What If You Were The Only Person Who Could Level Up? | “Solo Leveling” Season 1: Episodes 1-7 Review

I often enjoy decent fantasy anime, especially those like RPG elements.

“Solo Leveling” is one such anime, taking place in a modern Japan that has long since been plagued by magical monster gates that open up around the country. These monsters can only be fought by hunters — humans whose magical power has awakened. If a gate stays open too long, the monsters from the dungeons within break out, wreaking havoc on the outside world.

The world is complete with magical items that hunters can buy, which are standard RPG fair of swords, bows, shields, etc., as well as magical abilities. Dungeons are raided in parties registered with the government, which usually consist of members who are good at attacking, as well as healers.

The only catch is that once a hunter’s power awakens, that’s it. They cannot get more or less powerful; they’re stuck.

Sung Jin-woo (Aleks Le), the weakest hunter in the world, is our protagonist. His mother has a magically-induced coma and because of that, he has to earn money on raids despite being effectively useless. Most parties take him on to fill a government-mandated quote.

All goes well until he joins a party to raid a dungeons that has monsters way too powerful for him. We spend a few episodes seeing party members be ripped to shreds one by one by malicious statues, until Jin-woo realizes there are specific instructions they need to follow. He gets his party close, which includes his friend, Lee Joo-hee (Dani Chambers), but ends up presumably passing away.

Except he doesn’t quite. He wakes up and learns that he has access to a player menu no one else can see, that keeps track of his stats and assigns him quests. He learns quickly that he is the only one in the world that can level up, which he smartly decides to keep secret.

In later episodes, we see him astonish human foes who seek to take advantage of his presumably weak status, as he foils a plot to leave him for dead in a dungeon.

So far, this is an interesting series I will keep an eye on. This world is nothing special in this genre, but it works and feels very reminiscent of the first season of “Sword Art Online,” before that show went off the rails and lost the plot.

I initially liked Jin-woo, and his glowup after his initial few episodes is done well. But I can easily see him becoming a villain as he further gets desensitized to violence — especially against other people. He has too much of Eren Yeager in him for my liking.

With that being said, I think it’s also important to let this show run its course. Yes, I know I can cheat by reading the manga, but that’s not my preferred method of experiencing these tales, and not every manga gets a completely faithful anime adaptation.

“Solo Leveling” Season 1: Episodes 1-7 gets an 8/10