Solo Leveling

Episode 7

There's a lot to like about this episode on the character-building front. Jinwoo's talks with his sister give us a peak into the sibling dynamic and show us what Jinwoo is fighting so hard to protect—to the point that he is even willing to kill other people. Likewise, his talk with Jinho shows us how Jinwoo's thought process is changing with his strength and his expectations of things to come. We even get a great little moment where Jinho, in a moment of panic, tries to blackmail Jinwoo—only for a single murderous look from Jinwoo to knock that foolish idea out of his head. It's good stuff—but then we get the big fight of the episode.

Up until this point in the series, I've felt good about our hero and his level of power. While only Jinwoo can level up, it's been a step-by-step process. We've seen him go from killing a single goblin to groups of goblins, to wolves, to giant snakes and spiders. In the last episode, we even saw him tear through some C-rank hunters. In theory, this should put him somewhere in the B-ranks. But even then he's not even close to the top of what humans can become. However, he will be one of the strongest eventually.

In this episode, we get the first battle that it feels like Jinwoo should have lost—one that, frankly, it's insane to even think he had a chance of winning. Cerberus is the first boss of a special S-rank dungeon. Even Jinwoo himself states that S-rank dungeons require a full team of S-rank hunters to tackle. Yet, despite supposedly being much weaker than a team of the most powerful people on the planet, Jinwoo somehow comes out on top.

I might be able to give it some leeway if it had been a victory caused by quick thinking or exploiting the system. But, no. He wins simply by stabbing Cerberus in the eye a lot. This doesn't make sense on any level. We see that the status effects of the dagger have no effect on Cerberus and the blade's so short that it wouldn't even exit out the back of the eye. But even if it did—even if Jinwoo somehow sliced up the brain, what would it matter? Cerberus has three heads. Why does stabbing it in the eye a bunch (and giving it a few paper cuts across its body) kill it? I have no idea. And that's why this fight annoys me.

More than that, it would have been much more compelling narratively if Jinwoo had to use every bit of his brain and brawn just to be able to escape. With that, he would be truly humbled—seeing how far he is above some but also knowing he is still far below others. But now that he's jumped from taking out the boss of a C-Rank dungeon to the boss of an S-Rank one, his line about needing to come back to the castle after he's stronger rings more than a bit hollow.

Now I feel like everything we know about Jinwoo's relative strength to other hunters has been called into question. Is he already the most powerful on Earth? Or could other S-rank hunters have done the same against Cerberus? Or was there something special happening behind the scenes and this suspension-of-disbelief-breaking fight was a hint of that? Only time will tell. But in the end, I feel like this episode harmed the series more than it helped—which is a shame considering how good the character moments were in the front half of the episode.

Rating:

Solo Leveling is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

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