Name: Great art isn't enough
Item: Solo Leveling
Rating: 30
Author: ioctan

Great art isn't enough

__No Spoilers
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This "review" was originally intended to exist as a note in my list, but having gone over the character limit, I had to turn it into a review. First I'll talk about the setting, initial story and characters in a way that hopefully doesn't spoil those who haven't read it, but after a marked cut off point there will be spoilers.

Setting

The setting feels lazy, you have dungeon portals that appear at random and can only be entered by "awakened" people, they enter to get objects from the enemies and the dungeon itself and because if the dungeon isn't taken care of in 7 days (oddly there seems to be no variance in time) the monsters can go through the portal into their worldand wreak havoc. Awakened people have different rankings based in some sort of magic power that doesn't change[0], while you can get equipment to do better your actual magic power doesn't change.

Despite the existence of dungeons the rest of earth is pretty much parallel to real life, the economy is fine, there doesn't seem to be much of an impact in the world[1] (ignoring areas that were destroyed). Despite the dungeon containing materials not found on earth it doesn't appear it's being used to develop any sort of technologies besides medieval looking equipment that's only going to be used in the dungeons, so basically what happens in a dungeon is isolated from the world, I'd have expected these drastic changes in human activities would have meant changes in how our civilization develops, but nothing of note.

Story

The protagonist is the weakest of the hunters and makes very little money off it, barely enough to pay the hospital bills for mom, and getting behind on rent. He doesn't make enough to buy equipment to slowly get more money out of dungeons, he barely makes enough to scrap by, and he's normally the only one getting wounded in low level dungeons. Even though he could die, even though he's barely making any money, even though he isn't slowly improving or anything, and that the economy is working normally, he still works as a hunter. It's not explained why he doesn't take a normal job when he makes so little and if he died his sister would have to stop studying to begin working, it was never established why he had to do this job of all things.

If the economy was fucked, and he had nothing else to scrape enough? Fine. If hunters automatically got health insurance that affect direct families? Fine. But none of these things are in the setting.[2]

Then there's all the gaming stuff I just didn't care about. It's not just the "system" (which gets sort of explained later), it's the icons over people (which strangely only seems to appear in season 1), the medieval fantasy equipments, all that stuff, just makes it harder tot ake it seriously.

Characters

We have an S ranker looking for revenge, a serious A ranker that works for the government keeping things under control, a B ranker that's too afraid to go to high ranking dungeons[3], a C ranker that's getting old and after a lapse in judgment still decides to move forward, a sister that's willing to stop studying to prevent her brother from being hurt, and the protagonist who risks his life in order to pay for his mom's bill and his sister's school. You'd think this would be enough you get the ball rolling, but I was disappointed by how little these are explored, making them feel shallow, but it's to be expected that something called solo leveling would mainly focus on the protagonist...

The problem is that the protagonist isn't appealing to me, what we see is someone seeking to get strong, which makes sense given how weak he is, but not much else. There's just enough character for a power fantasy, which might be enough for some people, but not me.

Fights

[4]

Normally one expects protagonists to survive thank to plot armor, as an author you have to make him or at least the people around him feel vulnerable, but when the protagonist can get a power up from thin air, it's basically impossible for me to feel any tension.

Minor detail but the author likes to hide the faces of new strong characters... even if their face is going to be revealed in the next chapter, why even bother with hiding them at all?

Spoilers

[0]Except people can be re-awakened in a very unlikely event that isn't really explored, we just know that it happens but that's it. And we letter learn that there are a handful people that actually help people increase their magic power.

[1]The only exception seemingly being the machines made to keep alive those suffering from eternal slumber, but functionally they're the same as machines keeping comatose people alive. You could switch them around and nothing would change.

[2]About 1/3 through, it's revealed that MC's dad was the big cheese, and even he got sent to the shadow realm. Even LESS for the weakest of the weak to go be a hunter.

[3]She then gets PTSD after barely surviving a possible rank S encounter but keeps on chugging, but again, this isn't properly explored either, missed opportunity.

[4]I can't find any tension here when the main character can do whatever, when he fought the blue snake I expected him to bail out due to the difference of strength and experience, but after being hit around he won in one shot. Granted, he hit a weak spot, and the fight alone might be justifiable but...

Then he fights Cerberus, which was a lot stronger than him, a monster he couldn't put a scratch on, and then it used a skill to get even stronger, and what does he do? Just restore his status back to square one to recover his life and fatigue, yet he basically insta-kills Cerberus after that.

Overall
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I found the story forgettable, the setting lazy, and the plot just unengaging because there's generally very little reason to feel any tension when MC is present, and when he isn't the characters are generally not something I care about - the only time I considered there was a proper urgency, stakes, and goal, is when sister was in the school with the orcs.

The characters themselves are mediocre, not great, not terrible, but not much exploration of what they think and why, there was an attempt with sister and Myung around 3/4 into the manhwa, but it was too little too late.

There's just the bare minimum for the power fantasy to be viable, introduce some asshole character that scoffs at MC so they can get wrecked, or have people witness how strong he is and be amazed by his feats. Feeling smug as MC plows into his enemies is the main dish served by this manhwa.

The art is great, there are a few derpy eyes here and there, but there are good colors, composition, perspective, sense of speed, strength and scale. I'm amazed the artists managed to put these out weekly...

...but when I'm not engaged in the battle due to there being no danger and tension, I can't get excited by the battles, and, at that point, the art is just being wasted. Had this been shorter, I probably wouldn't be so tired of its formula, but for a 180 chapters work, it feels pretty barren in most regards.

The issue becomes more apparent the longer the manga runs, the power level just goes crazy, and the last stretch of the manga becomes so weightless that it's just a slog to read through, finishing with an end that left me feeling nothing - I was neither happy that those who died were brought back, nor saddened by the sacrifice MC had to do in order to achieve it, I just didn't really care because no character had an impact on me, MC included.

I can understand why people like it, if you can get into the battles, the art does the rest, unfortunately, I just couldn't get into the battles. And I tried to get in the mood, songs from metal gear rising, two steps from hell, ace attorney all failed me.

Significant plot points

MC tries to convince sister's friend to quit being a hunter, he learns about it when visiting school and gets asked by a teacher as she doesn't want to come to class to become a hunter despite being rank E. He decides to discourage her by bringing her to a high level dungeon, and they end up in a red gate. Despite the fact that an A rank and a bunch of B ranks he fails at convincing her to quit, she disappears from the manhwa shortly after, and reappears during the goblin school arc, even though she was going to quit school to become a hunter and MC failed at convincing her otherwise?

Dong Su gets called to America because they find a powerful South Korean that might be a monster, though strangely Dong Su says his business in SK was over, even though he might think that MC is dead or stuck in a red gate... he had 2 targets, the other one he never touched at all so that's just a lie. Also, after he gets defeated, he loses all relevancy without actually having accomplishing anything.

Dad suddenly appears 1/3 into the manhwa, he hadn't been mentioned up until that point, he comes out of a gate as he had been lost in a closed gate for 10 years. And he appears by taking care of a party setup for an A rank dungeon, and then an S ranker (Dong Su), not before saying that there was a big crisis that had to be adverted, but of course, not giving any details about what the crisis is, just to try and create some cheap suspension.

He then proceeds to disappear for over 100 chapters.

The mom appears for the first time about 1/3 through the manga and gets healed midway through. She appears so late, so little, and we're given so little backstory that when she was finally healed I couldn't have cared less about it.

I'm willing to admit I might be a jaded asshole, but I don't think we were given any reason to actually care about her.

The start of jeju island arc didn't sit well with me for 2 reasons:

a) Every victim we see from the Japanese side is killed in one shot by super ant, normally aiming at their head, but when it comes to the Korean tea... they get non-fatal wounds, why? The ant then leaves, killing only the healer so that they can be left wounded and then be "rescued".

b) How long MC takes to teleport, it was already shown that he was aware of an attempted murder by a normal person, than to his shadows. So how come he didn't teleport before they got wounded? Just so they can be wounded and rescued by him, the author is so transparent that it just doesn't feel right to me, it's a transparent attempt at raising the stakes. But you know, MC has to LOOK cool.

When MC finds the chained monarch, just before he frees him he says that the magic crystal in his neck means that he can hear the voice of the rulers............ when the fuck was this established? We do know that the rulers issue the command to kill humans to the monsters, but when was that connected to magic crystal walkie-talkies? Did I just miss this somewhere? Was it the translation I was reading? Where? When? How?

Mom decides to stay on the apartment (which I called to be due to dad and I ended up being right), saying that MC will protect them just like dad did, never mind he had been gone for 10 years at that point. She desists on the idea the moment he dies, despite that she should have no reason to know other than some nebulous intuition (and not like being there changed anything about his death).

Towards the end the power scale becomes completely ridiculous, even between monarchs the power difference is huge just to justify MC moping the floor with a few but then having trouble with the ones to come.

He gets a limitless regeneration (that isn't limitless) out of his ass, dies and gets fucking stronger, and then even stronger by connecting to his pokebank and retrieving his old army. Then we learn that monarch of the shadows has the power to rickroll people for some people, what does showing memories to people have to do with controlling the dead - no idea.

And for some reason, even though the whole premise of the series is to come into a dungeon portal to defeat what lies inside before they break free and fuck up people, towards the end they wait for the monster to pour out instead. Why? Why? You even have the advantage coming in because you can retreat after doing some damage and coming back. The only exceptions to that being red gates, and MC has only found 2 despite the many ones he's cleared, and one that had a spell put on it to prevent them from escaping, which MC being MC should be able to break, and yet again we saw a single time, even the one that had the chained monarch had no spell to prevent exitting it, and even then MC's been shown to be able to leave dungeons by exchanging himself with a shadow, so event hen it wouldn't have been an issue now that at this point he knows he can leave with people

Also love that he has more than enough shadows to place a few at every gate and use his shared senses to know what's happening everywhere as well as be able to teleport elsewhere if need be, but doesn't really, he manages to have one in canada just because Adam happened to be there, but it certainly was a great oversight.

When the deus ex machina time travel device was mentioned, it was said that the rulers hadn't managed to gain the upper hand because the monarchs' memories weren't affected so each time they were more effective, and they had always failed to get rid of them as a result. Despite the act that the last rewind is done after all of them are killed, they seem to still be disorganized and the strongest one, the dragon monarch still decides to properly engage only after everyone else is already dead, very intelligent strategy and a good use of being aware of your loses.

Setting nitpicks

Something I wondered for a while, is why you didn't see anyone using weapons like guns, at least the healer should have one in the low-ish rank dungeons, if the healer is toast the party is likely toast as well. But you know, we need to have almost every character looking straight out of a medieval fantasy setting. It's not until chapter 131 - about 3/4 into the manhwa - that new technologies don't much affect the creatures, no explanation given, and this coming after Jeju island where they used battleships and no mention of this whatsoever.

There's also the monster language, so hunters can't understand what they say, but somehow at the start we see the C ranker reading runes, how? We don't really see any efforts at understanding and integrating knowledge from the other worlds, the only instance we see anyone other than MC getting information from them is the C ranker at the very start of the manhwa, never explained how he could read it, nothing done with that skill other than that specific part.

The existence of red gates isn't really explained, if the idea is to strengthen humans and earth in order to survive the clash, why would you place death traps that hide their actual ranking and prevent people fro coming out? It's just going to kill most of the same people you're supposedly trying to give strength to.

A mystery throughout most of the manhwa is how the system works, which is what sets MC apart from everyone else, as it continuously allows him to grow. It is eventually revealed that it exists in order to allow for MC to slowly gain control of the monarch's power, as it'd be too much to take from the start...

But where does that leave stuff like the crafting system, and the shop (which was even locked at low levels)? What could those possibly have to do with controlling the undead. I guess shadow monarch just has ebay powers.

So as I understood, the gate portal backfired on MC's dad, causing him to be trapped, it's just weird is that - as far as I can remember - is the only case mentioned in the manhwa, so the reason wasn't all that satisfactory to me. He also mentions how the "great disaster" awakened soon before disappearing, and we never get to learn what he meant. The monarchs as a whole? Just the dragon monarch? But were they even sleeping? I don't recall that being mentioned, at least.