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Solo Leveling: Expertly executed power fantasy slop

When it comes to power fantasy shows, I don't think it is wrong to say that they get a lot of deserved negative attention. Cheap thrills for people who feel a lack of control over their lives. Solo Leveling isn't all that different. It is very blatantly pure power fantasy designed only to make the audience feel "hyped" as Jinwoo does something cool and blows the minds of every side character.

But where Solo Leveling succeeds and other power fantasy fails, is the execution of this basic genre. I don't only mean the quality of animation which is obviously ... very good and something that others have pointed out as well. But also in the story department and lack of mind numbing anime tropes. There is no harem of women existing purely to breast boobily and make the audience self-insert MC feel desired, there is no generic fantasy setting or undercooked gimmicks to differentiate a generic fantasy magic system from other generic fantasy magic systems.

One show that was airing at the same time as Solo Leveling S2 was that godawful fantasy slop show called Bogus Skill "Fruitmaster." These two shows actually have a surprisingly similar premise. Both shows have people who gain magical powers at some point in their life, it is known that those powers remain the same and cannot be changed afterwards, and our main character starts the series off as someone incredibly weak who through random chance becomes the only person able to increase his power level. Where Solo Leveling succeeds and Bogus Skill fails is in the execution and how thought out the magic system is. When Jinwoo gains the ability to level up, he must go through adversity and put in effort to grow in power. In Bogus Skill, people gain a skill by eating a skill fruit. They can only eat one as they are supposedly poisonous so eating more than one would be lethal to anyone who tries to eat more. Our MC gains the skill "fruitmaster" that on the surface seems very boring only allowing him to be a moderately good fruit farmer. But as we find out later this skill also allows him to withstand the poison of these fruits and therefore eat as many as he likes, gaining the potential for limitless amount of skills. See the problem? Our MC doesn't need to put in effort or go through heroic challanges to gain power. He only needs to eat. This is why Solo Leveling works and Bogus Skill does not.

That all being said, Solo Leveling is still a very simple show and doesn't try to be particularly deep or meaningful in anyway. This is why I still call it slop. It's primary purpose is purely to entertain and nothing else. If you have watched the show I recommend remembering what sorts of emotions did you go through while watching the show. I would imagine that list to be just hype and occasional anxiety. Maybe you also felt happy for Jinwoo when he woke up his mum. But did you feel much more than those emotions? Did the show make you think about something from a new perspective or on a deeper level? I don't think so. It is not a show with a meaningful message or deep cutting commentary on current times, it is unabashedly there to make you hyped for whatever Jinwoo will do next.

TL;DR: Solo Leveling is meant to entertain and does so incredibly well, but lacks any higher aspirations for emotional depth or meaningful commentary on anything. This is why I think it's very good but by no means a masterpiece. Loads of style, little to no substance.

Squandered potential.

This review is for both acts. I will also preface this review by saying that I have not read the source material and have only watched the anime.

I stumbled upon this show randomly. Just browsing what to watch and this seemed promising so I started watching it. And I immidietely got the impression that the source material bangs. I could see the framework of an extremely competent story. But what bothers me about the anime adaptation is that they seem to be speedrunning the story for some reason. This trend continued throughout the whole series and really upsets me because regardless of my low ... score and hesitance to outright recommend it, it's clear as the sky that the anime does not do justice to the source material. Even having never read it. The elements are just too competent. I plan on reading the novel at some point when I get the burst of motivation to do so and if it sucks I will be very surprised.

There are a lot of instances in the anime where sub plots start from seemingly in the middle without proper set up. Conflicts start and end within one or two episodes. This makes it difficult to follow the red thread running through the whole story and what is and isn't important.

I'll say this much, if this anime gets a remake some years down the line, with proper pacing and without the story being rushed, with better or even the same quality of animation, I will be watching that religiously. That probably won't happen considering this show wasn't all that popular and remakes rarely happen, but I would say that this story deserves it. It deserves the time and care of a longer and slower version of the anime. At minimum the story should have been spread over twice the run time. There was no need to rush things like this and I would love to hear the studio's justification for this speedrun-esque pacing.

Season 1 had plenty of charming character moments between the cast. Whereas season 2 seems completely devoid of any of it. So far in season 2 the vast majority of characters talking are either talking to an opponent during a fight, or internal monologue, the purpose of which is to explain what the fuck is happening with the convoluted curse system.

It feels like all the animators are trying to do is present fight scenes to the viewer desperately waiting for approval. "Doesn't this go hard, right?" But all of it end up feeling empty since all the character development happened in season 1, which aired ... long ago so the emotional attachement to the characters has weakened massively.

On top of this, what used to be the main cast in season 1, was split up in this season. Leading to no interaction between the characters that we care about the most. How many lines of dialogue have Itadori and Fushiguro shared this season? Or Itadori and Nobara? Don't remember anything meaningful. But hey, just look at the cool fight scenes.

And to tell you the truth, the fight scenes are also pretty awful. They do an awful job at conveying to the viewer how the fight is progressing, in which direction, and how close are we getting to the climax. As an example, the fight between Gojo annd the big bad curses in the subway with all the people around. It was impossible to know how many people were at risk since people were dying left and right at such a pace that you immidietely lost count, and to add to that, there was always some new source of fodder civilians. And it seemed like the point of the civilians was to hinder Gojo in the fight since he would supposedly care about civilian lives, but in the end, he didn't give a fuck. So we have to opposing forces, neither of which care about the civilians at risk. So why should the viewer care.

The fight scenes also fail on the visual front. I can see the effort put into the animation, but the effort is wasted since most shots are so up close, that it ends up simply being a character in a pose, with rubble/blood/guts/etc filling the background. The worst offender was the scene right before Gojo gets cubed up. It's just his face looking unhinged for what felt like eternity and blood splatters on the edges of the screen.

Wrote this after episode 18, I'll finish the series and adjust my score if anything changes towards the end.

TL;DR: this shit is ass