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EP. REVIEW: Solo Leveling


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Jay_Stone



Joined: 15 Oct 2016
Posts: 150
PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2024 8:40 am Reply with quote
Were those anime original scenes? I thought I heard people saying they were from the light novel instead of the manhwa.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11626
PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2024 9:35 am Reply with quote
Yeah, he's got bad knives. Do we yet know a reason he can't pick up the weapons dropped by the goblins he killed? Cause I kept really wanting him to grab one after his knife broke. Smile
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Emerje



Joined: 10 Aug 2002
Posts: 7424
Location: Maine
PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2024 10:00 am Reply with quote
I honestly thought everyone that ran away were being slaughtered as soon as they left the room. I guess the rule for that particular puzzle only required one sacrifice. What would have happened if two stayed?

Emerje
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SenpaiDuckie
ANN Community Manager


Joined: 16 Sep 2021
Posts: 531
Location: PH
PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2024 10:35 am Reply with quote
Jay_Stone wrote:
Were those anime original scenes? I thought I heard people saying they were from the light novel instead of the manhwa.


I read this via manhwa! There is a light novel but it depends on preference. For me, I love the manhwa because of the art man. It's so good, I couldn't sleep the whole night until I finished reading it all. Shocked

Emerje wrote:
I honestly thought everyone that ran away were being slaughtered as soon as they left the room. I guess the rule for that particular puzzle only required one sacrifice. What would have happened if two stayed?

Emerje


spoiler[Ehhe, I believe they would have been reawakened.
But I think the architect would not have allowed it... and that's just my theory.]
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Greed1914



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 4669
PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2024 10:39 am Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:
Yeah, he's got bad knives. Do we yet know a reason he can't pick up the weapons dropped by the goblins he killed? Cause I kept really wanting him to grab one after his knife broke. Smile


It's a good question. Considering he was fighting a goblin, it made me think he would pull a Goblin Slayer and use the weapons at hand. The group he goes with might have had weapons, but their clothes were normal, instead of some sort of armor, so I wonder if there are certain rules at play that prevent it. We already see that normal weapons plain don't work, so I could see that something prevents it.

At least so far, it seems like the Hunters Association does care about its employees. They send people to jobs appropriate to their skills, that orientation video says that having magic power isn't an obligation to do a dangerous job, and there was already a rule that said to stick to the assignment to avoid exactly what happened. The opening scene suggests that they can make mistakes since the assigned group wasn't able to handle those ants, but it seems like the Association was willing to reassign people when that became known. I'm sure that the discussion about all the outside influences wanting to push for more resources will present a problem, but it was nice that the ones in charge aren't indifferent to what happens.
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Minos_Kurumada



Joined: 04 Nov 2015
Posts: 1193
PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2024 10:58 am Reply with quote
Man, people weren't lying when they said this was the most generic plot ever.

I was literally counting the cliches, almost like going thru a check list, I am middle impressed of the generic love interest not dying though.

It doesn't bothers me though, everybody I have asked has told me that the cool thing here are the battles, the plot its just background noise.
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malvarez1



Joined: 17 Nov 2008
Posts: 2154
PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2024 11:23 am Reply with quote
Minos_Kurumada wrote:


I was literally counting the cliches, almost like going thru a check list, I am middle impressed of the generic love interest not dying though.
.


spoiler[It doesn’t matter. Unless the anime gives her more to do, she rarely appears again after this, and she has nothing to do.]
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tintor2



Joined: 11 Aug 2010
Posts: 2177
PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2024 11:50 am Reply with quote
The series kinda started like Goblin Slayer but with the MC being a noob rather than Goblin Slayer. In the opening video Jin is almost a superhero when compared to the series' persona so I wonder when exactly is his transformation gonna take place. The torture from episode 2 was insane but episode 3 felt like an abrupt change of tension with scenes feeling way calmer.
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b-dragon



Joined: 21 Apr 2021
Posts: 500
PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2024 1:25 pm Reply with quote
I definitely lost a lot of interest in episode 3. Game systems as narrative devices is a bit of pet peeve, so when he got a daily quest, I just about quit the episode right there. I had been accepting of the setting as mostly making sense and being coherent (I like monster's crystals being useful as an energy source, as an example.) But doubling down on the game elements aggravated me.

I'll give it an episode or two more to see if it interrogates or attempts to rationalize those elements. But it's looking mighty droppable. Definitely a personal preference thing, though.
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Gnarth



Joined: 06 Oct 2023
Posts: 175
PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2024 2:19 pm Reply with quote
The plot is generic so far and the game systems and terminology will never fit well with a serious tone in my opinion (like politicians seriously talking about defeating the boss is just silly) but the dungeon sequence in episode 1 and 2 had a great atmosphere. The statues were very creepy and old school in a good way and I really felt the tension. Very effective mood setter, and I appreciate the violence, though I kinda wanted it to be more gory. Looking forward hoping it capitalizes on its strengths.
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rudhy





PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2024 3:05 pm Reply with quote
b-dragon wrote:
I definitely lost a lot of interest in episode 3. Game systems as narrative devices is a bit of pet peeve, so when he got a daily quest, I just about quit the episode right there.


This is commonly stated. Let me preface by stating that it is 100% valid. However ... in the primary and secondary target markets (Japan, South Korea, China etc.) and demo (10-20 year old males) video gaming is the number one activity. And #2 isn't close. Take a look at the American entertainment landscape. In the 20th century the #1 entertainment activity was watching TV shows and movies. Said shows and movies were exported all over the world and became fodder for stuff like Cowboy Bebop, You're Under Arrest, Black Lagoon, Ghost In The Shell etc. ... westerns,police/detective shows, cyberpunk, space operas, etc. Well now almost no one in America is watches anything on linear TV anymore but football (not soccer) and it has been this way for years. Nothing reliably makes hits at the movies anymore either, not even the superhero movies that were all the rage 3-5 years ago and the Disney/Pixar/DreamWorks/Illumination cartoons 10 years ago. By contrast video gaming is becoming as popular in the west as it is in east Asia.

It stinks for people who aren't in the target market and demo, but a reliable and low risk way of reaching the audience numbers that you are targeting is to build on things that they are already familiar with and into. And you are probably going to get more of this instead of less, especially now that PC gaming is booming in east Asia: https://www.pcgamer.com/japanese-pc-gaming-saw-another-year-of-explosive-growth/. Maybe that will make the video game-based anime more diverse than all the Dragon Quest-inspired stuff that mostly gets made now. But so long as video gaming is so popular - and so long as nothing else is really popular with this cohort beyond maybe sports - then gaming and gaming adjacent anime is going to be what keeps getting made.
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malvarez1



Joined: 17 Nov 2008
Posts: 2154
PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2024 4:05 pm Reply with quote
Gnarth wrote:
. Very effective mood setter, and I appreciate the violence, though I kinda wanted it to be more gory.


It’s honestly already far gorier than the original source, so I don’t see it getting gorier than this. TBH, I’m wondering if making the first two episodes so violent will eventually backfire, since most of the series isn’t like that…unless they just increase the violence and blood for every action sequence.
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b-dragon



Joined: 21 Apr 2021
Posts: 500
PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2024 4:24 pm Reply with quote
@rudhy

Noted...But I AM a gamer. That is my major pasttime. Specifically, the kind of gamer that this is supposed to appeal to- I play primarily RPGs with all their granular stat distributions and skill and loot acquisitions. So it's not an issue of "wrong target audience" (other than age range.)

My issue, to be clear, is not that I don't understand or "get" it. I am quite familiar with the kinds of systems used. I just find it incredibly lazy writing for a narrative to lean on a stat screen as a mode of exposition. I find it terribly uninteresting when a character doesn't learn how to do something, practice how to move faster, or obtain skills organically- they didn't spend time working out, they just upped their strength on level up. You don't have to show what they can lift now that they couldn't before; you can just see the bigger strength stat.

Obviously, this isn't universally bad- I'm hardly going to chastise Shangri-La Frontier for its stat screens, as an obvious example. And if the execution interrogates or does something cool with the mechanics, then I'm ok with that. So I'm willing to watch on for a bit to see if the origin of this "game system" gets worked into the narrative, or if amounts to little more than a lazy narrative shortcut.
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Gnarth



Joined: 06 Oct 2023
Posts: 175
PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2024 5:08 pm Reply with quote
malvarez1 wrote:
It’s honestly already far gorier than the original source, so I don’t see it getting gorier than this. TBH, I’m wondering if making the first two episodes so violent will eventually backfire, since most of the series isn’t like that…unless they just increase the violence and blood for every action sequence.

I was just referring to how the scene was shot and the usual cuts to make it acceptable on TV. In that sense I don't think it was as extreme as some are calling it, but I overall really like how it was done. I do get what you say though: that is exactly how I felt about Goblin Slayer. I liked the first episode and its high stakes but greatly disliked how it quickly turned into a feel-good harem show. So I hope that if this changes it does so in a way that is still interesting.
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Key
Moderator


Joined: 03 Nov 2003
Posts: 18507
Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)
PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2024 7:10 pm Reply with quote
Gnarth wrote:
I do get what you say though: that is exactly how I felt about Goblin Slayer: I liked the first episode and its high stakes but greatly disliked how it quickly turned into a feel-good harem show. So I hope that if this changes it does so in a way that is still interesting.

These are not words that I would ever use to describe Goblin Slayer. (Harem, maybe, since there is more than one woman interested in him, but given how tertiary that aspect of the show is, even that's a bit of a stretch.)

Back on topic, I'm still watching this but not very enthusiastically, and am still left wondering how this got so immensely popular.
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