I know it's lame to say "I read the books, and they're much better", but that's 100% true in the case of Solo Leveling. Each adaptation gets worse, and the anime especially so. I really liked reading Solo Leveling, don't get me wrong. But, I hold no illusions of it being a particularly deep piece of art. The world-building is interesting, the development of Sung Jin-Woo's skills is really engaging and the overall plot is fun enough. The manhwa is a bit worse but still very fun to read since it's so beautiful. The anime is quite worse than the manhwa but it's so beautifully animated and the fight scenes are so cool.

So, if you like battle shounen manga, just know that this a cool anime and that you should watch it. Also, stop reading this review right now, because I'm gonna talk some shit.

If you're still reading this, let's delve deeper into the anime. Because this is a weird anime. First of all, given all the tension between Japan and South Korea from the japanese occupation and so many other things that I'm not qualified to comment on, this seems like a weird choice for a japanese animation. And it's not because Solo Leveling is korean, but because it's quite anti-japanese in its writing. Not overtly so, but the author clearly liked killing japanese characters and destroying japanese cities a bit too much. So, a japanese studio animating this kind of source material seems pretty surprising.

Secondly, this anime is sooooo into big manly men. It loves muscles and loves its "this is a man's world" setting. In its defense, so are the books. But the anime loves muscles so much more than the books and the manhwa. It really wants to bang Jin-Woo and it wants to convince you to WANT to bang Jin-Woo. Which is fine, but might not be too interesting for a lot of people.

Third, this anime is even more sexist than its source material. The manhwa and the books really love discarding any female character that is not related to Jin-Woo without ceremony. The anime even more so. The conversation between the nurses about how hot Jin-Woo became is so weird and I think it's anime-original.

Fourth, if you like your anime to be philosophical and thought-provoking, this isn't for you. The books have some very interesting pieces, but they're all about world building. When it comes to developing characters or having any kind of meaningful debate, Solo Leveling is not at all interested. And the anime somehow became even blander. I think the AniList user that reviewed this anime by saying it has "noob-level" writing hit the nail on the head. This anime is so generic in its writing that any scene not involving fights is quite boring and doesn't advance the story all that much.

Still, there are good things to take into account. For instance, the anime changed a lot of the story's pacing and exposition in ways that were fun. And have I talked about how cool the fight scenes are? Because they're really cool.

In summary, this is battle shounen through and through. If you like beautiful anime and really cool fight scenes, this is for you. If you like those but will feel weird about sexism, lackluster character development and weird pacing, you might be a bit disappointed. And if battle shounen isn't your thing and you really care about societal issues as well as good writing, steer clear of this one.