This week’s episode of Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise From the Shadow- (Episode 6) was absolutely fire. Amongst popular action-focused anime, there’s often a single episode that massively ups the standard of art and animation for combat scenes. The most similar sudden jump in animation quality coming to mind is Demon Slayer Episode 19, where Tanjiro and Nezuko took on a powerful demon making use of flashy, explosive, colorful attacks as they moved fluidly across the screen.
Similarly, Solo Leveling Season 2 Episode 6 (Episode 18 overall) was an exercise in movement and choreography. Rather than exemplify a single style, multiple types of combat were given different moments of attention, creating as many unique microcosms of satisfying combat for as many types of shadows in Jinwoo’s possession.
This was incredibly welcome, for two reasons. For one, the past few episodes have been building up to this and Jinwoo’s new abilities have been getting teased over and over. His power was constantly compared to others, whether it be via his performance relative to other strike teams or his self-comparison to Chairman Go-Gunhee.
This is the very first direct chance the audience has gotten to observe Jinwoo wield his S-rank abilities. Secondly though, and in my opinion more importantly, this is the first episode of this season that felt like a markedly improved version of what was presented in the original manhwa. To be clear, this isn’t to say that Season 2 has been a poor adaptation. Rather, the storytelling and especially the art in the original manhwa is impressive and the bar for adapting it incredibly well was quite high. The most recent episodes have faced some criticism for cuts, and the English dub has even saw fit to add back in some dialogue that was cut in the Japanese version(s). Unlike those instances of cuts, this episode felt a lot like the fight between Igris and Jinwoo back in Season 1. It added a ton to combat and made it visually enticing and exciting.
Beginning of Battle
The episode begins with Cha Hae-in approaching the gate, having some unsettled thoughts about Jinwoo and being curious why he’d be working as a miner. Right off the bat, I couldn’t help but feel this scene, and others like it, lacked a little bit that the manhwa had. For those who don’t know, the manhwa often employed a sort of cartoonish, joking style meant to add a bit of silliness to some facial expressions and overall make a scene a bit funnier. For stylistic reasons, the anime opted to do away with it, but moments like this are where it would be quite nice. See below for the anime on the left and the manhwa’s version on the right.
Similarly, the initial scene in Kargalgan’s boss room had a moment that I felt the anime could’ve kept as visceral as the source material did. When the boss flexes his magical power and intimidates the strike team (barring Jinwoo, of course), the effect of the original intimidation was to have all of the Hunters Guild members instantly see visions of their own deaths and having their bodies ripped apart or pierced by weapons. A small detail, but one I would’ve liked to see. One possible source of complaint here could also be the frequent use of CGI, but that’s to be expected when animating such large groups of things on screen.
I open with these complaints not to highlight them, but rather to get the few nitpicky negatives out of the way before I praise the hell out of the episode and all its remaining parts. For the Hunters Guild members and for Kargalgan, the voice acting here was excellent. The hunters communicated their terror in a more than convincing fashion and Kargalgan gives off such an air of evil with his intonation that it made the voice a perfect match for the character.
The very first attack of the episode, one launched in vain, set the stage for the episode and immediately expressed to the audience that the animation quality was going to get high and stay high, just from the running and jumping animations alone. Kargalgan’s spells look fantastic, with his shield having a bit more texture than the manhwa and every incantation retaining the gravelly texture of his voice. It’s a shame Kihoon had to be the character to endure so much punishment as a precursor for Jinwoo’s involvement, but it had to be somebody.
Finally, we get Jinwoo in action, with his best instance of shadow summoning yet. I would’ve loved a “Come forth” as part of this sequence, but it was badass nonetheless. Jinwoo as an S-rank initially seems like he’s acting out of some level of benevolence; in the manhwa there’s even additional dialogue where he justifies his actions by explaining the strike team is certain to be wiped out lest he interfere. The anime drops that pretense entirely, making it fairly clear that Jinwoo wants to test his strength. Saving them is a convenient byproduct of that.
Jinwoo vs Kargalgan, Army vs Army
This fight was incredibly violent and I’m glad that Solo Leveling kept it that way. Iron’s opening move was powerful, and this is a moment I’m actually glad the anime opted to do away with some of the comedic art stylings to keep things more or less serious. Igris is no less impressive; he’s clearly one of the favorites of the animators and watching him fight is always a treat. I’m personally a sucker for high speed movement, so seeing him blitz through a squad of high orcs was incredibly satisfying.
The music stays relatively simple here, and I think there was some intention to let the relatively higher pitched sound effects from blades slashing and bodies bursting come through undisturbed by an otherwise lower pitched backdrop. This was especially true as Jinwoo joined the fray, slicing even better than Igris (it’s clear the series wants to make it clear that he’s no longer weaker than Igris at this point) and getting compared to Cha Hae-in to further confirm his S-rank strength.
As the boss rages and starts absolutely spamming magic, the fight picks up and even the enemy high orcs start falling as collateral damage. It was interesting to see yet another boss with an ego go up against Jinwoo’s ridiculous abilities, especially in a battle where he can just replenish his army the more he takes out yours. As wildly unfair as it may have seemed for the strike team to run into a boss like this, it almost felt more unfair watching Kargalgan try and content with Jinwoo’s far superior combat abilities. As the fight finished up, my last worry was that the name of Kargalgan’s shadow would get lost in translation, but I was happy to see it stay as “Tusk” in the subtitles and on-screen English.
And just as fast as the episode began, it ended. The fact that this episode seemed to go by so fast is a testament to how high octane the action was. Looking back at the past few episodes, there have been a lot of things cut in order to streamline things and make the story slimmer in parts, to the point of eliminating an entire side character.
But, I think Solo Leveling is moving in a good direction with this adaptation despite all that. The key scenes are being enhanced beyond the original source material, and that’s really all you can ask for when adapting something that was such high quality to begin with. Onward to next week and Jinwoo finally confronting a more public knowledge of his strength.
Images via Crunchyroll
© Solo Leveling Animation Partners
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