Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise From the Shadow- brought some great world-building, satisfying combat, and continued character introductions with its latest two episodes. Thus far, this season has had a very healthy mix of the different elements that make Solo Leveling such a strong anime.
Combat, character, world-building, and a plot-driven heavily by personal ambition and power come together to make for a season that truly demands your attention, especially at the end of each episode when you’re left waiting for more. Episodes 4 and 5 of Season 2 (16 and 17 overall) are no exception. While 17 was more action-focused, 16 handled Jinwoo’s rank reassessment and the different impacts it has on hunters across the country’s guilds. Both were great entries in an overall fantastic season.
Korea’s Newest S-Rank Hunter
Episode 16 begins with Jinwoo’s return from the Demon Castle, having acquired two of the three required ingredients to craft the Elixir of Life. Originally, it was only after reaching this point in the Demon’s Castle that Jinwoo even learned the ingredients for the Elixir of Life, making this a critical point of comparison for the anime and the manhwa in terms of Jinwoo’s characterization. Both in previous episodes and in this one, there are small, subtle changes that are made to make Jinwoo a bit more like your typical shonen-style anime hero, someone who will go all out to protect his family and loved ones.
This isn’t to say that this isn’t a quality that Jinwoo entirely lacks, but rather to say that I think the anime overstates it a bit. Jinwoo has a protective side, and that goes as far back as his days as an E-rank. But, as we saw when he was suffering in the double dungeon and when he first discovered his ability to level up, he has a selfish side as well that wants to get stronger just to keep climbing and shatter his preconceived limits. I think that selfishness and the different ways that Jinwoo’s personality and humanity shift as he gets stronger is an incredibly important part of Solo Leveling, so I’m hoping the anime doesn’t lean too far into this mindset for him lest other important but less savory parts of his character get overwritten.
That aside, the reassessment scene was a good opportunity for Solo Leveling to do some world-building and continue to slow things down a bit so that the story can progress in ways that aren’t Jinwoo’s exp bar. There’s a decent amount of cut content here from the manhwa, including some scenes that made use of a sillier art style and a few humorous quips from other side characters. Like a lot of the cuts so far this season though, I felt the anime did well to streamline this section.
While the humor can be helpful at cutting through tension or just making scenes feel organic, I didn’t feel like there was much lost here. This also was yet another moment when the Solo Leveling anime removed a mention of South Korea, likely to save having to re-dub this scene for the version of Solo Leveling fully localized for Japan.
The remainder of the reassessment was well done in my opinion, communicating the competing desires of different guilds while also giving the audience a bit of a peak into how they try to snipe recruits from each other. Jinwoo’s conversation with the Hunter’s Association Chairman Go Gunhee complemented this quite well, reinforcing how extra-legal and money-governed a lot of the affairs involving hunters are since only those empowered with magical power are able to deal with other things that make use of magic power.
There were some minor elements of this conversation that didn’t make the cut, but I think they may come up later so I’ll hold off from mentioning them (the same can be said about some of the scenes between Jinwoo’s supposed father and Hwang Dongsoo). Once again though, this was a moment where the anime made the decision to re-assert Jinwoo’s desire to save his mother as a key motivation for his leveling up.
Leading up to Jinwoo’s decision to join a Hunters Guild strike team in taking down an A-rank dungeon, the anime added some dialogue to justify his choices which I think was a solid change. Like the reassessment, this section of the episode mostly characterized the way raids worked amongst larger guilds and helped paint a picture of how lucrative operation raids can be. We’d gotten somewhat of a hint about that when seeing how a rich family like Jinho’s could afford gear that’d let him contend with even higher-ranked hunters, but this was a whole different level of understanding.
The brief bits of combat we got were flashy and satisfying too, simultaneously showing off another S-rank hunter’s abilities while letting Solo Leveling show off its animation a bit as per usual. The strike team’s performance was also enhanced in the anime; in the manhwa they were notably taking a longer time than they were supposed to while in the anime they cleared the dungeon faster than expected. Jinwoo’s comments on her aura and supposed ability are also more generous relative to his own abilities here.
The episode ended with a nice, clear depiction of his somewhat childish/selfish side as he considered taking down the dungeon boss and I’m definitely glad it did and reinforced that part of his character (voice acting was on point here).
Jinwoo Literally Carries
Episode 17 begins right where Episode 16 left off, as Cha Hae-In spots Jinwoo in front of the dungeon’s boss room while he participates as a member of the mining team. We’re treated to quite a…moment for sure when Cha Hae-In smells Jinwoo for the first time and immediately falls for him, proving our protagonist is clearly just too much of a Chad for his own good or something. Following Jinwoo’s commitment to showing up for the following day’s raids, we get quite a lot of cut content before moving on to Cha Hae-In’s investigation of Jinwoo after noticing his scent or rather lack thereof.
The soft piano music in the background, the soft lighting, and even the delicate voice acting did a lot of work in this scene to paint Cha Hae-In’s early interest in Jinwoo as something more than mere curiosity. Personally, both in the manhwa and the anime, I wish there had been more moments dedicated to her strength before scenes like this that kickstart memes related to her immediate fixation on Jinwoo. But alas.
Curiously, the overall size of the team entering the A-rank dungeon was reduced in the anime, something that happened with other dungeons as well to lower the overall number of participants. This didn’t end up mattering much since they were no match for the high orcs with their original numbers anyway, but I find it interesting that the Solo Leveling anime made the choice to improve the main strike team’s performance while making the secondary team even weaker.
The actual fighting this episode was well done and quite well animated. Because of the diversity of the strike team and the wide variety of fighting styles, we got to see things from magical beams to sword attacks to tanks doing some tanking, letting the anime show off its entire combat toolkit.
Despite how much of the explicit power-scaling style dialogue was cut from these scenes, I think the anime actually embarked on a decent lesson of showing rather than telling such that the relative strengths are still gleanable from the bits of combat we saw. The A-ranks that were identified (mainly the Captain-to-be) were faring okay against a single high orc, mostly getting overwhelmed by the numerical disadvantage.
We got to see the kinds of damage that A and B-rank mages can do, easily taking out C-rank beasts but struggling with the orcs that match up with A-ranks. And all of this combined pales in comparison to what Jinwoo can do as a single S-rank while making an effort to not be noticed or do too much damage overall. It really puts in perspective the gap between S and everything else even without it being explicitly stated. Especially considering the best a high-ranked mage can summon is two creatures, something we already had been told was a rare ability to begin with.
As the strike team is cornered by even more high orcs and commanded to follow them to the boss room, Jinwoo has some newly added dialogue that compares this strike team, who is actively holding onto their sense of duty and acting to preserve the life of their lowest ranked member, to the strike team that agreed to abandon him in the double dungeon.
It’s a nice point of comparison and a really good bit of dialogue to add to this scene, giving more reason for Jinwoo to act to save them and prevent the sort of tragedy that he nearly suffered. And closing the episode, we’re treated to a fairly badass scene-setting for the boss room, some great music, and Cha Hae-In’s arrival to the scene. All of this is setting up for some grandiose action after a pair of lower-action episodes. I’m sure by now everyone is itching for a good boss fight and next week seems certain to provide it.
Images via Crunchyroll
© Solo Leveling Animation Partners
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