Solo Leveling is a manhwa that takes our modern society as a basis but adds the system of hunters and portals. Our hero, Sung Jin-Woo is one of those hunters whose job it is to go to the parallel worlds through the portals and beat the boss so that the access door closes and thus save the earth from an invasion of monsters.
As you can see right away, Solo Leveling does not have a very original scenario. Parallel worlds, doors opening onto other worlds and the RPG side are all very popular points that can be found everywhere in recent manga and animes. These are personally themes that speak to me, reminding me of the mmorpg years of my adolescence *_*. I was nevertheless surprised by the complexity of this world and by the modern aspect that the author gave to the RPG side. First of all, to clarify my point, I would like to add that there are several ranks in Solo Leveling and that not all human beings are hunters. To become a hunter, you must be awake and only after that the person’s power is measured and placed in one of the 6 ranks, according to his abilities. The lowest rank is rank E and the highest rank is rank S.

Our hero is nicknamed the weakest hunter in the world so it is a rank E. After facing a rather special dungeon, he acquires the ability to gain levels, which is not normal since a hunter cannot normally see his rank increase gradually as our protagonist. In addition, he has access to quests, dungeons, inventory, shops, bonuses, rewards, loot that no one else can see and touch. All this part is very RPG and does not change from what we know: the modern aspect I mentioned above and is reflected in details such as the fact that the S ranks are so strong that they cannot be controlled by justice, the fact that guilds have enormous economic and political power over society or that there are people who take advantage of dungeons to kill with impunity.

In short, there are a multitude of details that make this world original and complex, although the basic idea is not very attractive.
As for graphics and drawings, I was pleasantly surprised by the color scheme, which is really excellent, especially in battle scenes. In addition, there is a wide variety of different enemies, which allows the hero to develop many different strategies. I particularly enjoyed the fight with Igris which is the only fight where I really thought that Sung Jin-Woo might lose or flee. On the other hand, I find that there are sometimes too many effects during action scenes and that we lose readability on some pages. Otherwise, I have absolutely nothing to say, Solo Leveling is a very beautiful manhwa.

Now let’s talk about the main character, Song Jin-Woo. It seems interesting to me to develop it a little bit since it changes a lot on the personality level as well as on the physical level. And yes, because gaining strength points really increases the muscles of our hero (it’s the same with other stats). So in chapter 1, Sung Jin-Woo’s physique looks like that of a geek and in chapter 18, he has grown 30 cm in height and already has the 6 pack. I personally find this change a little drastic but it reminds me of the saga of the Fable games where the character changed physics over the levels so this point remains consistent with the story. As for personality, Song Jin-Woo is basically a nice character who does the job of a hunter because it is his only way to pay for his mother’s medical treatment. Everyone calls him weak and even accepts him so the image he gives is not very good.

In fact, at first, I really thought he had no assets and that he was a pain in the ass despite his enormous kindness. Yet before he acquired his strange powers, he already had an asset that made him interesting: his ability to feel danger and to survive in any situation. With time, he passes levels, gets more and more powers, self-confidence, intelligence but he also becomes colder, more manipulative. He says it himself, the stronger he becomes, the more his emotions die out.

I didn’t necessarily pay attention to the gradual change in his personality until he deliberately killed an A-ranked player and then used him to beat the boss. Until then, there were always reasons that made Sung Jin-Woo’s actions less serious than they were, for example, the two times he is forced to kill is to defend himself and because the system had forced him to do so. However, in the case I explained above, there is nothing to encourage him to do so, he could very well have adopted another strategy. All this to say that I’m a little afraid of what could happen to our hero, especially if he gets stronger than the S ranks and therefore no one can stop him anymore.

To conclude, Solo Leveling is a manhwa that I really appreciated. I like the script, I like the drawings and the colouring, I like the main character and his reasoning and intelligence. In short, I love 95% of this manhwa! I’m not going to go up to 100% since we can always do better.