This is a story of a world where humans are trying to survive from monsters. The source is portal gates that are appearing in their world, leading to dungeons filled with monsters. To save humanity, they have super hunters who have the ability to defeat the monsters. There are different ranges of hunters such as E to S ranks. In this manner, S-rank is the strongest and E-rank is the weakest hunter. This ranking is usually based on a hunter's mana level. S-rank hunters are very powerful, so they are always treated as elite members of society, but someone from E-rank is never respected by society. There are different ranks in dungeons too; not every rank hunter can survive. Hunters are often sent to these dungeons by estimating their perfect combat rank.
If an E-rank hunter enters an S-rank dungeon, then he/she can never survive unless there's someone with them from S-rank. So, hunters often create allies like in MOBA games where we choose our mage, healer, assassin, tank, etc. Low-rank dungeons mean E and D, and they are suitable for low-rank hunters, while high-rank dungeons are meant for A and S because they require strong hunters. There are many types of gates such as regular gates, red gates, and many more. The gates always appear randomly around the world.
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Our protagonist is Sung Jin Woo. He is an E-rank hunter and the only provider in his family. He has a sister and a mother who is in a coma, admitted to a hospital. So, he has to battle in the dungeons to survive and provide for his family. As usual, he decided to go into the battlefield with his teammates, who don’t think much of him, but there’s one girl who cares for him and her name is Lee Joohee. She is a B-rank healer who is considered as his friend. That day, they went to a dungeon together alongside other teammates who were higher rank than him. He was so weak that he could barely defeat any monster and always ended up getting hurt.
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But an unusual event occurred—they all entered a double dungeon. There, they discovered a hidden chamber where statues were present. That dungeon was beyond their ranks, and all of them started to die except for a few people who survived because of Sung Jin Woo’s intelligence. Sung Jin Woo helped everyone else escape and sacrificed himself.
Even though he received near-death injuries which caused him to lose his leg, it regenerated, and he found himself in a hospital bed. That day, Woo Jinchul from the Hunters Association came to the hospital to visit Sung Jin Woo to measure his mana output. They suspected a reawakening. However, it turned out to be a false alarm, which made Woo Jinchul disappointed. But little did they know, Sung Jin Woo was experiencing something on a different level beyond their imagination. Sung Jin Woo could detect a mysterious program screen hovering above in the air. It was an application that gave him the ability to upgrade his rank. As time passed, he followed the application's demands, and great development was seen in his character and physical features. He gradually leveled up his rank, which is impossible for other hunters.
The animation quality is breathtakingly good—I cannot express it in words. I just love the character of Sung Jin Woo so much; I even have him as my pfp on Discord. I am just crazy for this character. I really won’t be able to accept it if someone says that this anime is average. Well, this anime is one of the best of 2024. I have seen only a few anime with such good plots and everything about this anime is so good! Season 1 is full of fun and adventure. We get to see many new things, and I was amazed by the fighting scenes, they’re so perfect that I could hardly take my eyes off the screen. I will say that you won’t be able to eat your food when you watch this anime because it grabs your attention so much that you cannot focus on anything else around you.
Season 1 has only 12 episodes, but I think they could have added more episodes like 24 episodes would definitely do it justice. Also, I have seen manhwa readers complaining about the anime because they don’t find the similarities, which is obviously not a good thing for the manhwa readers. But as I don’t read often because of laziness, I would always prefer watching rather than reading because it takes a lot of time to finish reading. I might read the manhwa, but I would still say the same thing: Solo Leveling is one of the best.
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