This review also adds content from the first season since it's pivotal and this season mostly focus in long action scenes

After all the noise surrounding Solo Leveling, I finally gave the anime a proper watch to see if it lived up to the hype. After watching it 2 times to have a better opinion my reaction was mixed, partly disappointed, but also not surprised. In many ways, this show is a flashy reimagining of the same narrative we've seen countless times before: an ordinary guy becomes a god among mortals. The usual power-fantasy that other animes, like the average isekai, brings to the table, but without any emotional value, character development or advanced writing skills. Think The Oddissey by Homer, but updated with videogame screens, shadow creatures, no personality characters and polished animation.The difference is that this book is almost 3000 years old. The quality of Solo Leveling is almost the same, if not, worse. Let's start with the general problems of the show. The second season improves some things but they are replaced with action scenes. While the first season was a bad introduction to the world the second season follows the formula adding more action elements and not fixing any problems. I am going to talk a little bit about this, the problems that remain and the ones the anime "fix" adding action scenes; it is important to understand all the problems of the "story" to talk about this season (becuase the quality never really improves):

1. Introduction

The anime finally understands that it is a "power fantasy". The first season lost hours to badly introduce everything but we finally got what the show wanted: "aura farming". Hear me out, i don't like to describe a piece of media like that but this anime can be described as it. The main character only wins every battle without thinking. The pacing is decently better but mostly because it wants to show the fights as soon as possible, isn't real progression. Anyways, some problems remains the same:

• The setting is an augmented version of our mundane reality, infused with random isekai portals and superhuman abilities. The world is interesting at first sight but the author doesn't know how to explain it and the worldbuilding is a disaster. It doesn’t differ in the slightest despite a decade of constant monster invasions and people walking around with the ability to literally demolish concrete walls. Beyond the superficial addition of a hunter association (very unique!), it doesn’t reflect any substantive shifts in geopolitics, the global economy, or societal norms. It’s lazily made and doesn’t deserve any time in elaborating how it functions.

• The mechanics governing videogame powers and superhuman abilities, along with the hierarchical ranking system, are conveyed with no nuance. They are the most basic representation of an MMO or a D&D player’s handbook, which might have been cool to follow in the early 2000s along with other titles doing the same such as .hack and Gantz, but now it’s ever-present in our pop culture. It became understandable through mere osmosis and there is little reason to explain its most basic features.

• The characters are as one-dimensional as they get. They are all defined by a singular character trait, such as the hunters only caring about hunting, or the protagonist’s sister being a worrying sister. They have no life outside of the single idea the author bothered to have when he conceived them, so once again they don’t deserve any elaboration. The main character follows this rule too, but he got a little bit of development: he was "a loser" and now he is "the best". Then the director opens his own can of worms and persists in interrupting action sequences to afford glimpses into the inconsequential activities of minor characters somewhere far away, thus needlessly diluting the narrative focus. While I prefer they doing that instead of the silent mechanical main character passing throught everything without a toned context.

• The series’ sluggish pacing works against it, and the more it tries to explain its world and powers the more it exacerbates the shortcomings of its world-building and power system. This is a bigger problem in the first season but the problem remains. The revelation that hunters must personally finance their equipment and they undertake perilous dungeon delves merely to pay the bills (it’s literally mentioned on the intro song), can make you wonder why would low-ranking hunters, such as the protagonist in the beginning of the show, persist in risking their lives when more lucrative and less hazardous employment opportunities exist. Burger King or gathering trash would earn them more money and there would be no risk. Somewhat the second season tries to improve the pacing adding way more action scenes but it is a extreme treatment. It is still irregular but know we almost dont understand what is happening.

• Lastly, the series’ use of RPG-style stat screens and numerical indicators in a supposedly real-world setting feels jarring and artificial. In a game, stats are essential because players can’t physically feel pain, hunger, or fatigue, but in real life, people DO experience these things directly. Translating health bars, experience points, and mana levels into a real-world context undermines immersion rather than enhancing it. It feels especially odd when a character says something like “my HP is down to 10%” instead of just showing visible pain or exhaustion. Unlike SAO, where the digital framework is intrinsic to the story, Solo Leveling struggles to justify these elements in its semi-realistic world, making them feel more like a gimmick than a meaningful storytelling device.

1. Second Season & Market Timing

The second season of Solo Leveling has received significantly more praise than the first, and that’s not a surprise. The action is front and center, the animation has improved, and the pacing caters to a crowd that wants instant gratification and cheap dopamine. It's way better than the last one, because it finally shows what it can offer. With the momentum of some masterpieces like Kusuriya no Hitorigoto slowing down and few other major titles competing for the spotlight, Solo Leveling finally found its moment to shine. The high-budget animation that improved what we got in the first season sets a shining object in a ocean full of new titles.

What changed? Mainly, the show stopped pretending to be about world-building or complex systems. Instead, it leaned into what audiences actually showed up for: a ridiculously overpowered "aura main character" who slices through enemies like expired jelly. The clunky attempt to make viewers care about the system or lore in season 1 has been dropped in favor of pure basic spectacle. Why thinking about we are watching when we can watch cheap action narratives full of videogame elements and random Hunter x Hunter ""inspirations""? This season doesn't care about anything but action scenes and nice effects, which is illogical because it can show way more, probably.

Compare this to Re:Zero, which tried to delve into character psychology and narrative depth, but lost casual viewers when it sidelined its main character for story arcs most didn’t care about. Well, Solo Leveling is the opposite. It ditched the illusion of depth and just pumped up the dopamine. Is not bad to have this type of "junk-food shows" but it is important to know what we are watching, and understand why it is not good.

1. Turning the Bad into the Style

As presented in the introduction, the world of Solo Leveling is still full of plot holes and nonsensical design, but instead of feeling like narrative dead weight, those flaws have been weaponized. Instead of resolving problems the anime plays with them like a kid with a doll. The complete lack of safety protocols are now an excuse for the protagonist to show off his "cool aura" instead of a cheap excuse to throw him in life-threatening situations that could have easily been avoided. It’s still dumb, but now it’s only the secondary characters that get pulverized by the random monsters creatures all the time. The protagonist uses that to show off how much stronger he is than everyone else, which adds to the self-insert power fantasy narrative.

1. Stat Screens and Videogame Elements

Season 2 smartly minimizes the frequent, immersion-breaking pauses to display irrelevant stat screens. Although they are still there, they take up a lot less screen time and the numbers are often hidden, thus becoming an aesthetic rather than a vital element you have to constantly pay attention to instead of enjoying the "aura farming". This also partially removed the nonsense about the protagonist not knowing how injured he is without looking at the screen instead of just feeling pain and bleeding without knowing. While we have some improvements, the show still have big problems and it doesn't offer us any solution. Instead of all the crappy system now he is just overpowered. Instead of focusing in the problems, Solo Leveling solves anything with fights and action-packed scenes without any critical thinking.The infusion of videogame terminology can cater to gamers, yet unwittingly creates a jarring dissonance for everyone else, and is not an excuse for the nonsensical "power development" of the character.

1. Lack of Emotions and Humanity

This problem persists across this season, and all the show. The protagonist ""breaking down emotionally"" when his mother woke up had little thought put behind it. It was sudden, it had no build up, and nobody in the audience cared about his mother since they were watching the show for "cool fights". We don't know anything about them, and the scene lacks any emotional value. The studio vastly improved this exact scene compared to the original work where he almost stands silent because "he is strong and has this mysterious vampire aura", making everyone uncomfortable. The writer clearly has no skill here and insists on rewriting his characters whenever he feels like it instead of putting the work to make the change believable. And you know why? Becuase the show keeps focusing in the videogame clunky system and the fights. It's a shame, because even with the "self-insert narrative", we need emotions and human feelings.

Any changes to the protagonist’s personality are artificial without reason, since they too are imposed by the system rather than arising organically from within. They are also fairly sudden, which comes off as extra jarring when the pacing is overall glacial. The protagonist literary becomes a different person in an instant.

• His motivation changes from making money to hiding his power that would earn him more money by going to harder missions (why!?)

• The animators go as far as changing his strange facial structure completely.

• The voice actor speaks with an entirely different tone.

Then the viewer is expected to be fine with all that. The characters are too artificial and inorganic, they lack humanity and when the anime wants us to understand them it fails miserably.

1. The Main Character can Shine Without Explanation

Beyond its superficial appeal, the videogame aesthetics employed in Solo Leveling also strip the protagonist of free will and agency. His actions are dictated by the videogame system, rendering him a mere pawn in its machinations. Choices presented by the system are illusory at best, since they simply ask him if he accepts to do something or be severely punished. Do your daily quests or get chased around by monsters! Complete this special quest, or die! Your health is down, so buy potions! There’s nothing to actually choose in any of that. By extension, the protagonist’s accomplishments feel staged and unearned, since he would have never done anything without the enforcement of the system.

In Season 1, the system was essentially dragging the protagonist by the nose. He didn’t make choices, he reacted to forced quests and events. Season 2 changes that. Now that he’s absurdly strong, he wants to fight and fight and fight... He has agency, he can be proactive, but at what cost. The system becomes more of a silent partner than a puppeteer, which gives his character at least a bit more narrative credibility but at the end of the day this just adds to the power fantasy elements and the problem of fixing everything with action.

1. No More Fake Moral Conflict

The first season occasionally flirted with moral questions: should the protagonist kill, what does his power mean, is he still human? All that’s gone now, and honestly, the show is better off for it, maybe. Those half-baked ethical dilemmas were never going to work in a story that clearly wants you to root for a "god-tier main character steamrolling everything" and the living being emotions doesn't exist. The villains in season 2 aren’t complex, but they don’t need to be because they’re "fodder", and the show knows it. Their pattern is simple:

1) Powerful villain appears.

2) It beats and kill some filler hunters (execept tha main ones. The girl plot-armor is insane, she likes the protagonist so she is not going to die like that).

3) Jumbo appears with that cape-shirt that looks cool when the wind arises, even when there isn't possible to have wind, and his shiny eyes star shining to beat easily this antagonists.

4) All the people think he is really "cool and strong" and all the girls like him (seriously, all the girls in this show are objects that the main character uses)

Any attempts at moral dilemma ring hollow. Scenes where the protagonist has to choose between killing people or dying himself have no real choice, especially when the people he had to kill were already about to kill him. Furthermore, said people were portrayed as one-dimensional evil bad guys, made to be hated. The animators went as far as giving them demonic eyes and sadistic smiles in case you missed how obviously evil they were. Their voices sound bad and they are ugly, they must be bad guys! A leader’s name was Sucks Dong, in case you weren’t given enough reasons to hate this guy.

The writer wasn’t even trying to make these guys redeemable, yet he expected the viewer to take such scenes as life-changing. When you portray people as monsters that deserve to be killed, there is nothing for the audience to consider and therefore there is no real dilemma. We need to understand what is happening for once. The so-called loss of humanity the protagonist undergoes whenever he kills people means nothing since, as stated before, he made no actual choice, lacks any natural human thinking and, on top of that, he did it all for money.

1. "Cheater" Elements

Down to it, the protagonist was designed to be the " handsome and tall blank-slate for gamers to project themselves onto", but this inherent lack of agency detracts from his appeal, rendering him a bland archetype devoid of genuine depth or charisma. He doesn't feel human, even when the author wants him to be. This bland-looking "self-inserts" who get constantly betrayed by society and then get constantly more powerful so they can extract their revenge are an archetype very difficult to explore, and the anime doesn't even try whatsoever. The main issue with this bland-looking self-insert in specific is that he is not an underdog or a victim as the show like to portray him as.

• He was the only one who can level up in this show, so you can’t call him something that can’t apply to anyone else.

• He is not a victim when the hunter association allowed him to be a hunter and all his teammates (including the ones who wanted to kill him) were very welcoming. Nobody denied him the chance to participate or to prove his worth through his accomplishments.

• In reality he is a cheater, since he doesn’t tell anyone how he gets stronger and he has several unfair advantages over everyone else.

No other hunter is given a life-saving full recovery in the middle of the battle, or the option to buy potions as he is dying. He is literally playing in creative. It’s not the system giving him the chance to get stronger. It’s the system being rigged so he will be the only one who gets favored by it, thus becoming stronger while everyone else is kept in the dark (and dies because of it). This makes his superpowers unreal, he doesn't deserve anything. He isn't a victim, his personality changes are inorganic and no one cares about nothing.

1. Grinding And How Not To Write a Training Arc

The portrayal of training within the series serves as further evidence of its narrative inconsistencies. Some animes make the audience motivated by seeing characters training and getting stronger, as if they are gym rats. This show in particular should have the opposite effect, since training sequences in Solo Leveling lack significance. The protagonist’s exclusive access to leveling renders the efforts of secondary characters futile. Gym rat scenes with a carbon copy of Saitama's routine, intended to evoke motivation and empowerment, not only contradict the in-story rules but also come off as useless filler. Even if it wasn’t so, training scenes in general are looked down upon by most power fantasies. They tend to find them boring and they skip them, aiming to get to the outcome right away for that sweet dopamine fix. That is why most power fantasies begin with the protagonist being the most powerful since the very beginning. Nobody cares to see him grind, not even the author. They want to see him being awesome. In this regard Solo Leveling fails spectacularly by not delivering on the genre’s expectations. This makes all his evolution and strenght totally unbelivable, like if a external hand gives him everything he needs. In Season 1, these felt like padding, especially when only the protagonist was capable of growth. Season 2 trims the fat. When grinding happens, it’s quick, flashy, and focused on what audiences seems to want: domination and spectacle. And this is also a problem, Solo Leveling never offers a reason to why the main character is strong. He is just "the goat". Whenever it tries to explain something it doesn't understand how to do it.

Conclusion:

Solo Leveling is not clever. It never was. And everyone knows it. But the second season understands what its audience wants and finally delivers it without pretense. It’s a sleek, well-animated, emotionally shallow, spectacle-heavy anime that doesn’t try to be more than it is. Is bad, like the first season, but with some nuances and shades. The content in this season is basically animation effects and that is why I decided to talk about the first season too, since the base is vapid and bad written.

It’s still riddled with narrative shortcuts, one-dimensional character arcs, and writing that often falls apart under scrutiny. But if what you want is high-budget visual candy with a main character who can solo armies without breaking a sweat, season 2 is a much better delivery system than the first. It's not smart—but it's finally honest about that. Beyond this, it’s an enjoyable "mindless actionfest" that show what the animation studio can offer. So I invite everyone to check other A-1 Pictures instead.

Solo Leveling is not unlike anything we’ve seen before, it’s not the best power fantasy, it’s not the best korean manga, and it doesn’t have the best written characters in human history. It’s junk food, a forgettable time-waster at best, written with the lazy idea of an audience who isn't going read or going to care about quality writing and just want to "self-insert" into a ice cream cone-chin cheater guy who uses the most generic videogame mechanics imaginable to get the attention of no personality figurines.

If you have any criticism, you can message me. Thank you for reading and have a good day!!^^