When Solo Leveling finally leapt from the pages of its beloved manhwa onto screens, the anime community held its breath. Few stories arrive with such a heavy weight of expectation, and yet its first season managed to stir conversations and widespread acclaim across the community almost instantly, ushering in hordes of new fans. Many weren’t just tuning in for another dungeon-crawling adventure; they were witnessing the rise of a series that dared to take the underdog to overpowered-hero trope and refine it with darker edges, stylish battles, and an almost hypnotic sense of progression. But is that truly what we all got?

Rather than redefining the genre, it embraced its strengths and presented a remarkable intensity. In all, Winter 2024 saw the advent of a phenomenon that reshaped the way people talk about modern fantasy anime.

Season One | Episode Map

Season One | Summary & Recap

The Weakest Hunter

The story unfolds in a fictional South Korea where strange portals referred to as Gates occasionally emerge worldwide, linking the human world to unknown parallel dimensions. At the same time, an unexplained force has stirred within humanity, bestowing some with varying extraordinary powers that’d enable them to fight the magic beasts emerging from these Gates. The few humans with these abilities became recognized as Hunters, categorized by a letter grading system from E, D, C, B, A, to S, with S being the strongest. With the creation of Hunter guilds and agencies came career opportunities for hunters who often enter the Gates to kill these creatures and obtain magical items they can then sell for profit.

The story follows Sung Jin-woo, an E-rank hunter labeled "the weakest hunter of mankind" due to his frequent near-death encounters during hunting missions and low earnings, which he uses to care for his comatose mother and younger sister, Jin-ah. He gets called for a routine raid which transforms into a profound journey of growth, betrayal, and untapped potential.

Double Dungeon Disaster

The season opens with a flashback to a disastrous event on Jeju Island, where a dungeon break (monsters escaping a Gate) resulted in significant loss of life. Back to the present, Jin-woo joins a low-level D-rank dungeon raid with a mismatched group, featuring his healer friend Lee Joo-hee and the experienced C-rank hunter Song Chi-yul. 

The raid appears simple initially: they eliminate goblins and minor threats. But after defeating the boss, they discover a second dungeon—a rare "double dungeon" phenomenon. The group debates pressing on for riches or retreating, but greed prevails as Jin-woo's vote tips the balance. They discover a haunting chamber with colossal statues, including a god-like figure amid musical instruments and armored sentinels.

What follows is a harrowing experience in the Cartenon Temple, a trap dungeon ruled by cryptic commandments on tablets. Following the first rule of "Bow to your God," the hunters kneel as the statues come to life, eliminating those who break the rules. Panic arises as they interpret the next commandments, worshiping the god with music and demonstrating their faith at an altar. Statues with flutes, drums, and other instruments require precise actions, such as dancing or singing, and mistakes result in deadly consequences like lasers, fire, or crushing blows that eliminates some of them. 

Jin-woo, despite his weaknesses, demonstrates quick thinking, aiding the group in surviving longer than anticipated. The chaos takes a heavy toll, as Song loses an arm, Joo-hee is traumatized, and Jin-woo, with a severed leg, faces certain doom from the relentless assault of the god statue. In his last moments, a mysterious "System" interface appears, presenting a secret quest: become a "Player" to survive. Just before he loses consciousness, he agrees, and then passes out.

The System

Jin-woo wakes up in a hospital three days later, confused but alive. Investigators from the Korean Hunters Association, including Woo Jin-chul, are examining the incident. They confirm the double dungeon's horrors but find no mana surge in Jin-woo to suggest a re-awakening. Initially dismissed as E-rank, Jin-woo soon discovers a change: he now perceives a video game-like interface displaying stats (strength, agility, intelligence), inventory, a shop, and daily quests such as push-ups and runs to level up.

Skipping one sends him to a harsh desert called "penalty zone" filled with killer centipedes, where he barely survives but gains experience. This hidden system becomes his secret weapon. Driven by the need to understand the system and get better, he works tirelessly, assigning points to enhance his attributes.

His first major test arrives with a key to an "instant dungeon" which he opens in a subway station, a solo realm that mirrors real dungeons but is tailored to his level. He then confronts steel-fanged wolves, goblins, and the snake boss Kasaka, quickly leveling up and gaining skills like "Sprint" along with weapons from loot drops. He emerges stronger. Secretly, he assists another raid party that included Joo-hee by weakening a golem boss from a distance before disappearing. This ignites rumors of a strong and unknown hunter. 

A Bargain

Hwang Dong-suk, a dubious C-rank hunter, recruits Jin-woo for a bug-ridden dungeon, joined by the naive D-rank heir, Yoo Jin-ho. The raid offers mana crystals and a sweet deal, but Hwang and his team betray them, trapping Jin-woo and Jin-ho in the boss room with a giant spider to claim the loot for himself. Jin-woo, undeterred, defeats the arachnid beast and gets a System quest to eliminate threats, leading him to confront and kill Hwang's treacherous crew in self-defense. 

Jin-ho, impressed by Jin-woo's skills, suspects he's a "false ranker" concealing his strength and suggests a partnership: clear 19 dungeons so Jin-ho can become a guild master for his family's new venture. In agreement, Jin-woo receives a share of the profits and a building in return, and sees it as a low-risk method to gain experience.

While raiding together, they use filler hunters to meet quotas as Jin-woo solos the clears, attracting scrutiny. Ahn Sang-min of the White Tiger Guild investigates, realizing Jin-woo's reawakening and seeking to recruit him, but Jin-woo refuses, prioritizing his independence. Later on, interpersonal relationships deepen, as Jin-ah worries about her brother's absences, Joo-hee retires from hunting due to PTSD, and Song subtly mentors Jin-woo. 

A crucial raid brings Jin-woo back together with survivors from the double dungeon, including Song and Joo-hee, along with convict hunters led by B-rank overseer Kang Tae-shik. Tae-shik, an assassin covertly tasked with eliminating the convicts, betrays the group and kills the convicts. Jin-woo steps in, saving Song and Joo-hee, showcasing his enhanced skills by quickly defeating Tae-shik.

Shadow Monarch

Jin-woo's power surges as he enters the Demon Castle, a brutal instant dungeon accessed with a key, searching for an elixir ingredient for his mother's cure. After facing hellhounds and a fierce Cerberus that almost kills him, he retreats, promising to come back stronger. 

His journey peaks in the "Job Change Quest," transporting him to a grand throne room where he faces relentless waves of knights, assassins, archers, and mages. The intense trial culminates in a boss fight with Igris the Blood-Red, a swift and powerful crimson knight commander who nearly kills him. With great luck, he teleports to a penalty zone for recovery and triumphs, then comes back, fights and defeats Igris, before extracting him as his first "shadow soldier" through a new necromancer-like ability.

This grants him the "Shadow Monarch" class, enabling him to resurrect fallen enemies as an undying shadow army, complete with ranks and evolutions. As Jin-woo's shadows expand, his confidence rises. However, the season finale indicates greater dangers on Jeju Island, as ant monsters from the old dungeon break are evolving under a powerful queen, attracting S-rank hunters like Go Gun-hee and Cha Hae-in for a reclamation raid.

Season One | Review

Solo Leveling was the most eagerly awaited anime of Winter 2024, mostly because there weren't new titles that ended up being big hits. Despite the excitement surrounding it, it was overshadowed by the continued success of Frieren in the previous season, and it remains a fairly typical power fantasy that received enthusiastic acclaim from fans of the web novel. Typically, fans want you to see it as a subversive masterpiece, even though it fails to offer anything new that its predecessors haven't already tackled, often with better execution. Moreover, its obvious shortcomings provide numerous reasons for the typical viewer to lose interest.

As far as reviews go, this will be a rather controversial take on certain aspects of the anime, but let’s get on with it. I’ll be talking about its strengths and weaknesses, but let’s start with the latter.

Story & Plot Development | 4/10

The Weaknesses

Solo Leveling arrived on the anime scene with an almost mythical reputation thanks to its manhwa origins, yet the first season reveals several flaws in its storytelling that prevent the show from being as engaging as its premise would imply. Although it seems like an interesting power fantasy, its narrative decisions are frequently padded, uneven, and unduly dependent on stale mechanics.

Its most obvious flaw is its pacing. The series spends its opening episodes inching through exposition rather than diving into the action that fans of the genre crave. While some of the buildup is necessary, Solo Leveling takes this a bit far. The setting, a world lightly altered by the existence of gates, monsters, and hunters, fails to feel lived-in. Even after a decade of non-stop invasions, civilization appears to have remained largely unaltered, with economics, geopolitics, and daily life seemingly unaffected. The setting just serves as a background for dungeon raids, leaving the audience unmotivated to care about anything other than Jin-woo’s current problems.

The power system itself also lacks nuance. The MMO-inspired elements are treated so literally that they lose their charm. Although many viewers are already quite familiar with these cliches, the level-up system, stat displays, and health bars are described in agonizing detail. The excessive explanation undermines the story rather than increasing the tension. Worse still, the reliance on numbers and gauges reduces the protagonist’s experience to percentages, stripping away the physical and emotional grit that could have made his trials more resonant.

Ironically, the series’ insistence on explaining its mechanics only serves to emphasize how inconsistent the worldbuilding is. When closely observed, the idea that hunters must pay for their own gear and put their lives in danger for small rewards when there are safer alternatives doesn’t make much sense. Such questions are dismissed with minimal to no effort to explain them.

Even the strongest sequences, like Jin-woo’s dungeon fights, suffer. These moments should be the show’s heartbeat, yet the action is constantly interrupted by cutaways to other characters, dreary explanations of mechanics, or clumsy dialogues. Instead of allowing the spectacle to speak for itself, the show keeps on reminding the audience of its own regulations, which causes the enthusiasm that has been built up in fights to fade. Even the supposed moral dilemmas fall flat; scenes where Jin-woo faces “difficult choices” are undermined by one-dimensional villains and contrived scenarios that remove any genuine tension.

At the center of these issues is Jin-woo himself. Although he is portrayed as an underdog who overcomes all obstacles, his unique leveling ability turns him into a system-blessing cheater rather than a struggler. The System’s directives reduce his autonomy to little more than obeying instructions under pain or punishment, making his wins seem predetermined. He stops being a self-made hero and instead becomes a blank canvas whose achievements are manufactured, lessening the emotional impact of his development.

Even his training sequences, which could have been an opportunity to add depth, end up being boring. Since Jin-woo is the only one who gains from leveling, other hunters’ efforts seem pointless, including all other S-rank hunters, and his own grinding is limited to required montages with predictable results.

The Strengths

Despite all of these shortcomings, Solo Leveling Season One still demonstrates why it became such a global sensation in the first place. At its best, the anime creates a power fantasy that is emotionally fulfilling and thrilling to watch, with a protagonist whose path has resonance that goes well beyond the flashy fight sequences. What makes the storyline stand out is not just the spectacle, but the way it builds a sense of progression, tension, and emotional grounding.

Its strongest element lies in its underdog narrative. Sung Jin-woo starts as the weakest hunter in the world rather than an unstoppable powerhouse. We see him mocked, pitied, and nearly killed in dungeons that even lowly ranked hunters breeze through. In addition to making him sympathetic, his early frailty guarantees that every accomplishment he makes has purpose. The transformation feels more like a well-deserved second chance than wish fulfillment as he awakens as a Player of the enigmatic System. The core of the story is the underdog to overlord trajectory, which is carried out with enough perseverance and grit to keep viewers interested.

The use of progression as a narrative engine is another asset. Despite its simplicity, the System gives the storyline a distinct rhythm. Each dungeon, combat, and accomplished mission represents a concrete turning point in Jin-woo’s development. In the series, he grinds through progressively more difficult encounters, pushing himself to the edge and coming out stronger each time, rather than just depending on random power-ups.

The plot also benefits from its emotional grounding in family and responsibility. Jin-woo is driven not by a desire for glory, recognition, or revenge; rather, his focus lies in protecting his younger sister and finding a cure for his mother’s illness. This personal anchor elevates the story by giving significance to fights and moments that could otherwise seem like meaningless spectacle. His determination to provide for his family guarantees that viewers will perceive him as a young man standing up for something very human, rather than merely as a leveling machine.

In terms of tone, the series also succeeds by embracing its darker undertones. The story doesn’t shy away from showing the brutality of dungeon raids, the greed of human nature, or the casual cruelty of stronger hunters exploiting the weak. This keeps the series from appearing overly artificial and gives the otherwise fantastical premise some roughness. The Double Dungeon massacre at the beginning sets this tone perfectly, reminding us that survival comes at a cost and that Jin-woo’s rise will be soaked in blood.

Lastly, the series does a fantastic job at creating suspense, as each arc ends by hinting at even greater threats and mysteries to come, be it stronger monsters, secrets of the System, or the looming political struggles and machinations within the hunter world. It doesn’t just revel in Jin-woo’s victories; it positions them as stepping stones toward something much larger. That forward momentum is unarguably an element of the storyline that’s succeeded in keeping fans hooked and eager to see what happens next and how far he can climb. 

Animation & Visuals | 9/10

Animated by A-1 Pictures, the first season of Solo Leveling is well-known and praised as a visual powerhouse that faithfully and perfectly conveys the gritty, intense spirit of the manhwa. From the get-go, the animation quality impresses with its fluid choreography and dynamic fight scenes, turning dungeon fights into adrenaline-filled, high-octane spectacles. This mastery is evidenced in the Cartenon Temple arc, where tension builds through precise pacing and terrifying monster designs, like the animated stone statues, that feel genuinely menacing, bringing the blend of horror and action to life.

As the season progresses, especially from episode 4 onward, the visuals hit mind-blowing levels, with every frame bursting with detail. Character movements are sharp; colors pop in a bold, rich palette dominated by deep blues and shadows; and the angular, muscular designs evoke the original Korean manhwa style of tall figures with long necks and narrower eyes that add a unique, slightly edgy flair.

Jin-woo’s fight against Igris in Episode 11 is one of the best in the series. It features excellent and smoothly animated combat that’s on par with top-tier series like Jujutsu Kaisen, avoiding clunky interruptions for a truly immersive and enjoyable experience. The facial expressions and shaping also steal the show, conveying Jin-woo’s evolution from timid weakling to confident powerhouse with great and unforgettable emotive depth, with a visibly well-toned body. 

However, it is not perfect. Jin-woo’s design is a little boring in the midst of sporadic fan service that is elegant but unnecessary, and the animation quality of the beginning episodes is rather mediocre and chaotic, with the graphics only getting better towards the end. In combat, the power scaling can sometimes get excessive, transforming scenes into over-the-top displays. All things being considered, however, the animation enhances the power fantasy and gains a strong reputation as a “visual masterpiece”, which probably earned it its Best Action Anime award at the 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards.

Character Development | 3/10

Solo Leveling’s character development here is primarily carried by Jin-woo, whose transformation defines the entire narrative. If the series were an Isekai, a more suitable title could’ve been “The Weakest Hunter of Mankind Grows Stronger Because of a System”. His journey and transformation are remarkable for the significant power increase and the emotional and psychological depth that comes with it. We watch him transform from a kind-hearted young man fighting for survival to someone who understands the weight of solitude, responsibility, and wielding overwhelming strength.

This transformation, however, reveals a clear gap in the other characters. While Jin-woo gains more substance through his struggles, sacrifices, and eventual embrace of darker, more ambiguous traits, the supporting characters often serve as background figures. They all seem to function mainly to mirror the extent of Jin-woo’s growth rather than get meaningful arcs of their own. While some side interactions hint at his ability to form trust and teamwork, these moments are very brief and are fleeting compared to his lone progression.

Music & Voice Acting | 8/10

The voice acting and sound design are, as expected, essential components of the anime’s overall experience. Taito Ban delivers an impressive performance as Sung Jin-Woo's voice actor, skillfully portraying the character's journey from weakness to power with remarkable subtlety. His delivery starts as gentle and uncertain, reflecting Jin-Woo’s full persona as a weak and uncertain young man, and gradually transforms into a strong, authoritative presence. In a similar vein, Genta Nakamura infuses Yoo Jin-ho with warmth and sincerity, striking a balance of levity and loyalty that harmonizes with Jin-Woo’s growing maturity.

The series excels not only in its vocal performances but also in its musical direction. The opening theme is titled Level, composed by Hiroyuki Sawano and performed by Tomorrow X Together. It morphs itself into a dynamic sound, combined with visually stunning opening sequences, and sets the tone for each episode, merging excitement with anticipation. The ending theme, Request by krage and composed by TK from Ling Tosite Sigure, presents a more contemplative atmosphere, and it offers a satisfying end to the intensity of each episode, while also subtly maintaining the suspense and tension that lingers at the end of every episode.

Reception & Impact | 8/10

This season made a huge splash, quickly becoming a global sensation and scooping up major awards (some of which still get debated). Its success went beyond just popularity because it sparked a wave of interest in adapting manhwa into anime and shifted industry conversations. While the reception in Japan was a bit quieter, its worldwide impact left no doubt that it had become a landmark release. And oh yes, I did enjoy it too.

Overall Rating | 6.4/10