Review of Solo Leveling Season 2: Arise from the Shadow

I'm relatively new to the anime fandom, only having watched 20 or so animes. Till now, there hasn't been one anime where I thought it was actually horrendous. This is the first show I've rated less than a five. This show does so many things wrong I actually cannot comprehend how it's sitting at a 8.88. Story? bland. Characters? non-existent. Themes? unexplored. Entertaining? uh, sometimes I guess. This season was uninteresting and bland all the way through. In my opinion, this show did nothing right, fights had no substance, the characters are even real characters, only exisiting to glaze Jin-woo. His loss of humanity is a halfassedplotline and not really that engaging or interesting since they don't really explore it.

The writing was not only bad, but also insanely repetitive. Jin-woo fights boss -> "arise" with nothing interesting to latch onto. No real emotion, themes or anything. Even visually, it's all the same. These villains have zero personality and only serve as a villain of the week type thing.

This show can't even make up for all of its flaws with comedy or animation. Because while I think the animation is good, it's not that groundbreaking. This show also just takes itself way too seriously for what it is.

Like, I understand that people watch this only for the fights and aura, but the only other pure battle shounen I've watched, Jujutsu Kaisen, does everything this show does, but better in literally every single way you can think of. Better characters, better fights, better themes, better comedy, more substance, more entertaining and the list just goes on.

Power fantasies shouldn't be excused for having horrible characters and story. You can focus on battles and aura while being, funny and intersting.

This is the most nothingburger anime I've seen.