Perfect Time for a Penalty

Solo Leveling Episode 12 is the end of the season. And, I’m glad to see it end. I get that this is a very popular series. But, so is Sword Art Online. As far as I’m concerned, this is just Korean SAO.

So, what happened in Episode 12? Remember how Jinwoo dropped his teleportation stone (again)? Well, that didn’t end up mattering. It turns out that the endless waves of enemies weren’t so endless, after all. I’m not sure why Jinwoo’s directive was to survive for as long as possible.

All he actually had to do was kill six mages. That’s it. The only reason this was difficult is because he didn’t know that’s what he had to do at first. Once he figured that out, he didn’t have much of an issue. However, he did get a little help.

Jinwoo was going to die — again. But, since he hadn’t done his daily quest that day, the system teleported him to the penalty zone at the last second. There, he was able to level up, heal, and purchase a new weapon to help him defeat the knights more easily.

That really felt like a cop-out. He was in the middle of a special class change quest that didn’t allow him to heal. So, why is he allowed to jump into another dimension where he can heal? I’ll tell you why: It’s because this isn’t a good series.

Anyway, the system was acting pretty suspicious in this episode. It saved Jinwoo by sending him to the penalty zone, but that’s not all. It was also very pushy when it came to the job it wanted him to change to. It’s even more clear now that the system has a plan for him.

Jinwoo the Shadow Monarch

Why did Jinwoo receive the Necromancer class? There’s actually a very simple and obvious reason. It’s because Necromancer is the edgiest of all classes. That’s literally the only reason. As I said earlier, Solo Leveling is the Korean SAO. It’s not that deep.

Of course, Jinwoo isn’t only a Necromancer. No, he’s a Shadow Monarch — an even edgier name. What does this upgraded class do differently than the normal Necromancer class? I’m not sure. Jinwoo’s shadow soldier skill is supposedly connected to this class. But, if a normal Necromancer can’t do that, what can they do?

Alright, so, let’s look at Jinwoo’s new class from an in-universe perspective. Yes, it’s edgy and that’s definitely why the author gave him this class. However, we should also consider why the system would want Jinwoo to have this class. After all, he didn’t exactly get much of a choice.

To me, it looks a lot like the system is trying to turn Jinwoo into a boss. I brought this up in one of the earlier episode reviews, but we’ve seen Jinwoo’s personality change a bit. Sometimes, he appears to “lose his humanity” a bit and has the same eyes as the God Statue.

And now, we’re seeing the system give him a skill that will let him raise and command an army. Do you think the system is doing this so that Jinwoo can use his army to take the system down? I doubt it.

What seems more likely is that the system is using Jinwoo for its own gain. I’m predicting that, at some point, other Hunters will view Jinwoo as a dungeon boss. They’ll have to fight him and his army. That’s the direction the series looks to be heading in.

Arise, Igris

Does anyone else want to call Igris “Ignis?” Pretty much every time I type his name, I have to go back and fix it. I even misspelled it on the file name for the picture within this section. But, I didn’t care enough to fix that mistake.

Whatever you call him, it looks like Igris is going to stick around for a while longer. And, that’s a good thing. I know he hasn’t spoken (I don’t know if he ever will), but I liked him as a character. When Jinwoo killed him, I thought that was a bit of a waste.

How could I like Igris as a character, though? What characterization did he even have? Well, we saw that he was a chivalrous knight. Unlike the other knights Jinwoo fought, Igris seemed to have a personality of sorts. Or, at the very least, a sense of honor.

The thing that really showed me that Igris was a character — not a mindless monster — was when he threw down his sword. Jinwoo stopped using his sword because it couldn’t pierce Igris’s armor. So, to make it a fair fight, Igris stopped using his sword, as well.

I hope we get to see more of that from Igris in the future. That is, if Solo Leveling gets a second season. You might think that’s guaranteed, but it’s not. As of the writing of this review, I haven’t heard anything about a second season.

But, if there is a second season, I want Igris to play a bigger role. He’s Jinwoo’s commander of the knights. He has to be more involved than the rest of the knights. Even if he never speaks, I want to see him fighting alongside Jinwoo and not simply following orders.

Final Thoughts

What do you think of Solo Leveling Episode 12? Did you think the timing of Jinwoo’s penalty was a little too much of a Deus ex machina? How do you feel about Jinwoo earning the Necromancer class? And, are you expecting Igris to become a real character?

If you enjoyed this review, remember to share it with everyone you know. Also, follow me on your social media of choice so you don’t miss out on any future articles — links are in the footer.

Finally, I’d like to thank Roman and JasonHK for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about the perks of supporting this blog, check out DoubleSama.com/support.

Gearing Up in the Quest Change Dungeon

Solo Leveling Episode 11 was one of the better episodes of the series. I think it had the most action of any episode, so far. However, there still were some parts I could have done without (the Jinho stuff).

The big thing that came out of the first half of the episode was that Jinwoo got some gear. He’s gotten weapons and other items from monster drops before. But, he’s never received wearable gear until now. The knights he fought at the start of the episode dropped armor.

Why does this matter? Well, a lot of the other Hunters we’ve seen wear armor. I guess, there are plenty of low-ranked Hunters who don’t. And, that’s likely because E and D-Rank Hunters can’t afford armor. But, all the top Hunters use it — as does anyone else who can afford it (Jinho).

The obvious benefit of wearing armor is that it buffs Jinwoo’s stats. Specifically, the armor he gets at the start of the episode buffs his defense stats. But, we can assume there are a lot of different kinds of armor that boost different stats. I’m sure some pieces also come with skills.

Unfortunately, there’s one issue I have with Jinwoo’s armor acquisition. The armor he puts in is invisible. I assume he can toggle that on and off. As things stand now, though, he has the armor’s visibility toggled off. That’s bad because he looks stupid without armor.

Does anyone else have an issue with Jinwoo’s appearance? Or, is it just me? Something about him running around dungeons in jeans and a hoodie bothers me. He’s fighting monsters and knights and that’s what he’s wearing. I’d much rather see him actually wear some armor or a different outfit of some kind.

Knight Commander Igris the Bloodred

Most of this week’s episode was dedicated to Jinwoo’s fight against Igris the Bloodred. Igris is one of the strongest enemies Jinwoo has gone up against, so far. According to Jinwoo’s initial estimations, Igris is up there with the God Statue.

Now, are Igris and the God Statue actually equal in terms of power? I have to assume that the God Statue is more powerful. But, from what we’ve seen, Igris looks stronger. Based on Igris’s speed and power, I’d say he looks way stronger. From a story perspective, though, he’s probably not.

Considering that Jinwoo defeated Igris, it might be easy to assume he and Igris were on the same level. That’s not the case — we know this thanks to the simple fact that Igris’s name was red. The color of enemy names tells us how strong they are compared to Jinwoo.

We got an explanation of this earlier in the series. But, I’ll go over it again here, just in case. Jinwoo can’t see how objectively strong a particular enemy is. He can only see how strong they are in relation to himself. This means that the same enemy’s name can be multiple different colors.

White enemies are the weakest. These are enemies that are weaker than or on par with Jinwoo (like the knights from this episode). Orange enemies are stronger than Jinwoo (like the Kasaka from Episode 4). And, red enemies are much stronger than Jinwoo (like the Cerberus from Episode 7).

With the defeat of Igris, that’s two red enemies Jinwoo defeated. So, it’s by no means impossible. However, it’s also not normal. He almost died in both cases. The only reason he defeated Igris here is that he got a surprise attack in. That wasn’t very honorable.

Slippery Teleportation Stones

In my review of Episode 9, I mentioned a complaint I’d seen about Solo Leveling from manga (manhwa) readers. Their complaint is that the story is “straightforward.” It doesn’t do anything particularly unique. It follows a fairly predictable storyline and hits all the major beats you’d expect.

Episode 11 illustrated that the series might end up being pretty repetitive, too. At the end of this episode, Jinwoo is about to use a teleportation stone to flee a fight. But, just before he can use it, it gets knocked out of his hand, leaving him stranded.

We’ve actually seen this same exact development before. This is exactly what happened during the fight against the Cerberus. Jinwoo was going to flee with a teleportation stone, but it got knocked out of his hand. The author couldn’t even come up with a new way to add suspense.

To be fair, there’s a very slight difference between these two situations. With the Cerberus fight, Jinwoo didn’t need the teleportation stone. Killing the Cerberus was an option — and it’s what he ended up doing. However, in this situation with the knights, fleeing appears to be the only option.

According to the notification Jinwoo received, he needs to survive for as long as possible. There’s no set end to this battle. The knights will continue to spawn until Jinwoo either dies or flees. So, he’s going to need to get that teleportation stone back at some point.

Even with that difference, though, I’m not impressed by the same setup being used again. Dropping the teleportation stone the first time against the Cerberus is fine. Dropping it a second time? That’s no longer bad luck. Jinwoo needs to start putting his stat points into grip strength. This better not happen a third time.

Final Thoughts

What do you think about Solo Leveling Episode 11? Would you prefer if Jinwoo’s armor was visible, or do you like his jeans and hoodie look? Who do you think is stronger, Igris or the God Statue? And, how many more times do you predict Jinwoo will drop a teleportation stone?

If you enjoyed this review, remember to share it with everyone you know. Also, follow me on your social media of choice so you don’t miss out on any future articles — links are in the footer.

Finally, I’d like to thank Roman and JasonHK for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about the perks of supporting this blog, check out DoubleSama.com/support.

My review of Episode 12 is available now.

Time to Flee the Country

Solo Leveling Episode 10 was a pretty good episode. There was some cool dungeon-clearing action, which is what I’m watching the series for. But, there’s still not nearly enough of that kind of content. The majority of this series is dialogue. And, it’s not interesting enough for that.

Speaking of dialogue, at the start of the episode, Jinchul gives Jinwoo a warning. The S-Rank Hunter Dongsu Hwang is out for blood. Nobody can be sure of what happened to Dongsuk Hwang in the dungeon. But, that doesn’t matter. Dongsu wants revenge simply because his brother died and Jinwoo survived.

So, what’s Jinchul’s recommendation? That Jinwoo takes his family and flees the country. But, I fail to see how this would protect Jinwoo in any way. From what we know, Dongsu isn’t even in Korea right now. And, even if he was, it doesn’t look like fleeing would do Jinwoo any good.

According to Jinchul, S-Rank Hunters are above the law because they’re too strong. If Dongsu murdered Jinwoo, there would be nothing the government could do about it. He’s too powerful (physically) to be arrested. So, governments around the world kind of let S-Rank Hunters do whatever they want.

Now, if Jinwoo fled Korea, how would that protect him? The Korean government can’t keep him safe from Dongsu. So, I doubt any other government could either. What, is he going to flee to the US or some European country? What’s stopping Dongsu from following him?

I’m only bringing this up because I wanted to point out how illogical this suggestion is. The best reason I can come up with for why Jinchul said this is that he doesn’t want it to become his problem. If Dongsu’s going to murder Jinwoo, at least do it out of Jinchul’s jurisdiction.

C-Rank Dungeons and Job-Changing

If this entire episode was about Jinwoo and Jinho clearing dungeons, I would have said it was a good episode. Not just pretty good. Good. This was — by far — the best part of the episode. But, as I already mentioned, there wasn’t enough of it.

Why do I think this content is so good, though? There’s more to it than me thinking an action series should focus on the action. The dungeon content is the most interesting content of the series. Even if we ignore the action portion — the dungeons are more interesting than the real world.

In this episode, in particular, I liked seeing how Jinwoo and Jinho worked together. Jinho’s job was to mine all the materials. And, while he was doing that Jinwoo was protecting him. Then, once Jinho’s job was done, Jinwoo could defeat the boss to close the gate.

Something else I found interesting was that nobody from the strike team tried to interfere. I understand that most of them were happy to get paid for sitting around. But, I’m surprised that Jinah’s friend went along with that. I was sure she’d do something stupid.

She still probably will do something in a later episode. But, I was expecting her to enter one of the gates after Jinwoo and Jinho. Then, since she’s only E-Rank, they’d have to save her. That seemed like such an obvious thing to happen. And, that’s why I’m still predicting that it will.

But, that might not happen in the next episode. Jinwoo unlocked a job-change quest, so he’s taking the day off from clearing dungeons. Does Jinwoo have a current “job” other than Hunter? What do you think his new job is going to be after this quest?

White Tiger Recruitment

Jinwoo and Jinho’s plan to rush a bunch of C-Rank dungeons seems to have backfired, to an extent. Other guilds took notice of their new guild buying up the rights to C-Rank dungeons for high prices. And, that led one of them, the White Tigers, to look into it.

Upon investigating a bit, Ahn Sangmin of the White Tigers realized that something was wrong. Not only is this guild buying these dungeons above market price. But, their strike team is made up entirely of E and D-Rank Hunters. They shouldn’t be strong enough to clear these dungeons.

Ahn then noticed Jinwoo’s name on the strike team roster and things clicked. He’s familiar with Jinwoo because of all the crazy things Jinwoo’s recently survived. And, he suspects that Jinwoo has had a second awakening. So, there’s only one thing to do. Recruit Jinwoo to the White Tiger guild.

As we saw, Jinwoo threatened Ahn for investigating him. He even managed to offload some C-Rank dungeons onto Ahn for way above their value. But, here’s the thing. This doesn’t make Jinwoo look good. It makes Ahn look very, very bad at his job.

Okay, so you could argue that Ahn agreed to Jinwoo’s price because he got cornered. Jinwoo gave him an ultimatum. He had to buy the dungeons at Jinwoo’s price or miss out on all C-Rank dungeons in the near future. However, he should have known from the start that Jinwoo was bluffing.

Apparently, there were a lot of C-Rank dungeons for sale at far below what Jinwoo was asking. So, why did Ahn go into this meeting thinking that Jinwoo’s guild had access to all of them? He believed this before even talking to Jinwoo. Why? Did he never think to check?

Final Thoughts

What do you think of Solo Leveling Episode 10? Do you think fleeing the country would do anything to protect Jinwoo from Dongsu? Were you surprised that Jinah’s friend didn’t enter a dungeon after Jinwoo and Jinho? And, do you think Jinwoo will ever join the White Tiger Guild?

If you enjoyed this review, remember to share it with everyone you know. Also, follow me on your social media of choice so you don’t miss out on any future articles — links are in the footer.

Finally, I’d like to thank Roman and JasonHK for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about the perks of supporting this blog, check out DoubleSama.com/support.

My review of Episode 11 is available now.

A Twist I Wasn’t Expecting

Solo Leveling Episode 9 included a twist I wasn’t expecting. I never suspected that Taeshik Kang would be a serial killer. But, just because this was a twist I didn’t see coming doesn’t mean it’s a good twist.

Alright, so, why wasn’t this a very good twist? The problem is that the twist didn’t lead to anything long-term. We found out that Kang was a serial killer and then Jinwoo killed him. Sure, Song and Joohee know Jinwoo’s secret now. But, they aren’t a threat to him in any way.

What I expected to happen was for Kang to figure out Jinwoo’s secret and go on to cause problems for him. Or, at the very least, he’d be suspicious of Jinwoo and so Jinwoo would have to be cautious while around him. You know, something that would have longer-term effects.

Kang could even have still killed the three convicts. That part’s fine as long as it leads to something else. For example, let’s say the Jinwoo’s group defeated the dungeon boss while Kang killed the convicts. That could have led to both Jinwoo and Kang being suspicious of the other.

Kang would rightfully be suspicious about Jinwoo’s role in defeating the boss. And, Jinwoo would be suspicious about how the convicts died under Kang’s watch. This could have led to an interesting back and forth with each of them attempting to reveal the other. But, that’s not what we got.

And, this kind of ties into some complaints I’ve seen about Solo Leveling before. I’ve seen people who have read the source material call the story “straightforward.” There may be twists or obstacles that get in Jinwoo’s way. But, the solution is always the same — he powers through it with his skills.

Taeshik Kang the Assassin

Before Episode 9, we knew there were different kinds of Hunters. But, our knowledge of these Hunter types was very simplistic. We knew there were mages, like Song. We knew there were healers, like Joohee. And, we knew there were physical combatants, like Jinho.

Of course, Jinwoo is an exception, as he can do everything thanks to his unique level-up ability.

But, we now also know that there’s more variety when it comes to Hunter classes. Taeshik Kang, for instance, is an Assassin Hunter. And, this is reflected in both his stats and skills.

As an Assassin, Kang’s attack and defense stats aren’t as high as some other physical fighters. But, his speed stat is higher. On top of that, he has specialized skills, such as his Stealth skill. So, we can assume that this is true for all Hunters. They all have classes.

Okay, but why does this matter? Wasn’t it obvious that Hunters have classes based on those from RPGs? Yes and no. The start of this series was very slow and explained a lot of things that didn’t need explaining. But, how Hunters’ abilities work isn’t something that was explained well.

Joohee’s ability is an example of this. It was unclear whether she was a healer by choice or not. We can now safely assume that it wasn’t her choice. She’s a healer because her class is Healer. It’s not that she can use any magic and she chose healing magic — these are her skills.

However, there’s still something that doesn’t make much sense. Why can’t Song use a sword within dungeons? I know he’s a Mage Hunter. But, he still has his sword skills. What’s stopping him from getting a sword and using it like we saw in this episode?

Losing One’s Humanity

Did you notice how Jinwoo looked right before he killed Kang? He had the same glowing eyes as the smiling god statue from Episode 1. All he was missing was the smile and he would have looked just like the god.

This is where I lay out my theory. Why does the system seem to want Jinwoo to continue getting stronger? Why does Jinwoo feel like he’s losing something (his humanity?) as he levels up? And, why did he have the same eyes as the smiling god? Because that’s what he’s becoming.

I predict the system is trying to turn Jinwoo into a vessel for the god to reincarnate into. That would explain everything that’s happening to him. It explains why the system wants him to survive and get stronger. And, it explains why he feels like something’s wrong when he levels up.

Let’s also not forget what other characters have been saying about Jinwoo. Ever since the double dungeon, they’ve been saying he’s like a different person. He looks like a different person, for sure. But, he also acts like a different person. It’s as if who he was before is being eroded away.

As further evidence of this, Jinwoo no longer cares about killing other people. What he feels like he’s losing is definitely his “humanity.”

And, think about it. What will Jinwoo look like to other humans at the end of the series? He’ll be monstrously strong and have no regard for human life. That sounds a lot like how the Hunters viewed the god statue from the start of the series.

With that said, though, I do want to clear one thing up. I don’t think Jinwoo is the god from Episode 1 setting himself down this path.

Final Thoughts

What do you think of Solo Leveling Episode 9? Were you expecting Kang to be a bad guy? How many different Hunter classes do you think there are? And, what do you think of my prediction that the system is trying to use Jinwoo as a vessel for the god?

If you enjoyed this review, remember to share it with everyone you know. Also, follow me on your social media of choice so you don’t miss out on any future articles — links are in the footer.

Finally, I’d like to thank Roman and JasonHK for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about the perks of supporting this blog, check out DoubleSama.com/support.

My review of Episode 10 is available now.