Review of Solo Leveling Season 2: Arise from the Shadow

Fellow Solo Leveling fans, we stay winning. I still remember the early days of the quarantine, where we were forced to stay home and wonder. I for one, took on the Manhwa of Solo Leveling as a leisure activity among other things, and it made simple some of the best highlights of those good times. All the time throughout, dreaming about one day receiving a faithful Anime adaptation, it seemed so far-fetched at the time, and it’s so strange to have two fully animated seasons today. It’s surreal. The first season received so much hype from the fans, it broke records and set a standard for otherAnime-Manhwa adaptations to follow. Of course, the series was met with so much criticism and backlash as usual, and for a moment, a lot of it was justified.

Months later, season two aired, and oh boy were most of those shattered to the ground.

Season two was better animated, better paced, better voice-acted, and most of all, adapted what’s arguably the best portion of the story. The hype, the aura farming, the class, it has all.

From talking to a lot of non-Manhwa reader friends, I noticed a criticism they all had in common on season one was how little they cared about the side characters, thus, the constant switching and focusing on other non-main characters felt so off putting and vibe-killing, however, that was no longer the same with season two, clearly showing how better of a job the improved pacing did to make people love the side characters and care for them. The subtle backstories, the better dialog, the warmer interactions with the main character. It all was for the better.

The opening and ending of this season were somehow even better than season one’s, and by a long shot. TK killed it with that ending theme song, and the animators matched the energy as well.

This was one of THOSE sequels that really set the bar, not just for the series, but also for the rest of Manhwas to be adapted into Anime.

One side note though, this season more than the previous one made it clear that they were adapting the original novel, not the Manhwa, so there were some omition and deviations from the Manhwa which is understandable seeing how the Manhwa was deviating from the source novel itself.

Overall: 8.84/10.