Solo Leveling

Episode 5

Let's talk about the elephant in the room right from the start: Jinwoo's character redesign. What's interesting here is that the show goes out of its way to tell us that it's not just an artistic way of showing the change in Jinwoo's personality and mindset. Jinwoo has actually gotten several inches taller and cut like a bodybuilder overnight (and his hair somehow grew shorter as well).

I'm okay with the idea of his body changing to match his stats. What gets me, however, is the execution of this idea. If the stats do affect how he looks, then shouldn't this change have happened last episode while fighting the wolves—i.e., when he allocated all those status points instead of days after? And more than that, shouldn't his body continue to change as the story continues (making him look like the Hulk by the time it ends)? It seems that, in trying to hand-wave the new “more badass” character design, they raised far more questions than they answered.

But that is not the only problem of this nature in the episode. The villains also don't quite make sense. Now, I understand their basic scam. They trick two weak (preferably rich) people with a contract that pays a flat fee on completion of the dungeon. Then, in the dungeon, they kill the pair, loot their gear, and blame it on the monsters.

The obvious problem is that this is a plan of diminishing returns. As things go on, more and more people will notice the suspiciously high death rate for the party—and anyone with experience as a Hunter will avoid the group. This means that the party will have to prey on weak, isolated newbies—i.e., those who generally won't have gear that's worth much.

This, in and of itself, is fine as far as villainous motivations go. They're just lowlifes riding the scam as far as they can. It also serves to show why they are so gung-ho in this episode: Jinjo is a rare newbie who has a ton of expensive gear. It doesn't matter that Jinwoo has nothing worth stealing—he's just there as a tool to get Jinjo into the dungeon.

The issue I have with the evil party is the point where they act against their immediate self-interest to a suspension-of-disbelief-breaking degree. The moment they discovered the mana stones, the plan should have changed. It's common knowledge that a dungeon disappears an hour after the boss is killed. Simply put, killing Jinjo and Jinwoo leaves the party down two people capable of carrying out load after load of stones in that limited time. This amount of mana stones looks to be a once-in-a-lifetime chance at the C-class level. Even splitting the gems seven ways instead of five shouldn't hurt the bottom line—especially with all the weight they've seen Jinwoo capable of carrying. And to be frank, they can just kill Jinjo and get his gear next time. Can you imagine him turning them down after such a profitable first run?

But no, despite the obvious profitability of keeping the two alive, they go with the original plan and trap Jinjo and Jinwoo with the boss. And to be fair, I understand them on a metatextual level—these are a group of people that need to be so evil that we won't feel bad for them when Jinwoo inevitably slaughters them next episode. I just feel the creators here went a bit too far trying to make them unlikeable and ended up making them into “too dumb to live” caricatures rather than believable characters.

Despite all my complaints, I want to make it clear that I enjoyed this episode in general. It's nice to see that, despite leveling up, Jinwoo still has everyday problems like the rest of us—like missing his rent payment and having to scramble to pay it. This situation also allows us to see how it is for a low-level party without a nobleperson like Chiyul at the head. There's a good amount of world-building in this episode that works—which is why it's so much more glaring when it doesn't.

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• I chuckled at the nurse asking for Jinwoo's number as he headed to check out.

• Jinwoo's sister takes his physical changes way too casually.

• Continuing from his issues last week, we have a good little character beat when Jinwoo sees the spider boss and again has to remind himself that it's something he can now fight.

• I'm torn on spending time in this episode introducing us to Baek Yoonho. Yes, he is a notable character overall but he's not connected to anything happening right now.

Solo Leveling is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

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Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.