters risk life and limb to wipe out and clear the Dungeons.

Sung Jinwoo, an E-Rank Hunter known by the moniker “The Weakest Hunter of All Mankind,” struggles to get by in the strange new world. With his father who had mysteriously vanished and presumed dead in a Dungeon raid and mother in a magic-induced coma, he was forced to become the sole breadwinner for his family. Considered a dead weight, and a constant subject of humiliation and mockery, Sung Jinwoo has it rough. He thinks it’s going to be the end of him during a raid gone wrong.

Only it isn’t.

Instead, Jinwoo is selected to become a player in the “System,” a magical program that treats him like a player and the Dungeons a video game. Harnessing the power of the System, Jinwoo discovers he can now level up, unlike his fellow Hunters. Determined not to squander this golden opportunity, he decides that he will accept the powers offered to him by the System and make it to the top.

Solo Leveling is the story of how Sung Jinwoo goes from being humanity’s weakest hunter to the strongest of them all.

Quite like its protagonist, Solo Leveling rose to fame from an obscure light novel to a very successful anime. It initially started out as a webnovel by Chugong on KakaoPage from 2016 onwards. It was later serialized as a webtoon/manhwa in 2018 and went on to receive an anime adaptation from A-1 Pictures earlier this year. And now it has even spawned a film, Solo Leveling – ReAwakening. 

The film can be divided into two parts. The first is a comprehensive recap, or rather retelling of the first season. The second is a glimpse of what is to come, which is the first two episodes of Season 2 of the anime. Make no mistake, it doesn’t cut-copy-paste an abridged version of the first season’s episodes. Instead, the film takes the best moments from Season 1 and stitches it together as a strikingly animated powerful tapestry that sets the scene for the upcoming season.

While it can serve as a good entry point to the series, covering the bare bones, the film does work under the premise that one has watched the anime/read the manhwa/light novel, as a lot of vital information about the world is left out. It will definitely leave the first-time viewer a little lost.

Instead, what the film does is work as a refresher for those who have already consumed media related to Solo Leveling, namely the anime. It shows off Jinwoo’s skill and the skillful animation with which it is brought to life on screen. It serves as a celebration of Jinwoo’s progress across the first season and sets the stage for what is to come.

To say that Solo Leveling is an action-packed franchise is a huge understatement. If Solo Leveling manifested as a person and had a middle name, it would be ‘action.’ Fights are the most important thing here and it makes up the meat of the story and there’s no shortage of blood, gore and character deaths. There’s a lot of slicing and dicing going on, of people and monsters alike.

The manhwa is known for its art style first and foremost, with its clean line art, dynamic fight scenes and beautifully illustrated characters. To translate those static frames that have a lot going on into moving images is a mammoth task that A-1 Pictures has managed to pull off. With the film showcasing the best fights from the first season, fans of the action genre are in for a really good time. Visually, it’s a good film; slick, dynamic, it’s easy to get captivated by the high-stakes battles in the world of Solo Leveling.

When it comes to plot and character development, Solo Leveling hits a roadblock, especially towards the end of the manhwa and web novel.

The world building is neat: the threat of the gates, the dungeons, the hunters. The way the mysterious System operates and what its intentions are, the way in which Jinwoo collects his ‘Shadow Soldiers’ like Pokémon. In the beginning, it’s fun. Here you have someone ridiculously weak work his way to become ridiculously strong. Jinwoo’s initial opponents prove challenging and he must use both brains and brawn to defeat them. But after a while, it does get stale.

Early in the series, from Jinwoo’s point of view, we see the cold, cruel, callous nature of not only the monsters but also the humans that populate the world. The line between them seems blurred at best.  The powerups seem exciting and Jinwoo’s steadfast progress to the top is inspiring. The story starts off strong. The anime even expands on side characters that were slightly neglected in the source material, giving the story a little more substance.

Towards the end however, when all is revealed, and Jinwoo has become ridiculously overpowered, so what is the point of the story? Jinwoo transforms from a character with substance to the most overpowered edgelord by the end of the series. He has no flaws or chinks in his armor, there’s no struggle here, no mysteries to solve, no conspiracies to uncover; the fighting gets repetitive. You know he’s going to win; you know he’s going to crush his opponents; you know that the threat level is zero. There is more uncertainty in predicting the weather than there is in predicting the outcome of Jinwoo’s battles.

But one could suppose the same when you use an overpowered and over-leveled character to cheese a videogame instead of playing at the intended level of difficulty. One thing that does stand out is the way Solo Leveling turns a necromancer — a normally weak class — into the strongest tank possible.

At its core, Solo Leveling is an inspiring story of growth and triumph, of starting from the bottom of the barrel and clawing your way to the top. It is pure, unfiltered, unadulterated action that is directly pumped into your veins. Despite not physically fighting Jinwoo’s battles, there’s a certain addicting feeling of adrenaline coursing through you as he emerges victorious.