Highlights
- The first episode of Solo Leveling delivers thrilling and engaging action, showcasing the high stakes and fluid combat that fans of the webcomic have been eagerly waiting for.
- The anime's exposition-heavy approach in the first episode, with explanations of the world and its mechanics, can be helpful for newcomers but becomes a distraction from the main plot and character introductions.
- A-1 Pictures' animation and character design stay true to the source material, delivering visually stunning moments, but the lack of animation in certain scenes and some inconsistencies with detail detract from the overall impact.
The following contains spoilers for Solo Leveling, Episode 1 – "I'm Used to It", streaming on Crunchyroll.
The first episode of the highly anticipated anime adaptation of DUBU and Chugong's Solo Leveling webcomic has finally aired as the Winter 2024 anime season gets into gear. With visuals that are easy on the eye and animation that is very exciting and engaging, the first episode of Solo Leveling by A-1 Pictures was a good start to the series; however, with the objective of this beginning being largely exposition, the order of events from the original webcomic has changed slightly to pack much of the expository aspects into the beginning so that the next episodes focus more on more of the real-time happenings of the series.
That being said, the first episode of Solo Leveling is a good set-up for the remainder of the series, and for those who are familiar with the Solo Leveling universe, this first episode is an exciting start, but it leaves a few things to be desired.
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Opens With Fluid, Attention-Grabbing Action
Fans of the Solo Leveling webcomic already understand the significance of the first episode's high-octane opening sequence, which depicts an incident from three years ago when a band of adventurers on an unnamed island engaged in combat against a colony of giant ant monsters.
With various kinds of warriors and mages, the group struggles to maintain calm as the endless swarm of enemies begins to overwhelm them, and they soon realize that they're not going to survive their current situation. The combat is shown to be fluid and the amount of gore shown in the climactic parts of the first episode do a good job of showing how high the stakes are for the individuals known as Hunters.
Another more powerful group of adventurers appears and rescues the first group from certain death, as the abilities of various members of this new party show off a whole new level of strength and competence. A healer effortlessly deals with the critical and fatal wounds of those who are still alive, while two of his teammates deal blow after blow against the ant swarm. Bigger, more menacing white ants begin emerging, but these new adventurers seem more than ready to beat them down.
The entire sequence is exciting, and fast-paced and shows off an aspect of Solo Leveling that all fans desperately wanted to see animated: combat. With engaging camera angles, hard-hitting impact frames, and flashy combat, the use of the events that took place on Jeju Island as the opening scene of the Solo Leveling anime gives A-1 Pictures the opportunity to introduce the action in a way that seems out of context, but is very significant to the overall series. The scene ends as a huge band of adventurers have their weapons readied in a ruined city, with a large swarm of the same ants from earlier rushing towards them.
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The Danger of Over-Explaining
After the opening sequence, a narrator explains that in the world of Solo Leveling, over ten years prior to the events of the series, a series of portals called "Gates" opened up, linking the world to an alternative dimension swarming with monsters and "magic beasts" that are immune to traditional weaponry. However, people who have awakened magical abilities necessary to engage in combat against these monstrosities emerged and are called "Hunters".
Based on the concentration of magical powers within their bodies, Hunters have a pecking order, with the highest-ranked being S-Class Hunters, while E is the lowest class. There is no hope for improvement or change once awakened, so one will always be at the rank they were when they first awakened. Beyond this first bit of exposition, the anime attempts to introduce some of the significant characters early, like Chairman Go Gun-Hee of the Hunter Association, who also serves as a kind of narrator who explains why Hunters go into the dungeon in the first place, and what the significance of such explorations are for the rest of the world.
These chunks of exposition in between the main events can be helpful for those who are engaging with a narrative of this kind for the first time, but they encumber the first episode in ways that the first volume gets around by only dropping the explanation once the situation is encountered, like with the concept of essence stones. Explanations into the mechanics of dungeon exploration, guilds and the establishment of one's rankings are definitely necessary for worldbuilding, but with the way it is done in the anime, it distracts from the introduction and following of Sung Jin-Woo into the dungeon that will change his fate, especially when he still ends up explaining some of the same mechanics. Some scenes were used to take a brief look at characters who will be significant in the future, like S-Class hunter Cha Hae-In or Yoo Jin-Ho.
Lovely Visuals When it Counts
A-1 Pictures is famous for the production of anime titles like Sword Art Online, Erased and Lycoris Recoil to name a few, and there's a particular aesthetic that many A-1 productions have that is evident in Solo Leveling, especially in character design. While the mark of A-1 is evident, the character designs are effectively 1:1 with the source material, which was especially celebrated for its art. The animation's fluidity and depiction of light was brilliant in the first episode, particularly in the final third of the episode where Jin-Woo and his group have entered the mysterious second dungeon and are locked in with moving statues, the biggest of which unleashed a laser beam that vaporized anyone who was unlucky enough to still be standing up when Jin-Woo screamed for them to get down. While the episode had beautiful and dazzling animated moments, comparison becomes the thief of joy once again, as elements like the weathering on the statues and growth of moss, which were much more detailed and communicated the sheer age of the dungeon much more effectively than in the anime.
The lack of animation in Jin-Woo's dungeon exploration until that point is a strange decision to offscreen moments that would've helped viewers see Jin-Woo's weakness in action, as well as the relationships between him and the rest of the party. The direction was really something in the last few moments of the episode, especially with the confirmation of Jin-Woo's party member Joo-Hee's observation that the big statue's eyes can in fact move.
The impact of the moment Jin-Woo makes eye contact with the statue is one of the episode's best parts, and aside from being particularly nitpicky about certain visual details and some of the strange decisions made in the direction and exposition, Solo Leveling Episode 1 was a great start to the series that was visually engaging enough to keep viewers drawn in when it got good, but tried too hard to explain everything in one go, which got a little boring at times. An episode like this could perhaps have benefited from the feature-length treatment and depict the entire double-dungeon incident to completion; however, the episode cliffhanger is definitely an interesting way to have people eager to see the next episode.
