Welcome to another post here in the community.
If there’s one anime that’s been getting a lot of buzz lately, it’s Solo Leveling. Since its premiere, the first season made a huge impact with incredible action scenes, a heavy soundtrack, and that classic trope of a protagonist who grows way too fast. And I have to confess: when I started watching it, I was hyped. Watching a weak character become one of the most powerful beings in the world is always compelling.
But here's the problem:
Sung Jinwoo becomes so powerful that, at a certain point, the story starts to lose its impact. And that’s what I want to talk about today. It’s not that Solo Leveling is bad far from it. But there are things that really bothered me, and I want to show you why.
The beginning of the story is undoubtedly its strongest point.
Seeing the protagonist Jinwoo, who was considered the worst among hunters an “E-Rank” enter a double dungeon and come out with a mysterious power is the kind of twist that grabs anyone’s attention.
Who doesn’t love seeing a humble person become the most feared hero in the world?
And during the first few episodes, everything works great. He learns gradually, faces challenges, feels fear, has moments of weakness. But as he grows, the fights become… way too easy. And that, to me, starts to kill the purpose of the narrative.
If I had to point out the exact moment when I stopped feeling excited, it was the fight against the Ant King. If you’ve seen it, you know what I mean: the creature is built up as one of the greatest threats in the story. Other hunters are fighting for their lives, and it seems like the whole world is at risk. Then Jinwoo shows up and solves everything in a few minutes.
Visually?
A spectacle.
The soundtrack? Amazing. (By the way, I highly recommend listening to the song “4eVR” by SawanoHiroyuki$nZk$, which fits this kind of scene perfectly). But narratively, the impact dies right there. The tension built up throughout the episode vanishes, because we realize that he's going to win everything. Always. Without any real effort.
And that’s the core issue with Solo Leveling: Jinwoo is way too powerful. He beats any enemy, has abilities that let him resurrect, summon armies, control shadows, and even distort reality at times.
SPOILER
He has Shadow Extraction, a power that turns dead enemies into allies; Ruler’s Authority, which allows him to manipulate objects from a distance; and the System itself, which gives him RPG-like upgrades. He becomes a kind of “world champion” that no one else can ever catch up to.
And look, it’s not that I have something against strong protagonists. I really enjoy characters like Goku or Ichigo Kurosaki (Bleach), for example. But what makes us care about these characters are the moments when they lose, when they have to reinvent themselves and find something deep within. When they fail, and then come back stronger.
With Jinwoo, that basically doesn’t happen. He struggles in the beginning, but after that… he becomes a machine. The fights stop being competitive and just become showcases of how amazing he is.
In any anime, what keeps us hooked is the “surprise” factor. Will he manage to win? Will this enemy do something unexpected? Will there be a twist in the fight?
In Solo Leveling, those questions vanish.
When a new enemy appears, the only question left is: “how many seconds will it take for Jinwoo to win this time?” That completely removes the narrative weight. The episodes become more like power showcases than exciting battles. And honestly, it gets boring after a while.
If you’ve seen One Punch Man, for example, the protagonist Saitama is also invincible. But the whole point there is exactly that: the anime uses this exaggeration as a critique, a satire of the genre. The joke is that he beats everyone with one punch and is bored because of it.
Solo Leveling, on the other hand, takes the “strongest ever” idea seriously. And that, in my opinion, is where it goes wrong. When you remove challenge, fear, pain… what’s left? An unbeatable guy walking around solving everything by himself. And honestly, that doesn’t move me. Another thing that bothers me is how Jinwoo slowly loses his humanity. In the beginning, he fights for his sister Jin Ah, for his mother Park Kyung-Hye, and has strong emotional motivations. But as he gains power, those motivations fade away.
He becomes almost a god, and his dilemmas become “divine” problems. That’s interesting at first, but eventually feels hollow. The protagonist stops being someone we relate to and becomes just a distant, unreachable, cold legend.
It’s not wrong to show a character’s evolution.
The problem is when that evolution removes risk, doubt, and turns the story into something predictable.
Jinwoo is an interesting character, but when he wins everything without even sweating, the viewer stops feeling any tension. The anime even tries, at times, to bring in moral dilemmas and show the weight of being so strong… but it never really dives deep. Everything stays on the surface. The focus is always the next fight, the next villain, the next upgrade.
Is it worth watching?
Yes, absolutely. Especially if you enjoy well-made action scenes, high-quality animation, and that RPG vibe with systems, levels, evolutions, and bosses. Solo Leveling delivers all of that with style.
And I totally get why people love the series.
But if you’re like me and enjoy stories with more conflict, more tension, and characters who are truly tested, you might end up disappointed. Because Jinwoo doesn’t lose. Ever. And that, in the end, drains all the meaning from the journey. Solo Leveling is an anime that’s visually stunning and has a strong concept, but stumbles by turning its protagonist into an invincible entity. What starts as a story about overcoming adversity becomes a power parade without emotion. And while that works for many people, for me it ends up feeling empty.
If you want something more balanced, with characters who actually face hardship, I recommend checking out Attack on Titan (with deep human dilemmas), Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (with real growth for the Elric brothers), or even Mob Psycho 100, from the same creator of One Punch Man, which manages to balance power and humanity like few others.
But if you just want to turn off your brain and watch a hero destroy everything in style, then Solo Leveling is exactly what you’re looking for.