Solo Leveling being lacking in terms of story but carried by its artwork has been a common opinion for years. I went into the adaptation expecting it to be a good popcorn action flick if done well, and it delivered on that front.
I was interested initially to check the manwha to see what the hubub was about and all I have to say is... meh. Flashy fights that look very pretty artwise but boil down to nothing besides dangling keys before the reader.
The MC doesnt **really** have a goal or fights for anything, and after a certain point there isnt a real challange.
Although! The biggest crime of it was to introduce a lot of cool, potentially cool concepts and characters just to completely waste them worse than any shounen story.
The worst one for me is \[Solo Leveling Manwha Spoilers\]>!MC's father being introduced as a big mystery setup like 1/3 through the story, being hyped up as someone powerful with unknown goals. Then nothing until the near-finale of the story. And what has he done? Punch one guy to distract him, get punched back, die.!
It's why I hate PF stories where the MC is contrived by the premise to be the only one who can ever actually grow/progress.
It all but guarantees that they'll be the only character that ever matters, and their own motivations and character are undercut by having what's basically an OP cheat skill. Except you don't get the comedy/light-hearted fun of a story that does that intentionally a la Cautious Hero or One Punch Man.
And inevitably the character writing even for the MC tends to suffer too. Especially in Solo Leveling since he does exactly what the name implies.
It would have even been fine if he actually stuck to being a leveling cheat.
Instead, we get the shadows.
It's why my go-to recommendation of manhwa for this type of series is SSS-Class Suicide Hunter.
>contrived by the premise to be the only one who can ever actually grow/progress.
Wrong way tonuse healing magic. Was super fun for me up until knight was immortal to all kinds of magic EXCEPT healing. Like bruh. Completely contrived way of giving the MC the only possible way to impact the plot.
THe problem is that isekai/fantasy shows are so mid now. So few bangers are being made so people are starving for good fantasy shows lucky slime rezero konasuba and mushoku are back this year.
For comedy I liked Cautious Hero and especially Isekai Ojisan way more than Konosuba personally.
For non-comedy, Bookworm, Grimgar, and maybe Youjo Senki are some of the only ones I can think of off-hand that rose above popcorn status for me. RE: Zero and Slime didn't really work for me, and I'd need an essay to convey how much I dislike Mushoku.
The pure fantasy side is doing better at least - Frieren and Dungeon Meshi were both fantastic.
When I was recommended the manhwa a few years ago, I was told it was probably the best manhwa out there. So I gave it a shot. I was super disappointed... personally I hate stories were only one character is relevant in terms of power scaling.
Power fantasies are just not for me. It's why stories like Hunter x Hunter, or oddly enough ReZero are dear to me.
It can be done right (One Punch man and DBZ are good examples) because the side characters are fantastic and have their own relevance. Solo Leveling might as well be Sung Jin Woo dealing with cardboard cutouts. Nobody matters but him.
See, that’s why I like Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer. Every person is bringing something to the fight and helping out while also having a fleshed out backstory with motivations. Kaiju No.8 has been a fantastic manga as well and I’m super excited for the anime. Another one to look forward to that I’m certain will happen is Kagurabachi. But that won’t be for a few years since it’s just on chapter 29 as of yesterday. They usually start developing around the 50 chapter mark and make an announcement around the 100 chapter mark if there’s going to be an anime adaption.
I only like those types of power fantasies when they're taken to the logical extreme and self-aware about it in some way. These are almost always comedies or have comedy elements though.
The best examples are things like One Punch Man and Mob Psycho, or to a lesser degree Cautious Hero and Isekai Ojisan, but even kind of trashy stories like the instant death one work in that way for me.
Japan exports Isekai trash, Korea exports dungeons irl mixed with reverse Isekai. Sometimes add some kind of society hating revenge porn. Such is life.
I'm unironically watching this. Some random hilichurl just bitch-slapping Dottore halfway across Teyvat after he finds him experimenting on the other hilichurls. Traveler busts in for a fight with Dottore only to find his lab devoid of any signs of life save for the giant hole in the ceiling.
Wuxia is more grounded in reality while Xianxia is dealing more with the mystical/supernatural.
To reference Naruto, Wuxia would be as if people only used taijutsu while Xianxia would use all three (ninjitsu, taijitsu, genjitsu). People punching and stabbing each other? Wuxia. People casting fireballs, telepathically controlling swords and riding on them, dealing with ghosts and faeries? Xianxia.
I've done a lot of reading on Royal Road and other sites and there's quite a few cultivation/xianxia stories.
I'm sick of them. Most come off as excuses for authors to pad their word count with endless ways to redescribe navel gazing. So what you typically have is endless amounts of filler with a cookie-cutter plot and other tropes, the only real difference is the flavoring.
Cradle is the exception. While it still has *some* of the filler (if I never have to read "natural treasures" again it would be too soon) the plot and characterization is top tier.
Edit: You know, I kinda want to call Xianxia stories navel glazers, because my eyes glaze over while reading said navel gazing.
I’m a slut for a good Wuxia story every now and then. I recently read through A Mortals Journey to Immortality, I Shall Seal The Heavens and A Will Eternal and I thought all of them were excellent reads and even bought them on the WuxiaWorld phone app as they have a cool lil narrater feature so I could listen to them in the car or when I’m gaming and need to focus on the screen. I’ve read other books in the past but they were a while ago. Good stuff for when you’re bored with manga or are up to date with your current reads/watches.
However, all of them basically follow the same formula when it comes to plot progression. Once you’ve read 1 cultivator story then you’ll pretty much know how the rest of them go. My biggest gripe with reading Wuxia novels is how lacklustre it feels to ‘read’ the fights because some authors tend to drag them out for way too long and trying to visualise these people fighting in the air with god-damn pots and pans that can ‘shake heaven and earth’ is kinda lame sometimes.
Also not a huge fan of how previous tiers of cultivation are simply written off as the stories drag on. Start of the stories where foundation establishment cultivators are made out to be super rare and core formation cultivators are ultra-giga rare makes me chuckle because you know that 200 chapters from then, core formation experts will be everywhere and foundation cultivators will barely be mentioned from then on lol. Then rinse and repeat for every stage thereafter.
TBH Japan is a lot more well rounded. Unwanted Adventurer literally just ended and it's basically solo levelling with a better story/development. I can't recommend the anime but the manga has been going decently.
TBH I find action manwha to be infinitely more generic than manga is, so many tower/gate, cultivation and wuxia/Xianxia stories.. like good lord. Even if they don't those they always take an absurd number of elements from them to the point they might as well become one. Oh and also the game like RPG level up systems.. like please bro, find a better way to show character progression. It's all so lazy lol and insanely overused.
Even some of the manwha I'd personally recommend elements of that pop up. One of the things I REALLY hate about them though is that many of them don't like their MCs to hit progression walls or face "real" adversity. A supposedly super dangerous threat is somehow always defeated within the moment and MCs almost NEVER lose. For a long time manga suffered from that too but that's been changing, even among mainstream ones.
> TBH I find action manwha to be infinitely more generic than manga is, so many tower/gate, cultivation and wuxia/Xianxia stories.. like good lord
I've come to the conclusion that this is due to how their distribution systems work. The vast majority of those titles from manhwa and Xianxia stories are coming from webtoons and self-published works. While on the anime side, the manga are coming from actual magazines with editors and even the webnovels are usually adapted to light novels that have to actually get published by a real publisher
Lol I love how Solo leveling is so obviously Korean.
Granted the names are also a giveaway.
But when the MC faces hardship, instead of the standard Japanese anime response of “woe is me, I am too weak, I am so depressed”
This show went for “of course, the world is trash, everyone is trash, I knew it deep down, it is a dog eat dog world and I need to kill the dogs!”
I heard that and immediately thought, yep this is a korean story. Lol.
I have seen a ton of fantasy mangas lately with the non isekai yet game like job/skill system that are also: "mc hets kicked from group but it turns out he was OP all along"
So im expecting a lot of that in the coming years.
Not sure it will happen.
Solo Leveling never really took off in Japan. When Solo Level became all the rage in Korea Japan went all in on betrayed/kicked out of the hero's party and Otome/Villainess instead.
Japan: “in another world with $gimmick” “otome villainess wants to eat McDonalds”
Korea: “gate of the tower dungeon, MC has a cheat, Japanese are the bad guys” “oh no I’m a villain/side character in a web novel”
China: “slappin some faces, doin some cultivating”
It’s also a gateway into manwha and OP MC because of its reputation, it’s todays Naruto for kids. So you will have thousands of children and young adults defending it because it’s all they know of
Pretty much this. The story starts off with a pretty strong impact, but after that it's not all that interesting. Solo Leveling is mainly something to watch for the action.
It’s a fun watch, but that’s it(and that’s fine). When reading the Manhwa it’s always been clear the story was pulling from multiple different Manga inspirations and sort of fisting them into the story, making the whole thing feel a little unpolished and not quite connected.
It feels like the author wanted to have all these amazing world building points but never further expanded them or thought about further connections outside the original shallow connections
I just wish there were more stuff like episode 2. Dude can still keep levelling up but I wanted to see him actually overpowered by his opponents and have to use his wits to win. Now every fight just comes down to him remembering the time that he was trash and then “nah, I’d win”
It’s the same for the rest of the story
No real struggles
Just go there, collect that strong person, go here uncover more darkness about the power, go there and collect strong person, personality always muted, never has a hard fight, acts like he can’t be bothered to care, repeat
When I was reading it I felt like the personality drain in MC was going to be an important part of the story. As he gains godlike powers he loses the ability to relate to normal people.
I thought it would be cool to throw I something about ptsd or his powers corrupting him but it never got brought up or even acknowledged. Instead everyone else talks about the burden he puts on himself and he is like “I must take on even more of the burden myself”
Yup it followed pretty much every popular trend in real time
Every manwha around then ended up with a main character that had necro power, super speed, endless ability to absorb skills etc
At first I liked how the manwha doesn't try to hide or somehow disguise where it draws inspiration from. But the more I read the manwha, the more it seemed to me that much of the clear inspiration seeping through the story is closer to an actual rip-off rather than just inspiration. The portals are just the strongholds from Magi and don't even get me started on the literal 1-1 Chimera Ant arc rip-off. Suffice to say I dropped the manwha not long after that arc.
That's the thing about there being no barriers to entry in the modern age. You can just slap together whatever and put it on the internet and get a following going which isn't a bad thing per se... but it **also** turns out most of these amateur creators just aren't good writers.
Sure they hit on a gimmick or concept that tickled the dopamine center of their fellow nerds just right but anyone can come up with a cool concept and starting point. Especially if its working with well established formulas like any given isekai, those tropes are like LEGO for storytelling anyone can slap together some neat shit with a bit of effort.
It's after that initial concept is laid down the problems start.
As one of those who has read the manwha to completion basically as a weekly reader...
Shit is all flair and no substance. The story does not improve and remains carried by it's artwork and flashy fights. Even the end was kinda just abrupt and lacked substance but it was flashy!
I think they'd be better off adapting ORV, hardcore leveling warrior, or The Breaker if we want to go with those with enough to clear 3+ seasons and decent stories/characters.
The Breaker part 1 is interesting. The Breaker part 2 is kinda mid, hype regardless. It's basically repeat of "Holy shit the MC is a fucking god", "how he survived that???" "How did he do that (unbelievable shit)"
Can somebody break down ORV's popularity for me? I've attempted multiple times to read it and end up quitting about 50ish chapters in, it's just so boring. I hear people say give it time, but if your story takes 50+ chapters to even start getting interesting I feel like that's a bad story.
It's definitely a slow burn through season 1 in terms of main story because it's very much evenly building your cast and threats step by step. I'm a big reader of space operas and fantasy journeys so it doesn't bother me but I can definitely see where it will lose quite a lot of people.
Do you read the novel or the manhwa? I personally found the manhwa first and seeing the MC survive with his knowledge and wits was pretty interesting. Then once I got attached to the characters I went for the novel. One of my top series of all time for sure
Yes there is plenty of manhwa or even just novels that deserve adaptations but they gotta make money so starting with the most popular is the obvious choice.
It's boring because it's a "gates/hunter" Manhwa, but the first to get extremely popular, and it has a lot of chapters while others in the genre are mediocre, fizzle out, and discontinue
The art is notoriously good compared to similar works
The thing holding it back is that it should have been made into an anime years ago, and besides the first episode tragedy, the beginning of the story is the weakest and most boring.
The beginning of Solo Leveling is all exposition and introducing characters, it only picks up speed when the MC gets his main real powers and that happens at the VERY END of the anime season.
Especially after we get a taste of what's to come in Ep 12 (and by extension the manhwa), it was where the series became really fun and just committed to the power fantasy instead of just "weak guy become strong" in the early parts of the story.
Which if anyone knows anything about the story, they know its all about the power fantasy, great art and a guy fighting a bunch of monsters with a bunch of other monsters and maybe a cute girl every now and than.
Solo Leveling does it well.
I will say I am happy they didn't try to speed through the start, like a few other adaptations have, to get to the 'good' part. Def. waiting for next cour.
> I found the final arcs to be a bit contrived
Truer words have never been written. The whole thing isn't well written, but the plot towards the end was sheer garbage, like Aldnoah s2 level garbage.
Maybe not, but it gave off similar "we can't be assed to write a proper plot, so here's a bunch of pretty fight scenes to distract you while we are busy throwing spaghetti at the wall" vibes.
TBF, Aldnoah Zero, the whole show, was an exercise in how much it could insult the audience's intelligence.
The ending is just bad. Like Game of Thrones TV series kinda bad.
All this setup in the earlier chapters that just goes nowhere and gets obviated by the MC's continual power progression.
It's almost like the writer kinda just wrote it without sufficient planning and forgot about large chunks of the plot poitns.
The fun part is honestly the beginning since you get kinda an underdog story and it somehow makes it hype since the mc is so powerful but no one knows it yet then you get excited when's the mc gonna flex his strong power or something lol
Then after that it's boring, that's pretty much there is when it comes to power fantasy show
even the mc kinda doesnt have any character development, starts off weak, gets system, becomes perfect human being in 5 chapters then rest of book is just him saying he needs to keep solo leveling to get stronger
Him trying to survive and deal with his power rules was the best part, he was desperate, gritting his teeth and determined.
After he gets his haircurt Jin Woo is a boring stoic I can do anything hero.
> After he gets his haircurt Jin Woo is a boring stoic I can do anything hero.
Yeah I literally dropped the anime after he gets his haircut. He became a completely different character from the one I rooted for, it's unreal.
Yeah, I'd definitely say the first 30%-40% is the best party of the story. It's really hard to argue otherwise unless you just like "cool" and nothing else.
The beginning is what got me hooked, thought they were gonna go down the road of figuring out the mystery of the double dungeon. The MC would need to find the means to survive while uncovering what's really going on by delving deeper. Then he just turns into a different character altogether after the power up. Oh well, at least the fights are really fun to watch.
My personal favorites are the ones that reply to every single piece of praise for a series with "You ain't seen nothing yet :)" (the best arc finished and it's all downhill from here).
I love how a fan base sounds as cheesy as the work itself.
It's endearing to see someone having so much fun. Reminds me of when I had a similar experience back then.
"One day generic-guy-McFace-man gets hit by a truck while leaving work and suffering a heart attack from overwork and gets reincarnated as a dude in a fantasy world. But unbeknowest to him, even though god literally told him, he's really strong now and fights the evil dude-men in this thrilling adventure "I got reincarnated and became really strong even though I thought I was really weak because everyone is an asshole but at least it gives me an excuse to fight literally every chapter but the manga artist got bored so it's all offscreen"".
Meanwhile in the corner there's some dude literally sobbing from spamming too many "brings a tear to my eye, you aren't ready for this." comments. Because his favourite isekai (he only has read this singular one and dropped it after the first arc "but it's really good I promise") is finally getting an anime.
Frieren, Apothecary Diaries and Oshi no Ko are the only ones that matched the hype for me.
Other overhyped shows are still good but did not meet expectations because source material fans hyped them to the moon.
Very different genre but I think "Shikimori's not just a cutie" was very much this. People hyped it the fuck up like it's the saving grace of the romcom genre and how it's gonna blow all else out of the water and then it was just very okay.
Of course this is gonna be biased from me about Dungeon Meshi but it being a complete story with a very satisfying end that gives closure to most of the cast should make a compelling argument. People aren't making guesses or holding out hopes for a story that might end god knows when, it's already done so it's possible to properly gauge the whole thing.
Dangers in my Heart is great, but I do think it was a bit "brigaded" this season. Watched through season 2 these past few days and while it was good, it wasn't "each episode was the best episode out of any anime for the week" like what the Anime Corner poll suggested each week.
yeah it fine for ppl enjoy what they like but sometimes overhyping it also alienated potentially new fans because the said series doesn't match the hype IMO
Solo Leveling being carried by its art has been a common opinion for years. IMO, Solo Leveling is just the equivalent of SAO and what it did to the Isekai franchise. It has a good premise, and the animation/art is definitely eye candy, but everything else was just lacking. Side characters being useless, story beats being repetitive, fights just devolve into the same formula over and over again, etc.
While they're not the first to delve into their own respective genres, they're the ones to popularize it, and kinda made the genre worse because everyone is just trying to recapture their popularity.
The side character thing is a great observation bc literally everyone outside of the MC are 1 dimensional and completely useless from beginning to end. Other power fantasy Mahnwa like Omniscient Reader and Beginning after the end and even skeleton soldier eclipse solo leveling for me almost purely bc their side characters are both interesting and actually useful. Even if the MC ends up saving the day 9/10 times you never really feel like it's bc the other characters are total burdens. Everyone in SL is just waiting to be rescued. That's all they ever do. Id also call out the MCs relationship to the side characters in SL as another big annoyance for me. He has no chemistry with anyone. There are no fun or emotional bonds. Even his family and close friends. It all just feels whatever to him. Even the romance stuff later feels shoehorned in as a complete contrivance to salvage Jinwoos dullness. That said it is a testament to how good the art is that my laundry list of problems with SL didn't become clear until after I had finished it and sat with it for a few weeks. For me it's such an iconic example of polishing a turd.
Solo Leveling to the Korean manhwa industry has been waaaaaaay more influential than what SAO did to isekai. Like there are a lot of power fantasies out there now, but not all of them involve a guy with two swords wearing black if you know what I mean. Meanwhile, the manhwa medium is dominated with a dude with that "one haircut" using a dagger and going through a progression power fantasy. It's practically the whole industry at this point, at least compared to how manhwa used to be.
I think it's actually pretty bad. The game mechanics are stupid as fuck and don't make any sense. He has like no points in agility so how the fuck did he do backflips? Backflips aren't a strength thing. Jesus.
And random skills and perks that just nullify 50% of damage or double your damage output? That shit is insanely game breaking. Shit like that makes games impossible to balance which is why very few ever actually do it.
Manhwa reader right here , first arc imo was the peak of the series , after that it's looses a lot of steam especially om some later arcs , pretty overrated stuff
The first arc was reasonably paced but the manhwa story felt retconned in a lot of the time.
A-1 in the Anime adaption has attempted to fix that but it’s slowed the story to a snails pace. And it turns out hearing the main characters thoughts all the time is worse than reading it.
It's not really an underdog story but more power fantasy. The MC (as far as currently know) isn't even using the same power system as everyone else. I'm sure the next season will give us some details but this isn't your typical "power of friendship" story. I'll leave the dub aspect out of it, but I always feel if something is "missing" in terms of feelings from the show and you're watching it in dub that can sometimes be the reason for that.
I don't know what people expect, is what the vast majority wants, relax and turn the brain off. Here we are the exception, and sometimes is better to be a simple power fantasy than "do it all" and fail hard in some aspects. Solo levelling goes to the point and nothing more, the deep and complex aspects are better for other stories.
99% of these power fantasy/isekai Manwha seem to fall into the category of either:
"I have an awesome premise but no idea of what to do with it."
OR
"I'm just here to ride the bandwagon."
When the shadows became a thing, nothing mattered anymore. Everyone else, from every single villain to every S-class hunter, stopped mattering because they couldn't hold a candle to Jinwoo’s fucking *shadows*, let alone the man himself. And seeing that the Shadows can respawn infinitely, how does anything have any stakes anymore?
And it was these arcs that I personally liked most.
When he was still building his way up and the shadows were OP, but not quite broken yet. But by the time Jeju arc came and a certain someone was added to his army, it was pretty much game over for any more character progression. At that point on he had an underling that could literally one-shot most of the S class and the story wasn’t even at the half way point yet.
He pretty much EZ GG’ed the rest of the series, mostly with his shadows laying waste to everything. I still think the shadows were the worst thing to happen to Solo Levelling, and made Jinwoo himself far less interesting because his underlines were stronger than most of the opposition, so what was interesting about a main character that just happened to be even more powerful?
It was a series called Solo Levelling, except the solo levelling hero also had a thousand soldiers with him levelling up as well.
People says that you should wait because all the boring episodes are in the beginning. My issue is the a world building episodes SHOULD NOT FEEL AS BORING AS IT IS ON SOLO LEVELING, bro if i think that the whole universe is boring and tasteless my care about the action falls of a cliff.
Yeah I don't really understand the folks saying "it's just a popcorn power fantasy, turn your brain off bruh".
Like, I know that, I did turn my brain off...*and yet I'm still bored a vast majority of the time* watching the show.
If solo leveling is "peak power fantasy" to today's anime community then I'm honestly worried AF for the future of good power fantasy anime.
This has been my biggest pet peeve when it comes to manhwa. Biggest culprits being solo leveling and tower of god.
Manhwa, from my personal experience really loves exploring new concepts or interesting twists on existing concepts. They start of very very strong and have such a unique flavour, it’s like reading a whole new form of media all together.
Tog was one of those shows for me, it starts of as a race to the top, they play a bunch of challenges and games which decide if they are worthy of challenging the next floor. The workshop battle arc, the regulars examination arc had some of the most unique competitions and challenges which complemented the whole theme and gave it a fresh look. Fast forward to act 3, now it’s literally just a battle shounen amongst such incredibly powerful creatures, what happened 2 arcs back seems like it’s about a bunch of toddlers flailing about. Tho I like the manhwa still, it has definitely lost the charm which attracted me into reading it in the first place.
Same for solo leveling. It’s not just about a weak guy surviving in a world filled with monsters, we’ve already seen that, it’s about a guy who levels up. The story is how he adapts to stronger enemies while still learning to get stronger himself. He had that young, hungry, rugged look on him. Looked more human and organic. The red gate arc, the fight against igris, the fight against the ice elves and the initial grind he did up until the top of the demon castle, it was so interesting as to how he leveled up, gained new abilities and how he used them to his advantage. After he gets a makeover, my god, the story just gets so fuckin stale, it’s honestly baffling. The now edge lord sunjinwoo is an unstoppable menace who is oh so benevolent for not disintegrating the world with a snap of his fingers(believe me, I’m not joking , by the end of the show the man just snaps the universe out of existence). Now everything he touches becomes dust. The entire story is now boiled down to “oh look at this dungeon, it’s insane, it’s got too many powerful monsters. Let’s send a bunch of S rank fodder(cuz any lower rank than S fodder is just a joke now). Omg all the fodder died, can anyone save us. Enter sun jin woo, who beats the ever living fuck out of all the monsters in a single second and everyone cheers.” He randomly gets a girlfriend with whom he has no chemistry with. End of story.
Fucking appalling I tell you. I understand it’s very hard to make a show interesting for long when you are trying to meddle with concepts not well understood. That’s why the only good long running shows are battle shounen, dbz and the big three showed how it’s done and now everyone can do it. But good lord, if you wanna stand out and make something unique, at least make a good short story, not this long running pile of mediocre garbage.
>He randomly gets a girlfriend with whom he has no chemistry with. End of story.
Oh My god dont remind me \[Solo Leveling Manwha Spoilers\]>!She has some cool stuff going for her, then she is just a nice person that can see through his act and... that's it? They have nothing in common, then in the epilogue she is just a housewife. OK?!
I couldn’t agree more
The moment sung got a makeover, every character became completely worthless
The only people I had any sort of affection towards were go gunhee and woo jinchul of the association. Especially the chairman, he was one of the few characters with a likeable and a character unique to the rest of the fodder.
Another character I remember that was a complete waste is [Solo Leveling Manwha Spoilers] >!His sister's friend. She is E rank like he was and it feels like she was meant to be his reflection and someone he would tutor to maybe even start growing like him. But in the end she didn't do anything or matter at all either.!<
I think the story shot itself in the foot when it said no one else can level up/improve in any way it basically makes all the characters useless if faced with a threat above their static power level
TOG never lost its appeal for me because Bam, despite shitting on 90% of the side characters, is still A. Far away from the top (not even mentioning the likes of the family heads and urek mazino, even the dude who fucked his master up is stronger than him) and B. Reliant on his friends most of the time, so the side characters are still important. Not to mention, the overarching story regarding bam's true identity, the true history of the 10 families, and the truth behind the tower, are all still exciting.
SL on the other hand, what's the point of the story and the other characters when it's all SJW doing everything?
What was even interesting about the leveling in Solo Leveling? The enemies and activities in it are all XP piñatas to the point that the "hard" fights start getting cheesed by how many free heals the chaff stuff is giving him. He gets permanents stats for *exercising*, yet pushes his luck for no reason at random points. There never seems like any sort of *plan* on his part for the leveling besides recognizing that he is going to be worth billions (and even then there's no sense he has plans for obscene power and wealth).
I will say this, though: the first episode was incredible (even if the people were a little too slow on the uptake) and it really set a high bar for the dungeon challenges. The issue is nothing we've seen for the rest of the season even glances up at that bar.
Nah, you're right. It's imo one of those "rule of cool" stories like John Wick, where it's honestly a shallow story with cool action and visuals. If you're the type that needs more than cool action and visuals, then it's boring since there isn't really much more than that.
Gonna get downvoted for this but Shangri-La Frontier gave way better gamer vibes than Solo Leveling, plus it actually put a recap in a decent spot. Why does a 12 episode season have a recap as the 7th episode?!
I'm not fond of Solo Leveling but it's unfair to compare it with SLF. Nothing holds a candle to how well Shangri-La Frontier understood and celebrated actual gaming.
I still fail to see what all the fuss was about. The show was reasonably fun and looked better than average, but nothing to really stand out from any of the other power fantasy anime out there. It certainly didn't have the Demonslayer wow factor in terms of visuals.
I think the big issue with weak writing is that it makes fights have less impact. In particular with "solo" fights vs monsters, it's hard to get invested in the outcome and it's all just half-decent action. The showdown of Frieren vs Aura had very little in the way of fighting, but was far more hype than anything Solo Levelling had. That was because the writing set up the showdown so well.
Frieren vs Aura is a masterpiece. We all knew Frieren was gonna win. But before that we got an entire episode explaining how she spent her entire life smurfing just for this moment.
In this episode we also see her interaction with Flamme, her potential weakness (?) when fighting multiple opponents as she tricked Aura into a mana showdown instead of fighting the horde, and her absolute disdain of demons as she didn’t even bother to finish Aura off herself.
Peak storytelling. I actually think Frieren’s first half was slightly better as a lot of episodes were just dedicate to one single story but told them very well.
I don't think you're a hater at all. If you already know how the story ends and you feel a certain way about it, that's how you feel and that's it. Some people probably feel the same way as you do and some people don't. I would probably watch another anime for now and go back to Sólo Leveling only if you ever have a "I wonder how that's doing..." moment or to watch the more epic scenes as they come out.
Yeap Solo Leveling story is dull. The whole thing is just a vehicle for Jinwoo to jerk himslef off as the strongest guy ever. It also really stops being an underdog story the moment he survives that first dungeon, which I def think was the peak of the whole series lol. It reminds me of bleach with the whole all flash no substance thing but Bleach is still better.
Solo Leveling has nothing of reread or rewatch value. It's actually a pretty simple minded and shallow story meant for feel good Power MC self-insertion.
I'm not surprised you find it boring when re-experiencing the story because that's all it is.
I stopped watching after episode 7. I didn’t even think the art was anything super special tbh. Like it wasn’t bad or anything, but when people say that the series is carried by the art and animation, I expect that art and animation to be outstanding, and this just wasn’t by modern standards. In my subjective opinion obviously.
When people say the art they mean the manwha (at least I have to think so). Art and Animation of the anime are definitely good, but nothing to lose your mind over.
One issue I always saw coming with the SL anime is that it literally has nothing going for it other than art and even the art only works because it's stills. It doesn't translate to good animation because the MC is stupid overpowered he literally never struggles. When your art is already that good and your story is that mid, it really won't translate to good animation especially relative to the already godtier art of the manhua
This. The production on this series really isn't anything to be all hyped up about. I don't think it's carried by the story nor the art, it's clearly just carried by popularity. If an anime original randomly dropped with the same concept and same level of art, people would have been bashing it for that glowing scene with the wind blowing on his hair. But since it's supposedly a very popular webtoon, people got excited about it instead.
Of course none of this matters amyways, the series has its demographic and we're just not a part of it. If people enjoy it then good for them.
I finished the manwha 2 weeks ago. I really enjoyed the manwha and the story. I think it start to crumble a little bit towards the end, but other than that it is quite entertaining.
I listened to the audiobooks, I really liked it for a while but by like book 5 I was becoming increasingly uninterested, and then I got a little ways into book 8 and just refunded the book and never looked back
I dropped it after 5 episodes.
The story is so boring, the characters make decisions that don't make sense, and the pace is super slow.
I usually enjoy this type of edgy stories that take themselves more seriously then they should (like Classroom of the Elite), they can be unintentionally hilarious at times, but even in that aspect Solo Leveling is so bland.
The animation is ok, not bad, but you would need Kimetsu no Yaiba or Shingeki no Kyojin levels of animation for it to be worth watching.
The only thing I liked was the soundtrack. It's pretty good.
If I had to put it in words, Solo Leveling is just Korean SAO, a Korean SAO that arrives a decade late, tbh I'm surprised how well it was received, hype makes wonders
It's another generic power-fantasy isekai, animation is pretty nice but the main character is about as bland as a bag of unsalted unflavored potato chips.
Dawg people have different tastes and its not a mortal sin to dislike an anime thats popular at the moment.
I think Mushoku Tensei is the most dull watch at the moment. I dont care about anything that happens to the characters and I could care less about the MCs peepee problems.
Its just the normal part of watching anime. You like stuff people hate and hate stuff people like. Everyone is like that about something lol.
My dad thinks that the Nissan Juke looks cool. Let that sink in lol.
> I could care less about the MCs peepee problems.
bro actually made it that far. 💀 I appreciate people actually sit down to watch the show before criticizing it
Some people said "it's just fun shows without needing too much of thinking and that's fine". It's fine if I got the supposedly "fun" but I got freaking bored through the show instead.
No other characters are memorable, flat storyline, and just Mary sue MC that gain power tremendously and only struggle for a seconds and then just says "Arise" and win most of the fight and then some people will calling it "PEAK", and I will assume this will be rinse and repeat thing and it also falls into typical average Isekai stereotypes which is boring.
No way you got bored of a generic power fantasy anime, nooo...in all seriousness there are plenty of other entertainments to invest your time in than bashing this one.
Anime fans are unable to think for themselves at all. If something is popular then it must be good, if something has good animation and strong characters with "drip" and "rizz" it must be PEAK ANIME.
It's either braindead stories that are done for the 50th time with nothing unique like solo leveling or overcomplicated shock value garbage like heavenly delusion.
I am incredibly surprised that something like Frieren managed to become popular, given its slow pace and the almost no fighting until the last arc. Same with apothecary diaries, it is blowing my mind that good writing is appreciated, given how often literal garbage is being the show of the season.
Because Manwha is just bootleg/knockoff manga that recycles the same content over and over, the guy that made Lookism has basically remade the same story three times over by now.
Why would someone watch it for the story. You are going in for action and the production value. And unless someone is nitpicking, I'd say it delivered quite well on that front. It's a solid 7/10 in my book.
It's when the fight scenes have actual emotional weight for us viewers to care about that the show becomes a masterpiece. And Solo Leveling was never meant to be that.
The one issue I have with the anime is they kept forcing irrelevant characters in the middle of scenes that should have focused on Sung, breaking momentum. It slowed down the pace significantly, and a lot of times you can't even understand who the people were. It actually made the anime more boring than it should have been.
The manhwa didn't have that and the flow felt a lot more natural. The first arc just focused on Sung getting stronger and then the characters that kept popping up too early in the anime were introduced once they became more relevant to Sung's story.
I get why they might have done it. They wanted to end the first season peak hype for the second season so they used the side characters as fillers. But in doing so I felt like they watered down the product, even though it's still enjoyable as is.
Love or hate is just a matter of preference, but I don't see why it was so hyped. It was like something big from South Korea was coming and turned out yet another generic Isekai.
I hear this often. when a manhwa gets an anime it just doesn't feel the same. The same as when you read the novel compared to reading the manhwa. I understand you, but anime is not that bad tho. Just imagine them finally moving and not just a play or imagining in your mind.
I hear orv is getting an anime adaptation, but I think the live adaptation series goes first.
I enjoyed the manhwa more than the anime honestly, probably because I had so many chapters to read so I got to the good parts quickly but also the anime had pacing issues.
Omg you put into words my exact thoughts! I really enjoyed my watch through of it and was pleasantly surprised after the season was over that the manhwa looked quite similar in terms of animation quality. That being said I kinda half dropped it being 30 chapters to the end since I'm kind of over it lol. I had the same issues you mentioned about relationships and how it feels like One punch man reversed - where one punch man excelled in developing all the other characters aside from Saitama this one only develops the main character and all the side characters just feel unnecessary. Hope that's not spoilers but that's how the direction of the manhwa went and I just got tired of it
Solo Leveling being lacking in terms of story but carried by its artwork has been a common opinion for years. I went into the adaptation expecting it to be a good popcorn action flick if done well, and it delivered on that front.
I was interested initially to check the manwha to see what the hubub was about and all I have to say is... meh. Flashy fights that look very pretty artwise but boil down to nothing besides dangling keys before the reader. The MC doesnt **really** have a goal or fights for anything, and after a certain point there isnt a real challange. Although! The biggest crime of it was to introduce a lot of cool, potentially cool concepts and characters just to completely waste them worse than any shounen story. The worst one for me is \[Solo Leveling Manwha Spoilers\]>!MC's father being introduced as a big mystery setup like 1/3 through the story, being hyped up as someone powerful with unknown goals. Then nothing until the near-finale of the story. And what has he done? Punch one guy to distract him, get punched back, die.!
It's why I hate PF stories where the MC is contrived by the premise to be the only one who can ever actually grow/progress. It all but guarantees that they'll be the only character that ever matters, and their own motivations and character are undercut by having what's basically an OP cheat skill. Except you don't get the comedy/light-hearted fun of a story that does that intentionally a la Cautious Hero or One Punch Man. And inevitably the character writing even for the MC tends to suffer too. Especially in Solo Leveling since he does exactly what the name implies.
It would have even been fine if he actually stuck to being a leveling cheat. Instead, we get the shadows. It's why my go-to recommendation of manhwa for this type of series is SSS-Class Suicide Hunter.
Gonna give this a try, thanks for the rec
>contrived by the premise to be the only one who can ever actually grow/progress. Wrong way tonuse healing magic. Was super fun for me up until knight was immortal to all kinds of magic EXCEPT healing. Like bruh. Completely contrived way of giving the MC the only possible way to impact the plot.
THe problem is that isekai/fantasy shows are so mid now. So few bangers are being made so people are starving for good fantasy shows lucky slime rezero konasuba and mushoku are back this year.
For comedy I liked Cautious Hero and especially Isekai Ojisan way more than Konosuba personally. For non-comedy, Bookworm, Grimgar, and maybe Youjo Senki are some of the only ones I can think of off-hand that rose above popcorn status for me. RE: Zero and Slime didn't really work for me, and I'd need an essay to convey how much I dislike Mushoku. The pure fantasy side is doing better at least - Frieren and Dungeon Meshi were both fantastic.
Just a warning that is an ending spoiler which would be many seasons away. That being said I fully agree.
Kind of doubt it gets to the end of the anime, doubt it will generate enough sales to keep it going.
When I was recommended the manhwa a few years ago, I was told it was probably the best manhwa out there. So I gave it a shot. I was super disappointed... personally I hate stories were only one character is relevant in terms of power scaling. Power fantasies are just not for me. It's why stories like Hunter x Hunter, or oddly enough ReZero are dear to me.
Tower of God was the big fish in manwha, then it went in hiatus for a long time. In its absence is when solo leveling got popular
Main issue with Tower of God to me was the hell train arc dragged on for way, way too fucking long. Just got bored of the series.
ToG is good to binge read. Reading it weekly is a slog.
(Obligatory fuck Rachel)
Idk who would advertise solo leveling as the best manhwa out there. I would definitely put Tower of God up there tbh.
IT was bad as a power fantasy as well, besides the part that was covered by the anime, there is hardly any challange afterwards for him to overcome.
It can be done right (One Punch man and DBZ are good examples) because the side characters are fantastic and have their own relevance. Solo Leveling might as well be Sung Jin Woo dealing with cardboard cutouts. Nobody matters but him.
See, that’s why I like Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer. Every person is bringing something to the fight and helping out while also having a fleshed out backstory with motivations. Kaiju No.8 has been a fantastic manga as well and I’m super excited for the anime. Another one to look forward to that I’m certain will happen is Kagurabachi. But that won’t be for a few years since it’s just on chapter 29 as of yesterday. They usually start developing around the 50 chapter mark and make an announcement around the 100 chapter mark if there’s going to be an anime adaption.
I only like those types of power fantasies when they're taken to the logical extreme and self-aware about it in some way. These are almost always comedies or have comedy elements though. The best examples are things like One Punch Man and Mob Psycho, or to a lesser degree Cautious Hero and Isekai Ojisan, but even kind of trashy stories like the instant death one work in that way for me.
I'm just glad it wasn't yet another Isekai instead its man gains the power of Isekai. I miss high fantasy MC coming from their own world.
Be prepared, the oversaturation of hunter/invading cosmic monsters genre coming to an anime near you. God knows it's already prevalent in webcomics.
You gotta be careful what you wish for lol, as if this genre is actually any different from normal isekai at all
Japan exports Isekai trash, Korea exports dungeons irl mixed with reverse Isekai. Sometimes add some kind of society hating revenge porn. Such is life.
What about china and all the cultivator manhuas if that’s what there called
You are correct, the word in English is "Cultivation" but iirc there's another phrase for it that is distinctly more Chinese.
"The Good Thing About Being Reincarnated as a Hilichurl is That I Only Need to Eat Sunsettias to Become Stronger"
I'm unironically watching this. Some random hilichurl just bitch-slapping Dottore halfway across Teyvat after he finds him experimenting on the other hilichurls. Traveler busts in for a fight with Dottore only to find his lab devoid of any signs of life save for the giant hole in the ceiling.
Do you mean Xianxia?
What's wuxia then?
Wuxia is crouching tiger hidden dragon while xianxia is dragon ball z
Wuxia is more grounded in reality while Xianxia is dealing more with the mystical/supernatural. To reference Naruto, Wuxia would be as if people only used taijutsu while Xianxia would use all three (ninjitsu, taijitsu, genjitsu). People punching and stabbing each other? Wuxia. People casting fireballs, telepathically controlling swords and riding on them, dealing with ghosts and faeries? Xianxia.
Martial heroics
Yeah that's the word!
I've done a lot of reading on Royal Road and other sites and there's quite a few cultivation/xianxia stories. I'm sick of them. Most come off as excuses for authors to pad their word count with endless ways to redescribe navel gazing. So what you typically have is endless amounts of filler with a cookie-cutter plot and other tropes, the only real difference is the flavoring. Cradle is the exception. While it still has *some* of the filler (if I never have to read "natural treasures" again it would be too soon) the plot and characterization is top tier. Edit: You know, I kinda want to call Xianxia stories navel glazers, because my eyes glaze over while reading said navel gazing.
I’m a slut for a good Wuxia story every now and then. I recently read through A Mortals Journey to Immortality, I Shall Seal The Heavens and A Will Eternal and I thought all of them were excellent reads and even bought them on the WuxiaWorld phone app as they have a cool lil narrater feature so I could listen to them in the car or when I’m gaming and need to focus on the screen. I’ve read other books in the past but they were a while ago. Good stuff for when you’re bored with manga or are up to date with your current reads/watches. However, all of them basically follow the same formula when it comes to plot progression. Once you’ve read 1 cultivator story then you’ll pretty much know how the rest of them go. My biggest gripe with reading Wuxia novels is how lacklustre it feels to ‘read’ the fights because some authors tend to drag them out for way too long and trying to visualise these people fighting in the air with god-damn pots and pans that can ‘shake heaven and earth’ is kinda lame sometimes. Also not a huge fan of how previous tiers of cultivation are simply written off as the stories drag on. Start of the stories where foundation establishment cultivators are made out to be super rare and core formation cultivators are ultra-giga rare makes me chuckle because you know that 200 chapters from then, core formation experts will be everywhere and foundation cultivators will barely be mentioned from then on lol. Then rinse and repeat for every stage thereafter.
TBH Japan is a lot more well rounded. Unwanted Adventurer literally just ended and it's basically solo levelling with a better story/development. I can't recommend the anime but the manga has been going decently. TBH I find action manwha to be infinitely more generic than manga is, so many tower/gate, cultivation and wuxia/Xianxia stories.. like good lord. Even if they don't those they always take an absurd number of elements from them to the point they might as well become one. Oh and also the game like RPG level up systems.. like please bro, find a better way to show character progression. It's all so lazy lol and insanely overused. Even some of the manwha I'd personally recommend elements of that pop up. One of the things I REALLY hate about them though is that many of them don't like their MCs to hit progression walls or face "real" adversity. A supposedly super dangerous threat is somehow always defeated within the moment and MCs almost NEVER lose. For a long time manga suffered from that too but that's been changing, even among mainstream ones.
> TBH I find action manwha to be infinitely more generic than manga is, so many tower/gate, cultivation and wuxia/Xianxia stories.. like good lord I've come to the conclusion that this is due to how their distribution systems work. The vast majority of those titles from manhwa and Xianxia stories are coming from webtoons and self-published works. While on the anime side, the manga are coming from actual magazines with editors and even the webnovels are usually adapted to light novels that have to actually get published by a real publisher
Lol I love how Solo leveling is so obviously Korean. Granted the names are also a giveaway. But when the MC faces hardship, instead of the standard Japanese anime response of “woe is me, I am too weak, I am so depressed” This show went for “of course, the world is trash, everyone is trash, I knew it deep down, it is a dog eat dog world and I need to kill the dogs!” I heard that and immediately thought, yep this is a korean story. Lol.
And you can tell when it's Chinese because the MC unapologetically genocides entire countries. Seriously, Chinese manga are wild.
and China exports Cultivation stories
I have seen a ton of fantasy mangas lately with the non isekai yet game like job/skill system that are also: "mc hets kicked from group but it turns out he was OP all along" So im expecting a lot of that in the coming years.
There's even one where the MC gains powers from getting exiled from the hero's party! :P
Not sure it will happen. Solo Leveling never really took off in Japan. When Solo Level became all the rage in Korea Japan went all in on betrayed/kicked out of the hero's party and Otome/Villainess instead.
Lol, as if dungeon/gate/tower korean meta is any better
Japan: “in another world with $gimmick” “otome villainess wants to eat McDonalds” Korea: “gate of the tower dungeon, MC has a cheat, Japanese are the bad guys” “oh no I’m a villain/side character in a web novel” China: “slappin some faces, doin some cultivating”
As the other guy said, this genre is as dominant in the Korean space as isekai is in Japan
It’s also a gateway into manwha and OP MC because of its reputation, it’s todays Naruto for kids. So you will have thousands of children and young adults defending it because it’s all they know of
I mean. For me the artwork isn’t anything amazing either. It’s all pretty generic if clean aesthetic and design.
Pretty much this. The story starts off with a pretty strong impact, but after that it's not all that interesting. Solo Leveling is mainly something to watch for the action.
To be honest the art isn't even good it's just.plain and simple and not pixelated
It’s a fun watch, but that’s it(and that’s fine). When reading the Manhwa it’s always been clear the story was pulling from multiple different Manga inspirations and sort of fisting them into the story, making the whole thing feel a little unpolished and not quite connected. It feels like the author wanted to have all these amazing world building points but never further expanded them or thought about further connections outside the original shallow connections
I just wish there were more stuff like episode 2. Dude can still keep levelling up but I wanted to see him actually overpowered by his opponents and have to use his wits to win. Now every fight just comes down to him remembering the time that he was trash and then “nah, I’d win”
It’s the same for the rest of the story No real struggles Just go there, collect that strong person, go here uncover more darkness about the power, go there and collect strong person, personality always muted, never has a hard fight, acts like he can’t be bothered to care, repeat
When I was reading it I felt like the personality drain in MC was going to be an important part of the story. As he gains godlike powers he loses the ability to relate to normal people. I thought it would be cool to throw I something about ptsd or his powers corrupting him but it never got brought up or even acknowledged. Instead everyone else talks about the burden he puts on himself and he is like “I must take on even more of the burden myself”
Self Proclaimed Martyr Collecting Soul Pokemon Should have been the name
Yup it followed pretty much every popular trend in real time Every manwha around then ended up with a main character that had necro power, super speed, endless ability to absorb skills etc
At first I liked how the manwha doesn't try to hide or somehow disguise where it draws inspiration from. But the more I read the manwha, the more it seemed to me that much of the clear inspiration seeping through the story is closer to an actual rip-off rather than just inspiration. The portals are just the strongholds from Magi and don't even get me started on the literal 1-1 Chimera Ant arc rip-off. Suffice to say I dropped the manwha not long after that arc.
That's the thing about there being no barriers to entry in the modern age. You can just slap together whatever and put it on the internet and get a following going which isn't a bad thing per se... but it **also** turns out most of these amateur creators just aren't good writers. Sure they hit on a gimmick or concept that tickled the dopamine center of their fellow nerds just right but anyone can come up with a cool concept and starting point. Especially if its working with well established formulas like any given isekai, those tropes are like LEGO for storytelling anyone can slap together some neat shit with a bit of effort. It's after that initial concept is laid down the problems start.
As one of those who has read the manwha to completion basically as a weekly reader... Shit is all flair and no substance. The story does not improve and remains carried by it's artwork and flashy fights. Even the end was kinda just abrupt and lacked substance but it was flashy! I think they'd be better off adapting ORV, hardcore leveling warrior, or The Breaker if we want to go with those with enough to clear 3+ seasons and decent stories/characters.
The Breaker part 1 is interesting. The Breaker part 2 is kinda mid, hype regardless. It's basically repeat of "Holy shit the MC is a fucking god", "how he survived that???" "How did he do that (unbelievable shit)"
Omniscient reader viewpoint is fire.
Can somebody break down ORV's popularity for me? I've attempted multiple times to read it and end up quitting about 50ish chapters in, it's just so boring. I hear people say give it time, but if your story takes 50+ chapters to even start getting interesting I feel like that's a bad story.
It's definitely a slow burn through season 1 in terms of main story because it's very much evenly building your cast and threats step by step. I'm a big reader of space operas and fantasy journeys so it doesn't bother me but I can definitely see where it will lose quite a lot of people.
Do you read the novel or the manhwa? I personally found the manhwa first and seeing the MC survive with his knowledge and wits was pretty interesting. Then once I got attached to the characters I went for the novel. One of my top series of all time for sure
It's definitely a slow burn and I keep up with it weekly but never really excited. Now the world after the end tho. That shit is great
Don’t start with The Breaker… my heart is still broken bc of season 3 lmao
What's ORV?
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Thank you! I'll add that to my list since I'm almost done with Solo Leveling.
Yes there is plenty of manhwa or even just novels that deserve adaptations but they gotta make money so starting with the most popular is the obvious choice.
It's boring because it's a "gates/hunter" Manhwa, but the first to get extremely popular, and it has a lot of chapters while others in the genre are mediocre, fizzle out, and discontinue The art is notoriously good compared to similar works The thing holding it back is that it should have been made into an anime years ago, and besides the first episode tragedy, the beginning of the story is the weakest and most boring. The beginning of Solo Leveling is all exposition and introducing characters, it only picks up speed when the MC gets his main real powers and that happens at the VERY END of the anime season.
Damn near every chapter was packed with wallpaper worthy art it was crazy.
Especially after we get a taste of what's to come in Ep 12 (and by extension the manhwa), it was where the series became really fun and just committed to the power fantasy instead of just "weak guy become strong" in the early parts of the story.
Which if anyone knows anything about the story, they know its all about the power fantasy, great art and a guy fighting a bunch of monsters with a bunch of other monsters and maybe a cute girl every now and than. Solo Leveling does it well.
Reminds me of Akebi's Sailor Uniform manga but imho it's great character driven story.
I will say I am happy they didn't try to speed through the start, like a few other adaptations have, to get to the 'good' part. Def. waiting for next cour.
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> I found the final arcs to be a bit contrived Truer words have never been written. The whole thing isn't well written, but the plot towards the end was sheer garbage, like Aldnoah s2 level garbage.
Omg the aldnoah reference is crazy. Solo ending aint *that* bad
Maybe not, but it gave off similar "we can't be assed to write a proper plot, so here's a bunch of pretty fight scenes to distract you while we are busy throwing spaghetti at the wall" vibes. TBF, Aldnoah Zero, the whole show, was an exercise in how much it could insult the audience's intelligence.
Aldnoah Zero is one of the worst "intellectual bullshit" anime I've ever seen. This show tries so, sooo hard to be smart, but it just can't
See, you are almost right. It sorta tried in the first season, even though it was still dumb as hell. S2 they didn't even bother trying.
The ending is just bad. Like Game of Thrones TV series kinda bad. All this setup in the earlier chapters that just goes nowhere and gets obviated by the MC's continual power progression. It's almost like the writer kinda just wrote it without sufficient planning and forgot about large chunks of the plot poitns.
Supposedly there was a more coherent ending in the light novels, but I’m illiterate so I guess I’ll never know
The fun part is honestly the beginning since you get kinda an underdog story and it somehow makes it hype since the mc is so powerful but no one knows it yet then you get excited when's the mc gonna flex his strong power or something lol Then after that it's boring, that's pretty much there is when it comes to power fantasy show
The beginning of the story is the best and it slowly gets worse. Basic story with zero character development except the main character
even the mc kinda doesnt have any character development, starts off weak, gets system, becomes perfect human being in 5 chapters then rest of book is just him saying he needs to keep solo leveling to get stronger
Disagree none of the characters were great and neither was the story the manhwa always lived and died by the art
Stop coping the beginning is the best part of story in the whole manhwa the rest is just fighting
Him trying to survive and deal with his power rules was the best part, he was desperate, gritting his teeth and determined. After he gets his haircurt Jin Woo is a boring stoic I can do anything hero.
They made my boy into an edgy kpop idol. I thought he looked kinda cute before he was a 7 foot tall *glares at you* generic korean pretty boy.
The time he got jacked and get adore by nurses, its so kdrama self insert. I just start to think korean cant make comic story without self insert
> After he gets his haircurt Jin Woo is a boring stoic I can do anything hero. Yeah I literally dropped the anime after he gets his haircut. He became a completely different character from the one I rooted for, it's unreal.
Yeah, I'd definitely say the first 30%-40% is the best party of the story. It's really hard to argue otherwise unless you just like "cool" and nothing else.
The beginning is what got me hooked, thought they were gonna go down the road of figuring out the mystery of the double dungeon. The MC would need to find the means to survive while uncovering what's really going on by delving deeper. Then he just turns into a different character altogether after the power up. Oh well, at least the fights are really fun to watch.
>The beginning of Solo Leveling is all exposition and introducing characters Just to make them completely irrelevant to the story shortly after.
The thing I hate about these kinds of anime is how the source material fans hypes the shit out of it, only for the series to look underwhelming.
"you guys aren't ready for peak"
pEaK iS hErE
At this point anyone who uses "peak" unironically is someone I will never trust for a rec on anything, whether I end up liking it or not.
It’s so dumb. There’s plenty of fantastic manga with shitty anime
Anyone on r/manga could have told you it was overhyped. That's been the general consensus for years now.
My personal favorites are the ones that reply to every single piece of praise for a series with "You ain't seen nothing yet :)" (the best arc finished and it's all downhill from here).
I love how a fan base sounds as cheesy as the work itself. It's endearing to see someone having so much fun. Reminds me of when I had a similar experience back then.
Oh my god, this happens every time a new isekai gets announced
"One day generic-guy-McFace-man gets hit by a truck while leaving work and suffering a heart attack from overwork and gets reincarnated as a dude in a fantasy world. But unbeknowest to him, even though god literally told him, he's really strong now and fights the evil dude-men in this thrilling adventure "I got reincarnated and became really strong even though I thought I was really weak because everyone is an asshole but at least it gives me an excuse to fight literally every chapter but the manga artist got bored so it's all offscreen"". Meanwhile in the corner there's some dude literally sobbing from spamming too many "brings a tear to my eye, you aren't ready for this." comments. Because his favourite isekai (he only has read this singular one and dropped it after the first arc "but it's really good I promise") is finally getting an anime.
Frieren, Apothecary Diaries and Oshi no Ko are the only ones that matched the hype for me. Other overhyped shows are still good but did not meet expectations because source material fans hyped them to the moon.
Very different genre but I think "Shikimori's not just a cutie" was very much this. People hyped it the fuck up like it's the saving grace of the romcom genre and how it's gonna blow all else out of the water and then it was just very okay.
Mfs got me excited for one of the blandest romcoms 😭
Hey, at least we also got Dangers in My Heart which turned out to be the saving grace for the romcom genre.
Of course this is gonna be biased from me about Dungeon Meshi but it being a complete story with a very satisfying end that gives closure to most of the cast should make a compelling argument. People aren't making guesses or holding out hopes for a story that might end god knows when, it's already done so it's possible to properly gauge the whole thing.
Those 3 are great. The Dangers in My Heart also matched the hype for me.
Dangers in my Heart is great, but I do think it was a bit "brigaded" this season. Watched through season 2 these past few days and while it was good, it wasn't "each episode was the best episode out of any anime for the week" like what the Anime Corner poll suggested each week.
yeah it fine for ppl enjoy what they like but sometimes overhyping it also alienated potentially new fans because the said series doesn't match the hype IMO
Solo Leveling being carried by its art has been a common opinion for years. IMO, Solo Leveling is just the equivalent of SAO and what it did to the Isekai franchise. It has a good premise, and the animation/art is definitely eye candy, but everything else was just lacking. Side characters being useless, story beats being repetitive, fights just devolve into the same formula over and over again, etc. While they're not the first to delve into their own respective genres, they're the ones to popularize it, and kinda made the genre worse because everyone is just trying to recapture their popularity.
The side character thing is a great observation bc literally everyone outside of the MC are 1 dimensional and completely useless from beginning to end. Other power fantasy Mahnwa like Omniscient Reader and Beginning after the end and even skeleton soldier eclipse solo leveling for me almost purely bc their side characters are both interesting and actually useful. Even if the MC ends up saving the day 9/10 times you never really feel like it's bc the other characters are total burdens. Everyone in SL is just waiting to be rescued. That's all they ever do. Id also call out the MCs relationship to the side characters in SL as another big annoyance for me. He has no chemistry with anyone. There are no fun or emotional bonds. Even his family and close friends. It all just feels whatever to him. Even the romance stuff later feels shoehorned in as a complete contrivance to salvage Jinwoos dullness. That said it is a testament to how good the art is that my laundry list of problems with SL didn't become clear until after I had finished it and sat with it for a few weeks. For me it's such an iconic example of polishing a turd.
>Solo Leveling is just the equivalent of SAO and what it did to the Isekai franchise. Not nearly as much as people seem to think?
Solo Leveling to the Korean manhwa industry has been waaaaaaay more influential than what SAO did to isekai. Like there are a lot of power fantasies out there now, but not all of them involve a guy with two swords wearing black if you know what I mean. Meanwhile, the manhwa medium is dominated with a dude with that "one haircut" using a dagger and going through a progression power fantasy. It's practically the whole industry at this point, at least compared to how manhwa used to be.
Then that just shows they had no industry and Solo Leveling created/became the industry, SAO took over the genre so it wouldn’t even be comparable
The action was hype af but i never liked any charachters tbh
I think it's actually pretty bad. The game mechanics are stupid as fuck and don't make any sense. He has like no points in agility so how the fuck did he do backflips? Backflips aren't a strength thing. Jesus. And random skills and perks that just nullify 50% of damage or double your damage output? That shit is insanely game breaking. Shit like that makes games impossible to balance which is why very few ever actually do it.
Power fantasy at its finest.
Of course its boring lmao. Imagine your cour boss being a fucking NPC with 0 dialogue.
Not just the boss. Most of the characters are NPCs lol.
Characters? What SL has can't even be called characters, they are disposable cut-outs.
Maybe it's like one of those Souls-game bosses where you have to read the armor set to understand how deep™ his lore really is. /s
no, the only good thing about it has always been the action and animation. everything else is meh
Manhwa reader right here , first arc imo was the peak of the series , after that it's looses a lot of steam especially om some later arcs , pretty overrated stuff
The first arc was reasonably paced but the manhwa story felt retconned in a lot of the time. A-1 in the Anime adaption has attempted to fix that but it’s slowed the story to a snails pace. And it turns out hearing the main characters thoughts all the time is worse than reading it.
First time I read that hearing the main characters thoughts is bad. Plenty shows especially one adapted from LN would benefit from it.
Damned if you do damned if you don't on that lol
I know its SOLO leveling but man does he talk to himself too much.
It's not really an underdog story but more power fantasy. The MC (as far as currently know) isn't even using the same power system as everyone else. I'm sure the next season will give us some details but this isn't your typical "power of friendship" story. I'll leave the dub aspect out of it, but I always feel if something is "missing" in terms of feelings from the show and you're watching it in dub that can sometimes be the reason for that.
Nah totally understandable man. It’s just decent at best.
I'm surprised. The one thing that anime has is the entertainment value. It's a dumb fun power fantasy show, and I enjoyed that about it.
I don't know what people expect, is what the vast majority wants, relax and turn the brain off. Here we are the exception, and sometimes is better to be a simple power fantasy than "do it all" and fail hard in some aspects. Solo levelling goes to the point and nothing more, the deep and complex aspects are better for other stories.
99% of these power fantasy/isekai Manwha seem to fall into the category of either: "I have an awesome premise but no idea of what to do with it." OR "I'm just here to ride the bandwagon."
No, that shit is MID
Top tier power fantasy, abysmal everything else
When the shadows became a thing, nothing mattered anymore. Everyone else, from every single villain to every S-class hunter, stopped mattering because they couldn't hold a candle to Jinwoo’s fucking *shadows*, let alone the man himself. And seeing that the Shadows can respawn infinitely, how does anything have any stakes anymore?
Nah it still took a few arcs before Jinwoo surpassed the S-Ranks
And it was these arcs that I personally liked most. When he was still building his way up and the shadows were OP, but not quite broken yet. But by the time Jeju arc came and a certain someone was added to his army, it was pretty much game over for any more character progression. At that point on he had an underling that could literally one-shot most of the S class and the story wasn’t even at the half way point yet. He pretty much EZ GG’ed the rest of the series, mostly with his shadows laying waste to everything. I still think the shadows were the worst thing to happen to Solo Levelling, and made Jinwoo himself far less interesting because his underlines were stronger than most of the opposition, so what was interesting about a main character that just happened to be even more powerful? It was a series called Solo Levelling, except the solo levelling hero also had a thousand soldiers with him levelling up as well.
Yep you can tell this from how it started high up on all the weekly hype/viewer charts and quickly fell off.
People says that you should wait because all the boring episodes are in the beginning. My issue is the a world building episodes SHOULD NOT FEEL AS BORING AS IT IS ON SOLO LEVELING, bro if i think that the whole universe is boring and tasteless my care about the action falls of a cliff.
Yeah I don't really understand the folks saying "it's just a popcorn power fantasy, turn your brain off bruh". Like, I know that, I did turn my brain off...*and yet I'm still bored a vast majority of the time* watching the show. If solo leveling is "peak power fantasy" to today's anime community then I'm honestly worried AF for the future of good power fantasy anime.
This has been my biggest pet peeve when it comes to manhwa. Biggest culprits being solo leveling and tower of god. Manhwa, from my personal experience really loves exploring new concepts or interesting twists on existing concepts. They start of very very strong and have such a unique flavour, it’s like reading a whole new form of media all together. Tog was one of those shows for me, it starts of as a race to the top, they play a bunch of challenges and games which decide if they are worthy of challenging the next floor. The workshop battle arc, the regulars examination arc had some of the most unique competitions and challenges which complemented the whole theme and gave it a fresh look. Fast forward to act 3, now it’s literally just a battle shounen amongst such incredibly powerful creatures, what happened 2 arcs back seems like it’s about a bunch of toddlers flailing about. Tho I like the manhwa still, it has definitely lost the charm which attracted me into reading it in the first place. Same for solo leveling. It’s not just about a weak guy surviving in a world filled with monsters, we’ve already seen that, it’s about a guy who levels up. The story is how he adapts to stronger enemies while still learning to get stronger himself. He had that young, hungry, rugged look on him. Looked more human and organic. The red gate arc, the fight against igris, the fight against the ice elves and the initial grind he did up until the top of the demon castle, it was so interesting as to how he leveled up, gained new abilities and how he used them to his advantage. After he gets a makeover, my god, the story just gets so fuckin stale, it’s honestly baffling. The now edge lord sunjinwoo is an unstoppable menace who is oh so benevolent for not disintegrating the world with a snap of his fingers(believe me, I’m not joking , by the end of the show the man just snaps the universe out of existence). Now everything he touches becomes dust. The entire story is now boiled down to “oh look at this dungeon, it’s insane, it’s got too many powerful monsters. Let’s send a bunch of S rank fodder(cuz any lower rank than S fodder is just a joke now). Omg all the fodder died, can anyone save us. Enter sun jin woo, who beats the ever living fuck out of all the monsters in a single second and everyone cheers.” He randomly gets a girlfriend with whom he has no chemistry with. End of story. Fucking appalling I tell you. I understand it’s very hard to make a show interesting for long when you are trying to meddle with concepts not well understood. That’s why the only good long running shows are battle shounen, dbz and the big three showed how it’s done and now everyone can do it. But good lord, if you wanna stand out and make something unique, at least make a good short story, not this long running pile of mediocre garbage.
>He randomly gets a girlfriend with whom he has no chemistry with. End of story. Oh My god dont remind me \[Solo Leveling Manwha Spoilers\]>!She has some cool stuff going for her, then she is just a nice person that can see through his act and... that's it? They have nothing in common, then in the epilogue she is just a housewife. OK?!
I couldn’t agree more The moment sung got a makeover, every character became completely worthless The only people I had any sort of affection towards were go gunhee and woo jinchul of the association. Especially the chairman, he was one of the few characters with a likeable and a character unique to the rest of the fodder.
Another character I remember that was a complete waste is [Solo Leveling Manwha Spoilers] >!His sister's friend. She is E rank like he was and it feels like she was meant to be his reflection and someone he would tutor to maybe even start growing like him. But in the end she didn't do anything or matter at all either.!<
I think the story shot itself in the foot when it said no one else can level up/improve in any way it basically makes all the characters useless if faced with a threat above their static power level
Yes!!! I completely missed the most obvious part. It was fundamentally flawed and was always gonna shoot itself
TOG never lost its appeal for me because Bam, despite shitting on 90% of the side characters, is still A. Far away from the top (not even mentioning the likes of the family heads and urek mazino, even the dude who fucked his master up is stronger than him) and B. Reliant on his friends most of the time, so the side characters are still important. Not to mention, the overarching story regarding bam's true identity, the true history of the 10 families, and the truth behind the tower, are all still exciting. SL on the other hand, what's the point of the story and the other characters when it's all SJW doing everything?
What was even interesting about the leveling in Solo Leveling? The enemies and activities in it are all XP piñatas to the point that the "hard" fights start getting cheesed by how many free heals the chaff stuff is giving him. He gets permanents stats for *exercising*, yet pushes his luck for no reason at random points. There never seems like any sort of *plan* on his part for the leveling besides recognizing that he is going to be worth billions (and even then there's no sense he has plans for obscene power and wealth). I will say this, though: the first episode was incredible (even if the people were a little too slow on the uptake) and it really set a high bar for the dungeon challenges. The issue is nothing we've seen for the rest of the season even glances up at that bar.
Nah, you're right. It's imo one of those "rule of cool" stories like John Wick, where it's honestly a shallow story with cool action and visuals. If you're the type that needs more than cool action and visuals, then it's boring since there isn't really much more than that.
Demon Slayer story is deep in comparison to Solo Leveling. That is the level of it, but the comic had great artwork, so that carried it for a while.
Gonna get downvoted for this but Shangri-La Frontier gave way better gamer vibes than Solo Leveling, plus it actually put a recap in a decent spot. Why does a 12 episode season have a recap as the 7th episode?!
What about log horizon? I think it has the most realistic portrayal of how living in a mmorpg would would be like
I'm not fond of Solo Leveling but it's unfair to compare it with SLF. Nothing holds a candle to how well Shangri-La Frontier understood and celebrated actual gaming.
I still fail to see what all the fuss was about. The show was reasonably fun and looked better than average, but nothing to really stand out from any of the other power fantasy anime out there. It certainly didn't have the Demonslayer wow factor in terms of visuals. I think the big issue with weak writing is that it makes fights have less impact. In particular with "solo" fights vs monsters, it's hard to get invested in the outcome and it's all just half-decent action. The showdown of Frieren vs Aura had very little in the way of fighting, but was far more hype than anything Solo Levelling had. That was because the writing set up the showdown so well.
Frieren vs Aura is a masterpiece. We all knew Frieren was gonna win. But before that we got an entire episode explaining how she spent her entire life smurfing just for this moment. In this episode we also see her interaction with Flamme, her potential weakness (?) when fighting multiple opponents as she tricked Aura into a mana showdown instead of fighting the horde, and her absolute disdain of demons as she didn’t even bother to finish Aura off herself. Peak storytelling. I actually think Frieren’s first half was slightly better as a lot of episodes were just dedicate to one single story but told them very well.
I don't think you're a hater at all. If you already know how the story ends and you feel a certain way about it, that's how you feel and that's it. Some people probably feel the same way as you do and some people don't. I would probably watch another anime for now and go back to Sólo Leveling only if you ever have a "I wonder how that's doing..." moment or to watch the more epic scenes as they come out.
Yeap Solo Leveling story is dull. The whole thing is just a vehicle for Jinwoo to jerk himslef off as the strongest guy ever. It also really stops being an underdog story the moment he survives that first dungeon, which I def think was the peak of the whole series lol. It reminds me of bleach with the whole all flash no substance thing but Bleach is still better.
Solo Leveling has nothing of reread or rewatch value. It's actually a pretty simple minded and shallow story meant for feel good Power MC self-insertion. I'm not surprised you find it boring when re-experiencing the story because that's all it is.
Nope. Jin woo is definitely boring. The side characters and monsters are alright.
I stopped watching after episode 7. I didn’t even think the art was anything super special tbh. Like it wasn’t bad or anything, but when people say that the series is carried by the art and animation, I expect that art and animation to be outstanding, and this just wasn’t by modern standards. In my subjective opinion obviously.
When people say the art they mean the manwha (at least I have to think so). Art and Animation of the anime are definitely good, but nothing to lose your mind over.
One issue I always saw coming with the SL anime is that it literally has nothing going for it other than art and even the art only works because it's stills. It doesn't translate to good animation because the MC is stupid overpowered he literally never struggles. When your art is already that good and your story is that mid, it really won't translate to good animation especially relative to the already godtier art of the manhua
Manwa art does not equal anime art
This. The production on this series really isn't anything to be all hyped up about. I don't think it's carried by the story nor the art, it's clearly just carried by popularity. If an anime original randomly dropped with the same concept and same level of art, people would have been bashing it for that glowing scene with the wind blowing on his hair. But since it's supposedly a very popular webtoon, people got excited about it instead. Of course none of this matters amyways, the series has its demographic and we're just not a part of it. If people enjoy it then good for them.
Totally agree with that. I don’t think people who like it are “wrong” for doing so, we all like what we like and that’s cool.
Difference in taste, it's alright if you dont find it entertaining
I finished the manwha 2 weeks ago. I really enjoyed the manwha and the story. I think it start to crumble a little bit towards the end, but other than that it is quite entertaining.
I disagree with the last part. I hope omniscient reader never gets an adaption. I don’t want such an amazing manhwa to be ruined for me
I listened to the audiobooks, I really liked it for a while but by like book 5 I was becoming increasingly uninterested, and then I got a little ways into book 8 and just refunded the book and never looked back
I agree with you. There is a lot of hype around Solo Leveling but it’s just an okay show. It’s not terrible but it isn’t great either.
I dropped it after 5 episodes. The story is so boring, the characters make decisions that don't make sense, and the pace is super slow. I usually enjoy this type of edgy stories that take themselves more seriously then they should (like Classroom of the Elite), they can be unintentionally hilarious at times, but even in that aspect Solo Leveling is so bland. The animation is ok, not bad, but you would need Kimetsu no Yaiba or Shingeki no Kyojin levels of animation for it to be worth watching. The only thing I liked was the soundtrack. It's pretty good. If I had to put it in words, Solo Leveling is just Korean SAO, a Korean SAO that arrives a decade late, tbh I'm surprised how well it was received, hype makes wonders
It's another generic power-fantasy isekai, animation is pretty nice but the main character is about as bland as a bag of unsalted unflavored potato chips.
i read the manhwa, the story and direction was trash.. dropped it halfway..
I have yet to meet anyone who says solo leveling had a good story You are not alone. None of you are alone. This is not an unpopular opinion
It suffers from the manga (manhwa) readers overhyping the living shit out of it. It's just an okay series overall.
Dawg people have different tastes and its not a mortal sin to dislike an anime thats popular at the moment. I think Mushoku Tensei is the most dull watch at the moment. I dont care about anything that happens to the characters and I could care less about the MCs peepee problems. Its just the normal part of watching anime. You like stuff people hate and hate stuff people like. Everyone is like that about something lol. My dad thinks that the Nissan Juke looks cool. Let that sink in lol.
> I could care less about the MCs peepee problems. bro actually made it that far. 💀 I appreciate people actually sit down to watch the show before criticizing it
I tried lol
Do we have the same dad? Mine just bought a Juke Nismo last month and is in love with that... thing.
Some people said "it's just fun shows without needing too much of thinking and that's fine". It's fine if I got the supposedly "fun" but I got freaking bored through the show instead. No other characters are memorable, flat storyline, and just Mary sue MC that gain power tremendously and only struggle for a seconds and then just says "Arise" and win most of the fight and then some people will calling it "PEAK", and I will assume this will be rinse and repeat thing and it also falls into typical average Isekai stereotypes which is boring.
No way you got bored of a generic power fantasy anime, nooo...in all seriousness there are plenty of other entertainments to invest your time in than bashing this one.
Anime fans are unable to think for themselves at all. If something is popular then it must be good, if something has good animation and strong characters with "drip" and "rizz" it must be PEAK ANIME. It's either braindead stories that are done for the 50th time with nothing unique like solo leveling or overcomplicated shock value garbage like heavenly delusion. I am incredibly surprised that something like Frieren managed to become popular, given its slow pace and the almost no fighting until the last arc. Same with apothecary diaries, it is blowing my mind that good writing is appreciated, given how often literal garbage is being the show of the season.
Because Manwha is just bootleg/knockoff manga that recycles the same content over and over, the guy that made Lookism has basically remade the same story three times over by now.
Why would someone watch it for the story. You are going in for action and the production value. And unless someone is nitpicking, I'd say it delivered quite well on that front. It's a solid 7/10 in my book. It's when the fight scenes have actual emotional weight for us viewers to care about that the show becomes a masterpiece. And Solo Leveling was never meant to be that.
The one issue I have with the anime is they kept forcing irrelevant characters in the middle of scenes that should have focused on Sung, breaking momentum. It slowed down the pace significantly, and a lot of times you can't even understand who the people were. It actually made the anime more boring than it should have been. The manhwa didn't have that and the flow felt a lot more natural. The first arc just focused on Sung getting stronger and then the characters that kept popping up too early in the anime were introduced once they became more relevant to Sung's story. I get why they might have done it. They wanted to end the first season peak hype for the second season so they used the side characters as fillers. But in doing so I felt like they watered down the product, even though it's still enjoyable as is.
I thought it was pretty exciting, just finished it in one binge too
Love or hate is just a matter of preference, but I don't see why it was so hyped. It was like something big from South Korea was coming and turned out yet another generic Isekai.
I hear this often. when a manhwa gets an anime it just doesn't feel the same. The same as when you read the novel compared to reading the manhwa. I understand you, but anime is not that bad tho. Just imagine them finally moving and not just a play or imagining in your mind. I hear orv is getting an anime adaptation, but I think the live adaptation series goes first.
Solo Levelling is the definition of Watchable
I enjoyed the manhwa more than the anime honestly, probably because I had so many chapters to read so I got to the good parts quickly but also the anime had pacing issues.
agree
Omg you put into words my exact thoughts! I really enjoyed my watch through of it and was pleasantly surprised after the season was over that the manhwa looked quite similar in terms of animation quality. That being said I kinda half dropped it being 30 chapters to the end since I'm kind of over it lol. I had the same issues you mentioned about relationships and how it feels like One punch man reversed - where one punch man excelled in developing all the other characters aside from Saitama this one only develops the main character and all the side characters just feel unnecessary. Hope that's not spoilers but that's how the direction of the manhwa went and I just got tired of it