The anime series Solo Leveling is based on a Korean manhwa (comic) of the same name and is currently being shown on the streaming platform Crunchyroll. Solo Leveling is in my top five anime at the moment and I highly recommend the show to watch.
The plot revolves around the appearance of portals, called gates, around the world that lead to another world of monsters. At the same time the gates start appearing, people around the world gain magic powers with the ranking from the lowest at E and at the highest of S. The allotment of magic power an individual gets when their power awakens is what they get, that is the strongest they will be in terms of magical strength.
The people who go into the gates to battle the monsters are called hunters, and once the hunters slay the boss of the gate the gate will close after an hour. The story follows Jin Woo Sung, voiced by Aleks Le, who is an E rank hunter, dubbed the name the weakest hunter to ever exist. After a unique gate Jin woo is blessed with the ability to begin leveling up and get stronger.
As the story continues Jin Woo grows stronger and takes greater risks to gain more power. The battles that occur within the show are well animated and well choreographed, there is clear thought into the movements of the characters. The attention to detail with the ranking system is so similar to a video game that interacts with the real world. The limitations and insane extensions from the game aspect of the show adds to the world.
With voice acting, the translation does not exactly correlate to the timing from Japanese to English. With that Aleks Le takes some liberties to stay true to the original material and throw in some lines of his own into the dialogue.
As the story progresses through season two, a threat arises that needs to be dealt with on an international scale. For that matter the Voice Director, Caitlin Glass, decided to address the multilingual conversation by blending the spoken Japanese into the translated English.
Solo Leveling has broken the fastest time to get 100,000 likes on Crunchyroll, with episode six in season two then again with episode seven later on in the same season. With so many viewers at once the Crunchyroll servers crashed during the viewing and even some pirating sites too according to Gamerant.
As most good shows do, Solo Leveling masterfully crafted its cliff hangers as finishing each episode had viewers on the edge of their seats waiting for the next episode. With the last episode airing in English on April 12th, fans are left waiting for season three rumored to come in late 2025.
Solo Leveling in itself is a great show based on a good premise, with a strong storyline and amazing animation. From animation to the voice acting conveys so much emotion and is easy to understand.
