REVIEW: Solo Leveling Season Two

The second season of Solo Leveling, subtitled Arise from the Shadow, has all the makings of a grimdark anime classic. Based on a Korean web novel of the same name, Solo Leveling takes place in a modern South Korea where portals to monster-infested dungeons appear, threatening to overrun humankind if they are left unchecked. In order to maintain peace, guilds of monster hunters raid the portals, systematically eliminating each enemy on their way to the boss at the end of the dungeon.

Each hunter has a designated rank, which is innate and immutable. Sung Jinwoo, the protagonist of Solo Leveling, is the Mr. Irrelevant of the hunter guilds, the weakest warrior of the lowest rank. However, after surviving a massacre early in the first season, Sung Jinwoo discovers that he has the unique ability to level up, growing his powers by defeating increasingly powerful monsters. It’s as if Sung Jinwoo is the main character in his own role-playing game.

Season two of Solo Leveling surpasses the first season in every respect: more action, more character development, and a surprising amount of emotional depth, especially in the latter episodes. The relationship between Sung Jinwoo and his mother is especially moving, as he will go to any lengths to help her recover from her years-long coma. While his mother is sick, Sung Jinwoo has also taken charge of his younger sister, a responsibility he must balance with his role as a progressively powerful hunter.

The action scenes in Solo Leveling are absolutely spellbinding. I sometimes worried that Sung Jinwoo would become too powerful too quickly, but the increasingly fearsome enemies kept pace with our protagonist and kept my heart pounding throughout the entirety of the season. There are also expanded roles for other hunters in the second season, allaying one of my criticisms of the first season that there was too much “solo” in Solo Leveling.

The second season of Solo Leveling has probably the best use of necromancy that I’ve seen anywhere. All of this is building up to an epic battle between the top-tier hunters and an army of insectoid monsters on Jeju Island that could have easily sprung out of a Michael R. Fletcher novel. The animation in Solo Leveling is top-notch, among the best in modern anime, and the voice acting is also outstanding.

Altogether, grimdark anime fans are sure to devour the second season of Solo Leveling. The combination of traditional Dungeons & Dragons-type tropes with an urban low-fantasy setting works very effectively. Although season two has a satisfying conclusion, there are still major questions left open to address in the third season (which can’t come soon enough).