Impressions about Solo Leveling and its anime adaptation

I have been hearing about manhwas for many years, I know that they come from Korea and that they are basically a version of Japanese manga with the difference that they are usually in color, which certainly makes them quite distinctive since we are used to reading manga in black and white, hopefully we can see some color covers. I understand that many manhwas have achieved great fame and some have been animated, which is undoubtedly a symbol of success since the works are not very profitable usually remain on paper.

So far I haven't felt the need to watch them, maybe it's because of the little time I have available, but at the moment it's not a world I want to enter. However, there is one manhwa that I did see and it is obviously the one with the cover name, Solo Leveling. I got to this one thanks to a nephew who used to upload statuses to Whatsapp with referential images, but who really gave me the access to the chapters was a friend from work named Angelo.

I read Solo Leveling when it was still on the air, and to be frank, at first I didn't have much faith in it, but I must confess that the fact that the images were in color and with very good quality caught my attention. One of the reasons why I didn't really want to read this manhwa, is because I usually don't like this kind of stories since they tend to be predictable, however, there was something that caught my attention and I think it was the fact that the main character had a good development, something that nowadays is hard to see in conventional manga or anime.

To give you a bit of context about the story, Solo Leveling presents us with a world in which there are groups of hunters with physical and magical abilities, as well as special weapons. The job of these hunters is to enter through portals that open randomly in different parts of the city which lead to dungeons full of monsters, these must be defeated along with their boss to then extract the mana which has a monetary value. It is important to mention that each dungeon has a difficulty level and according to that the level of the hunters is taken into account, which range from E to S rank, there are also national level hunters.

The story focuses on Sung Jin-woo, an E-ranked hunter who, after entering a mysterious dungeon and facing fearsome monsters of clearly higher ranks than the group, awakens a kind of power that gives him the opportunity to train, fulfill missions and, along with that, level up as long as he fulfills those missions. Thus, our protagonist is immersed in different situations that gradually test his abilities, but beyond that, there are also interesting mysteries, charismatic characters and many adventures full of good action.

After reading the Solo Leveling manhwa, I was left with a pleasant impression of how the story was developed, it turned out to be interesting since the universe of hunters and monsters is quite large and that generated the opportunity to get some alternate stories that enriched the plot. I think the author knew how to handle in a good way the different mysteries that were revealed little by little and with a good conclusion.

The anime adaptation is currently being broadcast by A-1 Pictures, a studio that has animated stories such as Fairy Tail, Kuroshitsuji, Erased, among others. So far I have seen 6 chapters and I must say that I really liked it, I feel that the essence has been maintained at all times since the story has been respected practically in its entirety, maybe there are differences, but at the moment I am not able to grasp them. The animation in particular is quite acceptable and somehow makes me remember positively the good color drawing of the manhwa. The soundtrack is an aspect that at the moment has a debt, neither the opening nor the ending have caught my attention, they are quite insipid, but that is something that could improve with the following seasons.

If you have not yet seen Solo Leveling, I invite you to give it a chance, it may not have a revolutionary story, but I assure you that it is at least interesting.