PLEASE DO NOT HARASS ME ABOUT THIS REVIEW. AS A MATTER OF FACT, PLEASE DON'T HARASS ANYONE WHO PUT OUT A NEGATIVE REVIEW ON THIS SHOW. I AM JUST PUTTING OUT MY PERSONAL OPINION ABOUT THIS ANIME BECAUSE I AM REALLY PASSIONATE ABOUT WRITING THIS. SAME APPLIES TO THE PEOPLE WRITING NEGATIVE REVIEWS.

Solo Leveling has been an extremely popular piece of media before it got an anime adaptation. It was one of the most popular manhwas when it was still releasing chapters, and I was one of those people who read it while it was being released. I know the entirety of this story as I have caught up to it on every release since circa 2020-2021. And my thoughts? Fucking hated it. Yeah, I was an OG hater.

Why did I watch the anime adaptation then? I wanted to see how this would get adapted, and hatewatch it, to be completely honest. And have my thoughts changed? Just slightly for the worse. This still fucking sucks. This still kept all of the problems I had with the manhwa when it was still releasing. This is so extremely overrated that it isn’t even funny.

The story is extremely predictable. Sung Jin-Woo is labeled “the weakest hunter,” and then BOOM. He becomes extremely strong the next second. He now has some sort of neuralink chip planted into his head where he can now see a game menu. Who could’ve seen this coming? Not me. Not anyone, at all. Look at me in the eyes right now and tell me this isn’t just another variant of Kirito. Another Jesus-kun. Another Gary Stu. You just can’t. This mf also has no personality whatsoever. Anytime he’s in a bad situation, you can so easily predict what will happen next. Every episode literally goes by like this:

1. Jin-Woo is in a seriously dangerous situation! Whatever will he do!
2. Oh no, it seems like he is severely injured and will give up!
3. What? He has regained his strength back and started to fight the one dimensional villains!
4. Level up! Level up! Level up!

Any episode that seems to “build” and “thicken” the plot, is just ultimately thrown away, because what do you really expect from this series when it only focuses on how badass Jin-Woo is during his fighting scenes? This show literally thrives off of hype to keep the viewers entertained, and I do not mean that in a good way.

For all the other characters, I really don’t care about them at all. Like literally. I don’t have anything to say about them. They are just literally all cardboard cutouts. They’re just there. They don’t do anything other than either obstruct Jin-Woo on his journey, or just glaze him. Hae-in is one of the decent characters in this show, but she’s just there to serve as a romantic interest to Jin-Woo.

The animation is alright if I’m being honest. A-1 Picture’s animation style isn’t particularly my favorite. All of the faces for the character designs look basically the same. What I really liked from the manhwa is Dubu’s artstyle, which was probably the only part of the manhwa that entertained me. The fight directing was not the best, especially the spider episode. There were some parts here and there in the anime where the action scenes looked somewhat decent.

The music is probably the only really outstanding thing about the anime adaptation. Hiroyuki Sawano, the legendary man behind the AOT, Kill la Kill, and other popular anime was chosen to conduct the OST to this anime. The music piqued my interest in this otherwise bland show. I am going to go on a bit of a side tangent here, but I like to think of this as crinkle fries, my least favorite type of fries. They are extremely bland, but taste somewhat decent when you put condiments onto it. That’s how I feel when Sawano’s music starts playing. He actually carries this garbage show. I don’t know how they got him to conduct amazing music for this.

The OP and ED were pretty good as well. I was surprised at how TxT was put on the OP (Is this the first time a K-Pop group was put onto an anime?). The OP was extremely catchy, and it probably still hasn’t gotten out of my head at all, and I don’t see it getting out of my head any time soon. I absolutely loved the shit out of the ED. It went extremely hard, and that might be just one of the things that I always looked forward to while watching the anime.

I like to think about Solo Leveling as a 9 year old kid playing with action figures. They are holding Batman and Superman. They clash the fictional characters together while saying stuff like “BOOM! EXPLOSION! KAPOW! WHOOSH! ANNIHILATED! LEVEL UP! FATALITY!” It may seem cool to them when they were still 9, but looking back at it as an adult? Uhhh…