Season 2 of Solo Leveling is more of the same more irritating pseudochuuni sophistry more interchangeable sakugainterested fight scenes designed to be reposted rather than enjoyed more characters with increasingly similar names we have to pretend care about procedurally generated TOP TEN COOLEST ANIME ENTRANCESass entertainment wrapped in a layer of undeserved pretension. Clearly somethings working though because this is currently the twentyfifth highest rated show on here and one of the most viewed series ever on Crunchyroll. Streaming sites crash whenever a new episode comes out. Ive seen more people talk about Solo Leveling in the past three months than the most recent MCU flop. You wont have to force me to name something people actually like about this show because Im not deliberately obtuse enough to pretend the flash over substance angle isnt exactly what thrives in this modern viewing environment where everything has to be as concise as possible. But flash over substance implies the existence of any kind of substance at all. Its just under 300 chapters worth of Timmys middle school Wattpad ego trip about beating up the mean kids at school after getting bullied for the last time Tails Gets Trolled if the ironic selfawareness was feigned. This is not the kind of work that deserves a fullscale anime production but you can chalk it up to corporate suits who keep throwing money at Dgrade internet fanfiction until it becomes the next big thing. You wouldnt be reading this if not for them because Solo Leveling as a concept wouldnt have advanced past the dumpster of the online serialization where it belongs. The characters are still onenote and unlikeable. I dont even know what Sung Jinwoos goal is anymore. The impetus for his transformation into an emotionless RPG slave is resolved by the halfway point of the season when he wakes his comatose mother. The moment where he heals ger is the single best moment in the entire show because as SJW cries tears of relief he begins to feel like a real person someone you can sympathize with and relate to if only for a minute elevated to tearjerker levels by Taito Bans vocal performance it comes as no surprise that this is the most disliked episode of the season. Apparently having the selfinsert main character show any sort of convincing human emotion signifies that he lost his aura because the only thing that matters now is how an anime presents itself and not what it stands for or how it conveys ideas. Im not sure why fans prefer that Jinwoo be an emotionless Gary Stu so badly like its a good thing if a character never feels or reacts to anything going on around them. Make him cry more Even a smile or two would be enough I cant believe Im defending fucking Solo Leveling from its own fanbase no less but the moment the show threatens to become watchable they all seem to turn on it. The story seems to bend over backwards to make SJW the strongest and most competent character in any given situation which makes for an exhausting watch experience. His biggest trial this season is getting grazed by one of the bosses hes fighting. He either defeats every single enemy without breaking a sweat or he lets his shadows do all the work for him. I couldnt take any aspect of the narrative seriously after Jinwoo easily killed a supposedly unbeatable monster as everyone looked on in shock for tenth time in the span of five episodes. The only other times Jinwoo shows any appeal is when he foregoes his job as an Srank monster hunter to hang out with his mom and sister to compensate for all the years of bonding his family didnt get to experience and then go stand around on the roof of his apartment. Yet this somehow manages to undercut Jinwoos appeal even more as it takes place during a battle that involves several innocent people dying horribly which couldve been prevented had he been there. Theres layers to Solo Levelings incompetence even when its doing something right its at the cost of something else like some kind of narrative equivalent exchange. RDCworld did a pretty funny video about it. Put a gun to my head and ask me to name five Solo Leveling characters and what their personalities are beyond surfacelevel archetypal traits. Its impossible. Anyone who isnt Sung Jinwoo barely services the overall narrative and Im convinced that if you removed 75 of the supporting cast this show would be at least five episodes shorter. This season alone introduces like fifty equally terrible new hunters monsters and civilians who all have the memorability and personality of a rock. You already know none of these unlikeable incompetent superficial dipshits arent going to matter by the end of the season because Jinwoo does all the heavy lifting for everyone else while they stand around verbally fellating him. This season even brings in a staggeringly uninteresting future love interest whose loyalty towards SJW is only justified by the fact that she thinks he smells better than everyone else I actually paused the episode here and had to go watch an entire episode of Medalist just to get my mind off how embarrassing it was that a grown adult could write something so insipid. The only good character in this season is Esil a demon girl who shows up as a sidekick for one episode and she is the cutest goshdarn thing Ive ever seen. I cant complain about her minimal presence because shed probably be ruined if she stayed around any longer than that. The other SRank hunters are just as useless as they were in the manhwa. Theres this annoying nerd who looks like if Aizen was drawn by a fujoshi some guy who turns into a werewolf a really big dude with an afro all of whom exist to stand around either monologuing killing fodder enemies or getting fodderized by the actual threats so Jinwoo can come save them but only after standing around and letting a few of them die so he can look cool of course. The Japanese hunters have it even worse this is a Korean franchise after all so anyone who represents a foreign nation is either a weaselly little bastard with no sense of honor or the most pathetic jobber on the face of the earth. And youd better believe Solo Leveling will cut away from the fights multiple times per episode in service of another scene where these dweebs stand around in an office to deliver exposition as if they havent wasted enough time doing that already. The shows pacing is dreadful to the point it keeps bringing back old plot points and then not resolving them until a later arc. Remember Wang Dong Sucks brother who vowed to avenge his death in season 1? He gets offscreened by Jinwoos dad and his plotline gets dropped until the next season where hell inevitably get folded again because nobody in Solo Leveling gets to do anything other than job unless theyre Sung Jinwoo. This show isnt just derivative it blatantly lifts storylines from series I would rather be enjoying instead. The major focus of this season aside from the endless meandering and dropped subplots is a shameless rehash of the Chimera Ant arc from Hunter x Hunter which suffers the most from the shows terrible pacing despite being the selling point of season 2 it gets condensed down to three episodes which is indicative of the seasons detrimentally rapid pacing. Instead of a complex and nuanced antagonist like Meruem the character he was derived from Beru is just another obstacle for Jinwoo to curbstomp. SJW could be fighting some fodder enemy for all I care because theres no tangible conflict here like there was in HxH. I think this perfectly summarizes everything wrong with Solo Leveling it copies better works at a surface level and retains none of the underlying themes and exchange of viewpoints that make them what they are. I mean for Gods sake theres a scene halfway through the season where Jinwoo has a flashback of his mom getting burnt to save him and its lifted shot for shot word for word from one of Shinichis flashbacks in Parasyte. Im not sure how Chugong even got away with this because its not exactly subtle. When I was reviewing the first season I noted that the technical competence was one of the few saving graces of the show but now it feels like A1 Pictures started experiencing budget cuts midway through the production. Season 1 wasnt coming close to Dubus art from the manhwa but it wasnt constantly flipping between rejected character drawings from OnePunch Man season 2. I actually went back and compared episodes to their respective chapters and it wasnt even a contest between the two mediums. I can say with confidence the anime looks like a Deviantart user trying to recreate their favorite anime screencap in comparison especially now that the overwhelming amount of offmodel character art can be spotted without having to pause midscene like in the first season. The professionally constructed paneling and framing of certain events in the manhwa was woefully underutilized a lot of the time this season if not outright butchered for seemingly no reason theres a moderately iconic panel where a villain rips off a characters arms and walks away towards the viewer in the next panel with their opponent bleeding profusely in the background. I was baffled that such a clearcut panel to adapt wasnt included rather the director opted to show it at a different less striking angle that made what couldve been an effective moment of intimidation look boring in comparison. Little things like that make me wonder what the fuck is going on at A1 Pictures and if they have any quality control in their studio. I already mentioned last season how unmemorable and samey Hiroyuki Sawanos score for this series felt to me but it doesnt even sound like him now. The opening is the best sounding track of the show so far and Im not even sure if Sawano composed it or its another artist trying to imitate his style. It depresses hearing such a legendary composer phone it in to this extent. Even the fight choreography feels lazier than before. The twelfth episode is painfully inconsistent in terms of consistent animation fluidity bad anatomy and lazily rendered CGI environments which is made even more insulting by the fact that there are some genuinely great shots when the incomprehensible direction isnt drowning everything else stuff during the fight like the bugs claw hovering inches away from Jinwoos eye or Jinwoo staring down his reflection on a wall of ice are visually phenomenal. Its clear the storyboarders are trying during major sequences are their efforts are commendable. Contrarily the final battle between SJW and Beru has them do that thing from One Piece where they turn into brightly colored streaks and fly around in midair interspersed with that nauseating fauxshakycam thing anime directors do now. I had a hard time keeping track of what was going on at certain points because the camera was moving so fast it felt like I was watching on 2x speed or even worse watching a fight scene from Magia Record. Jinwoo anticlimactically dispatches Beruem by slashing him a bunch of times portrayed by a bunch of looping frames and a lazy panning shot complete with speed lines. Im not sure why this episode was so highly praised considering how glaringly obvious the flaws were so I have to assume most viewers were probably too disoriented from the fight scene to notice. Giving this season a 1/10 would be dishonest because compared to the first the positive aspects were more abundant. Unlike the previous season there were moments that felt like they made me see what fans see in this show. Episode eight looks fantastic aside from being a genuinely enjoyable experience compared to the rest of the show mostly in part to Yoshihiro Kannos storyboards. Jinwoo punches a demon in the face so hard it creates a nuclear explosion. I liked that one moment significantly more than anything else that happened this season. And as previously mentioned episode twelve has fantastic storyboarding at times in contrast to the overcomplicated scene direction. I rarely have anything good to say about this anime because when there are positives they hardly last more than a few minutes and make you wish you were watching something else.