Highlights
- Jinwoo faces new challenges as a Player, risking his life in a penalty challenge.
- The episode focuses on Jinwoo's recovery, training, and the developments in the story.
- The visuals and animation have their moments of beauty, but some combat scenes lack impact.
The following contains spoilers for Solo Leveling Episode 3, "It's Like a Game", available for streaming on Crunchyroll.
The third episode of Solo Leveling continues the decent pace established by the first two episodes, and begins to explore the nature of Jinwoo's condition after his ordeal in the Double Dungeon. With his injuries fully healed, and a strange videogame-like system now dictating his life, Jinwoo finds out the hard way just how demanding being a Player can be. The new lease on life comes with a completely new set of obstacles for Jinwoo, and one mistake could cost him his life, but his defining trait once again shows itself in the face of overwhelming adversity.
Solid visuals and animation, as well as the series' continued faithfulness to the original manhwa carried this episode, particularly in some of the more intense moments and judging from this third episode, the Solo Leveling anime adaptation is shaping up quite nicely.
Solo Leveling: Heroic Death and The Hypocrisy of Self-Sacrifice
Jin-Woo's tragic fate is sealed after his allies escape the Dungeon.
The Hunter Association Suspects A Second Awakening
As his life ended, Jinwoo accepted the terms posed by the mysterious interface that appeared. Three days later, Jinwoo woke up in hospital with all of his injuries healed, and two officials from the Hunter Association sought an audience with him. They update Jinwoo on the outcome of the Double Dungeon incident – only six of the seventeen Hunters who entered were able to leave with their lives, and when the White Tiger Hunter Guild arrived on the scene, there were no signs of the dungeon; however, the remains of the deceased and an unconscious Jinwoo were found.
C-Rank Hunter Song Chiyul had to retire from Hunter activities after losing his arm; while Joohee retired due to the immense psychological stress and PTSD she experienced as a result. Given how the reports of the witnesses all line up, the party was cleared of any suspicion; however, those same reports paint a picture in which Jinwoo's survival is extremely unlikely – unless he has experienced the rare phenomenon that is a second awakening. However, when they test Jinwoo's magical potential once more, they find that his status has not changed and he remains an E-Rank Hunter.
Jinwoo Learns the Consequences of Being Idle
After becoming a Player, Jinwoo's perspective becomes cluttered with various interfaces that are reminiscent of status screens and menus from videogames. With a little help from his little sister, Jinah, Jinwoo learns how to navigate this new HUD that only he can see, and he learns that he has a number of daily tasks that he needs to complete. An exercise regime that matches the one that gave rise to Saitama's incredible strength in One Punch Man becomes Jinwoo's daily required task, and he learns the hard way that the daily task incurs an incredibly harsh penalty.
Not too long after surviving an impossible situation, Jinwoo finds himself running for his life in the penalty challenge, which places him in a vast desert for four hours as he runs away from a Poison-Fanged Giant Desert Centipede, a terrifying magical beast that chases its prey relentlessly. Having survived, Jinwoo is returned to his hospital room and the next morning he begins his daily training. Like in an RPG, Jinwoo can view his various stats and his Player Level via a status window, and through performing various tasks, he is able to level up and distribute points to improve various attributes like Strength, Intelligence or Agility. Jinwoo even summarizes the entire system as being "like a game", which is rather on-the-nose and perhaps unnecessary.
Solo Leveling: The Truth Behind The Double Dungeon, Explained
After dealing with a conventional D-rank dungeon, the Double Dungeon appears. What is it?
The Pacing Has Improved From The First Episode
Due to the series having introduced certain pieces early, such as the Hunter Association and how rankings are determined, as well as the incidence of Gates and the risk they pose when it comes to dungeon breaks, Solo Leveling has marked improvements on pacing in episode 3 that enable it to focus on Jinwoo's recovery and training, as well as the developments taking place at the same time. As a small nod towards the events that take place towards the end of the episode, a conversation between Joohee and an unknown Hunter trying to recruit her for an upcoming raid at a Gate that is shown opening up in Hapjeong, Seoul.
Hapjeong Station is where Jinwoo uses a special gift he receives from the System after completing his daily tasks, a key that enables him to open and enter what is called an Instance Dungeon, which he must clear himself with no chance of escape. There's even an explanation into the circumstances that led to his mother's permanent hospitalization, which was briefly shown in a previous episode through Jinah's daily hospital visits after school, all of which weren't yet developed at this same point in the manhwa. Given how the episode ends, it seems that Solo Leveling has developed a penchant for cliffhangers, which might start to get frustrating as the story develops but passes for now.
Beautiful Effects and Fluid Animation... Here and There
Various visual effects in Solo Leveling have a certain appeal to them that improves the overall feel of the developing story. The various interfaces that Jinwoo sees on a daily basis are particularly aesthetically pleasing and give a sense of the "gamification" of Jinwoo's life, while other effects like his acceptance of his gift from the System, or his use of the key at Hapjeong Station. Even the appearance of the Gate in Hapjeong was visually appealing, and speaks to the kind of attention that is being paid to the visual elements of Solo Leveling beyond characters and backgrounds.
Soon after entering the Instance Dungeon, Jinwoo is accosted by three goblins, but he holds his own and even manages to defeat them. The fight is definitely dynamic, but it lacks the kind of polish seen in the opening scene of episode 1. Despite this, there are definitely flashes of animation that stick out from the rest of the episode, and Solo Leveling shows us gorgeously detailed animation in certain moments, like in Jinwoo's nod to Arya Stark's grip-change in her defeat of the Night King in Game of Thrones as he slashes the third goblin. While that was actually really cool, the quality of animation drops soon after as a Steel-Fanged Lycan tries to make Jinwoo its lunch. Awkward movement and cuts that show only the moment before and the moment after certain movements and the random slow-motion can make some of the combat feel like its a bit lacking in impact, but overall, the Solo Leveling anime has been a good watch thus far.
Is Solo Leveling an Isekai?
Solo Leveling has some fans wondering if the series can be classified as an isekai or something else entirely.
