Solo Leveling – 12 (S1 Fin) – Shadow Monarch

Jinwoo has gone and backed himself into a corner. The knights keep coming, his fatigue and HP continue to drop, and he has no way to raise them. He eventually ends up on the ground, contemplating his demise once again, and haunted by the voices of those who said he was the weakest hunter ever, and even kinder voices like Joohee who told him he didn’t have to push himself so hard. Even his former, weaker self shows up to tell him that beneath his tougher body he’s still weak.

While that might be true, and Jinwoo may be at the end of his line here, his past self doesn’t account for luck here. Because Jinwoo didn’t do his daily quest—push-ups, sit-ups, a run, etc.—he’s transported out of the job change quest and into the penalty zone. There, all he has to do is defeat a bunch of giant centipedes (which are no problem) and he can level up and recover his HP and mana. He even gets to purchase a new dagger that, while pricey, is perfect for armored foes.

When the system sends him back to the dungeon, he’s ready to go (he also has “ruler’s hand”, which lets him use telekinesis without mana), but he’s irked by the fact the knights just keep coming while the mages don’t seem to be attacking. It dawns on him that they’re summoning the gates that are bringing the endless knights through. So he changes his primary targets from the foot soldiers to the mages. As their number decreases, so do the gates.

The mages try to pivot their strategy by merging a bunch of knights into one giant armored golem, but by reducing the number of targets Jinwoo has to deal with, they are actually lowering their defenses. He carves through the scant knights remaining, destroys the three remaining mages, and then destroys the master-less golem.

With all enemies defeated, the system starts cycling through various messages. First, it analyses the battle Jinwoo just fought and deems that he can switch jobs to Necromancer. Jinwoo isn’t sure about that at first as it’s not a front-line job, but considering how strong he is, perhaps he can be the exception to the rule. That proves to be the case, as all the bonuses he earned end up blowing past Necromancer and advancing to the even more badass-sounding Shadow Monarch.

Jinwoo tries out his new ability to raise a shadow army from the dead knights around him, but it takes three attempts to convince their commander Ignis to serve him rather than a king of old who may never return. Jin-Ah is correct: Jinwoo isn’t late coming home because he has a girlfriend. It’s because he can now summon dead warriors of any rank to fight for him.

This likely means that it’s going to be a lot harder for him to keep a low profile and maintain his anonymity from organizations like the Hunter’s Guild / Association. It also means he’ll probably be able to afford treatment for his mother sooner rather than later.

How he figures into the battle of Jeju Island on which the S-Rankers are about to embark, we’ll have to wait for the confirmed second season. I’ll be watching to see just how far this former nobody can go.

Solo Leveling – 11 – The Red Knight

I’m going to … level with you. I simply do not care about Cha Hae-In, Baek Yoon-ho, or Choi Jongin’s quest to continue a raid on Jeju Island he believes never truly ended. The show has given us little tidbits of these characters, but it’s not nearly enough to get me invested, even if their battle costumes are pretty cool-looking.

I don’t really care about the Yoo brothers and their little tug-of-war for their father’s approval, either. I do care, however, that Jin-Ah has a good dinner and studies well before going to bed, though I was worried her one scene would indicate she’s being targeted by Hwang. Really, this episode is all about Jinwoo’s job-change quest.

His first opponent is a gray knight, and his best dagger can’t chip its armor. He is able to use his bare hands and brute strength to behead the knight and others like him, but he also ends up fighting mages and assassins, and without being able to use full recovery or potions.

It’s quite a handicap, but it’s a testament to how far Jinwoo has already come that he never really panics when the dungeon turns out to be tougher. He just steps up his game to match the intensity. And no foe has had such a threatening aura since the double dungeon than the dungeon boss, Knight Commander Igris the Bloodred.

Igris is as fast as Jinwoo, but much, much stronger, and also maintains his  ridiculous speed while in some top-notch heavy armor. Like the other knights, his armor can’t be penetrated by a dagger, and even though it drops its weapons when Jinwoo drops his, Jinwoo can’t score a good hit, and has to do everything he can not to get hit himself.

Ultimately Igris wears him down, and even when Jinwoo gets a slight hit on the knight’s neck, he’s then pulled and twisted and tossed all over the throne room like a ragdoll being caught in a building implosion. It’s some of Solo Leveling’s best combat animation to date, as while violent chaos reigns I could still tell what’s going on and get a really good sense of the three-dimensional space.

Jinwoo ends up slumped over on the throne, which I thought was going to have some significance—perhaps the throne and Ignis, were waiting for a ruler? The knight summons its sword and prepares for a killing blow, but Jinwoo blocks it with his bare hand. He’s not ready to die, and he hasn’t lost yet.

Finding another gear, Jinwoo drives his dagger into Igris’ throat, and keeps hacking at it until it’s deep enough to defeat him. He scores a rune stone for something called “Ruler’s Hand”, Igris’ helmet, 1.5 million gold, and an instant teleportation stone.

Unfortunately, he also gets a rude awakening: defeating Igris didn’t clear this dungeon. Dozens of gates open, and knights, mages, and assassins start flowing out by the dozens. While no one of them is something he can’t handle after beating Igris, he’s extremely exhausted and there are dozens of them.

This is the true job-change quest, and it’s a test of endurance. The longer he survives, the more enhancement points he’ll earn, which are needed to be assigned a “higher class.” My educated guess for next week’s finale is that he’ll find a way to earn those points, reach that higher class … and I’m sure we’ll get another mandatory check-in with Jongin, Hae-in & Co.

Solo Leveling – 10 – Kind of a Big Deal

After one more harrowing raid that goes sideways, Joohee tells Jinwoo she’s retiring from hunting and moving back in with her parents. Her reasons are sound, understandable, and releatable, and while the puny past Jinwoo might’ve argued more for her to stick it out, this stronger, less emotional Jinwoo wishes her well, promising to meet up with her if he’s ever in her neck of the woods.

Jinho’s new armor made me literally LMFAO – So gaudy

Despite thinking very soberly these days, Jinwoo isn’t so heartless he’d invite Joohee to join his quota “Strike Team”, which as assembled buy Jinho is a thrown together mix of people who can’t go on raids or are hard up for cash, including Han Song-yi, a high schooler and his sister’s classmate. They all get three million per gate to sit around outside the gate as Jinwoo and Jinho go into the dungeon on their own.

The random hunters assembled to sit around don’t know quite what to make of this, but they’re also not about to turn down that cash. And just a half-hour into what should be at least a two-hour raid, Jinho and Jinwoo come out unscathed, and the gate collapses, which can only mean the boss was defeated. Before they can pick up their dropped jaws, it’s on to gate two of three they’re tackling for the day.

Jinho and Jinwoo’s strike team make the equivalent of $60,000 that first day, so it’s a given that they all come back for day two, day three, and so on. All the while, Jinho is able to harvest mana crystals while Jinwoo continues leveling up and gaining skills. The Stealth mode he gained from defeating Kang is particularly useful, if a bit unsporting. This gate-speedrun sequence has a lively pace and fun swagger to it.

All the C-Rank Gates being bought up attracts the attention of Ahn Sangmin, a mid-level recruiter for the White Tiger Guild. At first he almost seems like a cop abot to expose Jinwoo, but he’s actually eager to make him a valuable member of the guild, as he’s reasonably certain this “E-Rank” hunter reawakened. One night, Ahn and his subordinate give Jinwoo a slight start as they introduce themselves.

Over coffee in a public place, Ahn lays down the brass tacks: he thinks he’s perfect for White Tiger and wants him to join, and is willing to pay him double what Yoojin Construction is offering. Jinwoo states that even at a discount, that would mean paying him over 50 billion yen. He then engages his stealth, demonstrates his power, and gets the truth from Ahn about how he found out about him: he was looking into who was buying up so many C-Rank gates.

Rather than walk away from their meeting with nothing, Jinwoo gets Ahn to agree to pay 600 million yen for three of the C-Rank gates Yoojin controls. The next morning, after they paid Jinwoo, Ahn learns that Yoojin only ever had three gates, and there are plenty more that are going for as low as 50 million.

Ahn gets a text from Jinwoo saying they’re now even after Ahn spied on him. Ahn concedes that Jinwoo played his hand well, and now has his contact info for future opportunities. As for Jinwoo, he’s taken a day off for a “Job-Change Quest” for which he’s now a high enough level to pursue. With Hwang’s S-Ranked brother possibly targeting him, he’s gotta get even stronger than he already is.

Solo Leveling – 09 – As Strong as the Shadows are Dark

After the first few waves of small-fry goblins, Joohee is astonished and gladdened by the fact Jinwoo hasn’t been wounded once. Good, I say: Joohee has been through so much it’s good to see an unforced smile on her face. Unfortunately that smile, and the relative peace and ease of their raid, doesn’t last.

What comes as a mild surprise is that it’s not the three convicts who start trouble. They were a red (or rather orange) herring. It’s Kang Taeshik, their handler, who deviates from the mission. When the path forks three ways and the party splits up, Kang finds a quiet place to torture and murder the convicts one by one. He was paid handsomely to kill them by the father of one of their victims, who committed suicide not long after they assaulted her.

When Kim and his friend’s path happens to merge with Kang’s, he attacks them to. The friend is dead when Jinwoo, Joohee, and Song arrive, while Kim doesn’t last much longer. I knew he was a goner when he said he’d properly apologize for abandoning Jinwoo after they got out of this. Kang than swoops in and tries to kill the healer Joohee, but Jinwoo is quick enough to stop him.

After that, he kinda vanishes from the battle entirely, as the C-Ranked Song battles the B-Ranked Kang. Despite the difference, Song is a master swordsman who has trained S-Ranks, so he’s able to stay alive longer than most would against a B, and when he’s wounded, Joohee heals him. Of course eventually he runs out of gas and she runs out of mana, so it’s Jinwoo’s time to shine.

In classic shounen style, Kang provides constant commentary, both revealing what a bloodthirsy piece of scum he is, but that he far prefers killing people to monsters. Also apparently Hunters Association employees are paid shit, but rather than start a union, Kang here decided to break very very bad. Fortunately, Jinwoo is able to keep up with him, and when he gets sliced, he uses Full Recovery to heal instantly.

After poisoning him with his dagger earlier in the battle, Jinwoo uses the Murderous Intent skill, and despite Kang using a stealth ability that makes him invisible, he’s still swallowed up by Jinwoo’s overwhelming aura. Before he knows it the dagger is lodged in his chest and he’s breathing his last breaths.

While Kang knew about Second Awakenings, he knows nothing of the “System” that guides and directs Jinwoo. He also knows that anyone who gets stronger with each battle they win is bound to end up in some dark-ass places. Jinwoo must admit, it’s not just his physical appearance, but psyche that at which all this power and destruction is starting to gnaw.

Jinwoo was able to defeat a B-Rank, but he has no illusions about an A-Rank like Kang’s former supervisor, Woo Jinchul. Song covers for Jinwoo by taking credit for killing the rogue Kang, aided by Joohee’s healing, and Woo at least outwardly buys it, even though he’s suspicious of an E-Rank Jinwoo surviving another ordeal unscathed.

Woo takes them to the HA for paperwork, but their self-defense is confirmed when the father who paid Kang to kill the convicts turns himself in. After they’re free to go, Jinwoo and Joohee take a breather in the park, and Joohee presents him with an essence stone, hoping he’ll remember where it’s from. We’ll see if they play any role in his leveling, and if that leveling starts to adversely affect his relationships.

Solo Leveling – 08 – Survivors Guild

Jinwoo needs the Elixir of Life to cure his mom, but he knows he’s still not strong enough to brave the dungeon where the three ingredients are located. He needs to level up more, so he agrees to Jinho’s offer of nineteen C-Rank raids, provided they go it alone. He leaves it to Jinho to hire the extra six people needed to meet the quotas.

In our intermittent Ten Seconds with Hae-In, she’s training when she’s approached by someone with Yoojin Construction, Jinho’s dad’s company. His dad is tired of relying on the five existing guilds (which he lists in a lengthy infodump) for the immensely valuable resources the Dungeons have to offer, so he’s starting a sixth guild.

We also check in on Song, who is still sparring in the dojo despite having only one arm, and Kim, who assures his worried wife that the raid where so many were killed is the exception, and he can’t just quit when they have bills to pay and two kids to feed. Joohee is still dealing with PTSD from that raid, but isn’t quite ready to throw in the towel.

The theme of this week setup, and the re/introducing of the S-Rank hunters Jinwoo is quickly approaching in level and all their various motivations. Choi tells Baek that he is eager to recruit more hunters so that they can launch a fresh raid on Jeju Island, a past failure where both of them left not only glory but comrades behind.

A request for volunteers for a D-Rank raid ends up reuniting Jinwoo with Song, Kim, and Joohee. Joohee is as delighted to see Jinwoo again as she is shocked how much hunkier he looks. Their reunion is spoiled by the arrival of three unpleasant C-Rank convicts in orange jumpsuits, minded by the B-Ranked Kang Taeshik.

Due to an exodus of local hunters, the association has to resort to using “prisoner substitute hunters” trying to reduce their sentences. I have a much simpler term for them: trouble. Using convicts in dungeons seems like a terrible, terrible idea, but when they inevitably become a threat I’ll trust Jinwoo to watch his back and keep Joohee safe.

Solo Leveling – 07 – Going Up to Eleven

Fresh off his victory over a C-Ranked boss, Jinwoo comes home with beer and fried chicken for him and Jin-Ah. He doesn’t think too much about the fact that he had to kill fellow humans and focuses on the fact that he did what he had to do to get stronger and protect his family. He also learns that due to his leveling up, he is no longer able to get drunk on beer.

Jinho asks to meet with Jinwoo. While it’s never in doubt that Jinho will keep his “boss'” secret, he also asks that Jinwoo assist him in becoming a guild master, which requires him to pass nineteen more raids. He offers him 30 billion to participate in these raids. And while that would have been an offer Jinwoo couldn’t refuse in the past, he refuses it here, because his unique ability to level up could allow him to surpass even the seven S-ranked hunters.

While Hwang’s younger brother seeks revenge, Jinwoo goes running with Jin-Ah, and his sister finds she’s unable to keep up with him. Even if she still considers him “E-Rank”, she figures he’s still a hunter, and is thus a cut above normal people. Even when she breathlessly catches up to him, he’s ready to keep running past his daily quest of 10km.

Going beyond the daily goals nets Jinwoo a new key that allows him access to the “Demon’s Castle”, an S-ranked dungeon and the toughest challenge his faced to date. The gatekeeper of this dungeon is a Cerberus who he’s unable to wound deeply even with his fancy dagger. It then buffs itself so its abilities are doubled, and Jinwoo’s HP suffers a precipitous drop.

When he considers using his teleportation stone to flee the battle, it is wrenched from his grip. He then decides to use a potion in his inventory that hardens his skin at the risk (or possibly guarantee) of permanent muscle damage. Throwing caution to the wind, he drinks it, and proceeds to whale on the Cerberus until it is defeated.

Having defeated the gatekeeper, he earns a new key to the Demon’s Castle itself, which he dares not enter in his current weakened state. He also gains the formula for the Elixir of Life, a potion that could cure his mother. All he has to do is acquire three items to brew it, all of them located in the aforementioned Demon’s Castle. It will be no easy task, but he’s come too far to turn back now.

Solo Leveling – 06 – Eight Legs, Six Heels

Jinwoo estimates that the giant snake boss and the golem boss he defeated were probably D-rank. That makes this spider boss C-Rank, and while he’s not sure he can defeat it at his current level, he’s also keenly aware of the fact that he’s not afraid to engage it in order to find out.

As he launches a series of quick probing strikes, he determines the spider has an extremely tough exoskeleton and periodically spits acid. These strikes drain his stamina, but he’s able to use “Full Recovery”, a Mega Potion-like reward from a previous quest, to get it all back and attack the Spider’s weak spots – its eyes.

Jinho can’t believe what he just saw an E-Rank Hunter do … unless Jinwoo is one of the rumored “False Rankers” who are able to conceal their full strength. When Dongsuk returns, he assumes the boss wasn’t that tough, and Jinho managed to bring it down with his trust fund gear.

He’ll spare Jinho … if he kills Jinwoo. Whether it’s because he’s a good kid and won’t hurt his aniki, or because he knows full well he can’t beat him (or both), Jinho sides with Jinwoo.

Dongsuk’s mage fires off a spell that slams Jinwoo into the mana crystal wall, and he believes that’s that for the Weakest Hunter. But then a window appears for Jinwoo declaring a new Urgent Quest: Kill the six enemies trying to kill him, the “Player,” or he will be assessed a penalty: his heart will stop.

Jinwoo took this job because he wanted some cash to pay the bills, but Dongsuk and his Strike Team just had to be evil assholes. Now the system is giving Jinwoo two choices: kill fellow humans for the first time, or die. There’s no choice, and Dongsuk’s men soon learn they have no chance against him.

In a matter of moments, Dongsuk is all who remains of his dastardly strike team. We’ll never know how many other lower-ranked Hunters they lured into their schemes only for them to be killed in the dungeons and written off as unfortunate casualties of the raid.

Yet despite all of the evil he’s committed, and the fact he tried to kill Jinwoo three times, he still begs for mercy and offers to pay him double what they agreed along with all the crystals. Jinwoo isn’t willing to deal with someone who has already proven untrustworthy. And the C-Ranked Dongsuk may be strong, but Jinwoo is stronger, and still leveling up.

Jinwoo went to a dark place in that dungeon, but it’s not like he had a choice. He may call himself a murderer, but what he did was self-defense; Dongsuk and his men weren’t going to stop until he and Jinho were dead.

When the two emerge and are debriefed by a guild official (whom we saw having tea with a couple friends, one of them working with S-Ranked Cha Hae-In), she assumes, like anyone would, that Jinho and his fancy armor and sword was the hero of the day.

Jinho knows better, but doesn’t say anything that might call attention to Jinwoo. As rain starts to fall, he’s mentions he’s glad he made sure Jin-Ah had an umbrella. He says it as if grasping for something to retain his humanity and sense of normalcy.

Solo Leveling – 05 – Messing With the Wrong E-Rank

With all the blood, gore, and dread of the first two episodes and Jinwoo’s well-structured leveling up since his reawakening, there hasn’t been a ton of time for comedy on Solo Leveling. However, the nurses gossiping about how swole Jinwoo has become, one of said cute nurses asking for his contact info, and Jin-Ah also noticing said swole-ness is all funny as hell. Dude is finally getting some attention. Meanwhile, Hunter Baek Yoon-ho, one of only seven S-Ranks in Japan, gets fluffy TV interviews.

Now that he finally has some strength, Jinwoo is eager to put it to use providing for his family. But he also doesn’t want to have a high profile or draw too much attention to himself. To that end, he takes a menial but well-paying C-Rank dungeon job filling the 8-man quota for a 6-man “strike team” with no healer. His job will be to carry their baggage. The second quota-filler is Yoo Jinho, whose daddy bought him the finest armor and weapons for his very first raid.

The leader of the party, Hwang Dongsuk, seems to have a good head on his shoulders, and while his team lacks a healer, they make up for it with their offensive ability. Upon entering the dungeon they eventually encounter a horde of giant ants, but the team shows excellent training and coordination in handling them with ease.

Even so, the forebodingly dark dungeon promises to have tougher enemies, and Jinho seems like a prime target for the first victim of those enemies. As for Jinwoo, he only kills one ant with his food when no one is watching, so everyone assumes he’s the same old Weakest Hunter, serving as nothing but a porter. But he’s no greenhorn like Jinho; he advises extreme caution.

It’s right around when Jinwoo is questioning why a non-fighting gig is such a good deal when the dungeon’s tunnels are strewn with spider silk and they eventually come upon an absolute bonanza of mana crystals—perhaps a billion yen’s worth. There’s also a giant slumbering spider that Dongsuk is oddly certain won’t wake up.

Jinho asks to take a look at Jinwoo’s contract, and it doesn’t say anything about not giving him a share of mined crystals. Dongsuk seems fine with this, but since the party member responsible for the mining equipment left it back at the starting point, so Dongsuk has everyone but Jinho and Jinwoo head back for it.

Shortly after they leave the spider’s lair, Dongsuk orders the opening sealed, trapping Jinho and Jinwoo inside. Jinwoo now knows what his instinct was telling him: these guys are playing dirty. It’s sadly a common occurrence in such situations where there’s no cameras or witnesses to any crimes that occur in the dungeon.

The thing is, it wasn’t until after it was confirmed Dongsuk was backstabbing Jinwoo and Jinho that I feld like they’d actually be okay. The spider may be a C-rank boss, but it doesn’t seem as frightful a monster as the giant snake Jinwoo destroyed with his bare hands. He’s got this, so it’s just a matter of whether he can keep Jinho safe. If they’re able to get some mana crystals out of it and give Dongsuk’s party some payback, that’s a bonus.

Solo Leveling – 04 – One Wolf at a Time

Jinwoo soon learns he’s a lot stronger and his body feels a lot lighter than he thought. Once he pulls Kim’s sword out of his inventory, he’s in business, able to kill wolf after steel-fanged wolf with a single slash. He reaches level 2, and all his attributes go up by one. Whatever this dungeon is, it’s a place where he can get level up fast.

When he’s set upon by a whole pack of wolves, Jinwoo doesn’t lose his cool. After all, he survived far more powerful and terrifying monsters back before his awakening as a Player. He eventually kills enough wolves to be given the title Wolf Assassin, giving him a bonus against all animal-type monsters. He also has 34 wolf fangs he can sell for gold.

More importantly, among the loot he acquired is a teleportation stone, which means he can leave now having reached Level 15 with his head held high. But not knowing if he’ll ever be able to return to this dungeon or level up this easily anywhere else, Jinwoo descends into the overgrown lair of the boss: a Blue Venom-Fanged Kasaka, AKA Giant Blue Snake. It isn’t mentioned, but as a snake is an animal-type monster, his abilities are all +40.

Even though his battered sword is chipped away down to the last couple inches of blade, and he loses his grip on it altogether, Jinwoo is fueled by his desire to make up for a life spent being a laughing stock. He sinks his bare hands into the armor around the snake’s throat and keeps tearing away until it’s dead. His reward is a kickass venom blade, as well as a potion that gives him armor skin at the cost of permanently damaged muscles.

With the dungeon boss defeated, the subway station returns to normal. When Jinwoo returns to the surface it’s nighttime, and a dungeon break is in progress, with a hastily-assembled party of D- and E-Ranked Hunters trying in vain to take out a golem boss.

Joohee is among those answering the call, but she’s still traumatized just a week after going through hell, and she’s still unable to focus her magic. Jinwoo decides to lend a hand by tossing the nub of his sword at the golem with maximum force. This shatters its defenses and allows the Hunters to finish him off.

That said, none of the Hunters know who tossed the broken sword that led to their victory, other than possibly Joohee, who might’ve sensed him with her perception. Jinwoo decided to simply walk away rather than claim any credit. He ends the episode a lot stronger and a lot more confident than when it began.

While there was a rigid mechanical nature to Jinwoo’s initial battles with wolves and increasing of his stats, that structure was balanced out with moments of pure bloody chaos and mayhem as he danced with the giant blue snake in the swamp-ified subway.

It’s good to see him steadily climbing out of his deep hole of inadequacy, and this was the most entertaining and satisfying episode of Solo Leveling yet. And by God, does the OP slap.