This week’s Episode 9 of Solo Leveling brought with it some incredible new additions to the source material, a few more precious scenes with best girl Esil, and the official beginning of the Jeju Island arc. Last episode covered an amazing and difficult fight against the Demon Monarch Baran, forcing Jinwoo to stretch his abilities to their limits against a foe able to match him and nearly defeat him without Esil’s timely interference.
While not quite as visually stunning as the fight against Kargalgan and the high orcs, this fight was an entertaining and well choreographed one, especially since Jinwoo needed to enter the fold himself rather than relying too much on his soldiers. Interspersed throughout that episode were some expository scenes between Japan and Korea’s top Hunters as they discussed possible solutions to the growing ant problem on Jeju Island. It was a well crafted combination of the end of Jinwoo’s fight within the Demon Castle and the beginning of a focus on Jeju Island, other S-ranks, and the monster ants.
This episode follows the immediate aftermath of Baran’s defeat and the agreement between Korea and Japan regarding Jeju, as Jinwoo finally has all of the required materials to craft the elixir of life and S-ranks are poised to start getting deep in planning their combat against the ants.
Healing Jinwoo’s Mother
The scene where Jinwoo finally heals his mother is perhaps one of the most important and underrated scenes of this part of the story and I’m quite glad the anime decided to dedicate extra care and attention toward it. At this point, as Jinwoo himself notes in this episode, Jinwoo has crossed certain lines that most humans never would. He’s killed, both in self defense and, in the case of Iron, with some degree of malice. He’s had to throw himself into his training in order to get as strong as he now is.
At times, his motivation has been a selfish one but, especially in the Solo Leveling anime, saving his mother and restoring his family to normalcy has been a pretty consistent reason for him to progress himself and get even more powerful. Despite that, and despite losing some of his humanity in exchange for power, he’s still capable of breaking down at the recollection of memories of mistakenly hurting his mother. He’s still capable of longing for her return and experiences genuine joy at the smallest amount of her affection once she’s woken up.
There’s a clear parallel between Jinwoo’s necromancy and this moment in my opinion. As the Player and as a necromancer, Jinwoo decided long ago to “use” the system and not just be used by it. Even when summoning shadow soldiers like Igris, who was stronger than him, he didn’t beg the system to work some miracle for him, instead he spoke to Igris himself on the basis of his own power and authority.
This is the first time he’s really forced to put his faith in the system and essentially admit that he’s some degree of powerless against his mother’s sickness without the system’s help. It’s intriguing to watch him go from raising the dead with his own power to beseeching another power to save the living.
This was a shorter sequence in the manhwa. By no means one that was glossed over, but certainly not one with as much life as the anime gave it. Music was one part of this, but voice acting took it over the edge. Taito Ban delivered an incredibly emotional performance.
The contrast between his usual portrayal of Jinwoo’s strong and powerful voice and this vulnerable, emotional side made the scene even more rewarding than it was on its own. For all the criticism Solo Leveling has faced for cutting scenes from the manhwa, I think this is an instance where it deserves some credit for how well Episode 9 adapted this one and enhanced it well beyond what would’ve been adequate.
S-Ranks Gearing Up
Structurally for the story, I’m glad that Solo Leveling opted to immediately bring in a ton of S-rank Hunters right now. In an action focused series like this one, it can hard to prevent established characters from becoming irrelevant as the main character(s) get stronger and stronger. With Jinwoo now well beyond the abilities of an S-rank, any longstanding Hunter below that would get horribly overshadowed in combat. It’s better to have not really invested too much in a lot of characters that quickly were going to become comically weak in comparison to Jinwoo.
The early section of the episode did some nice characterization of two of those S-ranks, Min Byung-gu and Baek Yoonho. It was interesting to see yet another healer that decided to retire as a Hunter. Lee Joohee was similar, and Yoonho’s musings about Hunters tending to enjoy fighting monsters seems line up with a similar hypothesis about healers being compassionate people, likely those who only step into battle to help others on the front lines.
Additionally, I think it was a good moment to establish that even S-ranks, as powerful as they are, can die in a dungeon of sufficient difficulty. It re-establishes a sort of power ceiling for a class of Hunters that have thus far been characterized as being immeasurably powerful and nigh invincible in combat. Now that the gaps between S-ranks are starting to get fleshed out, I think this was an important scene to keep in.
Like with all Solo Leveling episodes, Episode 9 went by way too fast, especially once we began to meet the other S-ranks from Japan and saw the beginning of a sparring match. In the manhwa, there was a bit of introductory sparring match involving the interpreter that looks like it was likely cut, which is a bit of a disappointment. That aside though, I’m looking forward to next week when we get to see the gaps in power between these various S-ranks.
Images via Crunchyroll
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