Ore Dake Level Up na Ken / Solo Leveling

[MFauli]

Ten years ago, "the Gate" appeared and connected the real world with the realm of magic and monsters. To combat these vile beasts, ordinary people received superhuman powers and became known as "Hunters." Twenty-year-old Sung Jin-Woo is one such Hunter, but he is known as the "World's Weakest," owing to his pathetic power compared to even a measly E-Rank. Still, he hunts monsters tirelessly in low-rank Gates to pay for his mother's medical bills.

Episode 1:

First of all, I left out the second part of the synopsis above, because it spoils the 2nd episode ... that hasn't been released, LOL. Just searched whether this was another double-release, but no.

As for the first episode, it was much better than expected. While the beginning feels a bit rushed and we're supposed to accept a lot of ridiculous things as a given (I really want to know what conventional weapons are literally useless. If those monsters step through a gate into our world, the laws of physics should dictate that a heavy force should impact them, no matter what. There'd have to be an active magic spell protecting the monsters from our world's weaponry. Very weird choice), the general feeling was pleasantly down-to-earth and with a nice amount of realism - except for the idiot who uses his pregnant wife as a reason FOR going to fight deadly monsters, lol.

Made a thread because this seems to be the #1 hyped anime of the season and it's surely gonna be fun enough. I'm still skeptic of how good it's gonna remain, because from the synopsis, the main character will probably quickly turn into a powerful character. If we get another Kirito, that'd be super bad.

Anyway, this anime season is already leaps better than last.

[Ryllharu]

Hard skip for me. I read the majority of the manwha/webtoon and well...yeah.

It should be considered the flagship title in setting off a flurry of korean-style Xianxia/Cultivation stories. But this is certainly going to be the most overhyped series of the season.

It has a rabid cult following that refuses to give it a balanced take.

[Kraco]

The manhwa was quite good. Although if you have read a lot of similar series, I'd guess it wouldn't impress much.

This hasn't got anything to do with xianxia/cultivation. I don't know why Ryll would throw those words randomly around here. Korea has its own martial arts series (murim stories), but this isn't one of them, not matter how you look at it. This is more like a weird isekai story happening right on Earth.

[Ryllharu]

It's not a murim story since there is no parallel society of martial artists, they're all publicly known. It is definitely closer to xianxia since it focuses on being reborn and rewriting fate through effort.

It is a xianxia story viewed through a LitRPG filter.

And while I agree that it is good, it isn't mindblowing and it is absolutely overhyped to hell and back.

[MFauli]

My god, stop throwing around random Korean words or at least explain them ;>

@Kraco: It's not "weird isekai" imo, it's a better GATE.

[Ryllharu]

My god, stop throwing around random Korean words or at least explain them ;>

China and Korea have fiction genre staples for martial arts that are dissimilar from their Japanese counterparts.

• wuxia - Chinese martial arts hero series. You probably know this one. Just that kind of series in general.
• xianxia - "immortal heroes", is wuxia where the heroes essentially become living deities or actual ones through years of effort or granted due to extraordinary achievements. It is your Taoist and Buddhist Chinese myths and folk stories. A subgenre within this where specific styles, techniques, means, effort of this training accomplishes becoming an ascendant being is often translated as "cultivation". As in cultivating skills, techniques, qi or some other energy, etc.
• Murim - Is specifically Korean wuxia, but with the very consistent theme is that the world is divided into a normal world run by the regular government, and the "murim" world of martial artists run by their own laws, practices, and authorities. The regular government and the murim leaders have agreements with each other not to interefere with each other's "worlds," so that the two societies exist in parallel and the murim one is largely hidden within the regular one. The martial arts sects within the murim world fight each other over stupid shit.

[MFauli]

Ok, just to be safe: Pls no spoilers about where this story goes and such. Gotwoot has a manga-forum :>

Edit: Ah, Ryll just posted. So ... could Dragonball be called a story that started out as Wuxia and then turned into Xianxia?

[Ryllharu]

Ok, just to be safe: Pls no spoilers about where this story goes and such. Gotwoot has a manga-forum :>

Edit: Ah, Ryll just posted. So ... could Dragonball be called a story that started out as Wuxia and then turned into Xianxia?

I wouldn't go that far. Dragonball is still very Japanese at its core and Toriyama is a nutcase in the best way possible, so there's not really a direct parallel. Ranma 1/2 is a very clear wuxia series though, just written by a Japanese woman.

[MFauli]

I wouldn't go that far. Dragonball is still very Japanese at its core and Toriyama is a nutcase in the best way possible, so there's not really a direct parallel. Ranma 1/2 is a very clear wuxia series though, just written by a Japanese woman.

Ok, so Xianxia and Wuxia require Chinese story elements to be called Xianxia and Wuxia? Because Japanese genres are separate from any ethnic connotation, that's what irritates me a bit.

[Ryllharu]

Historically, at the time both were developed and launched, Japan was deeply influenced by Hong Kong cinema the same way the US was, just explosion of content from the territory that people became very enamored with. So no, I mean the whole plot in general of Ranma 1/2 is explicitly wuxia and written to be one. It's a Japanese author making a wuxia series because she wanted to tap into the craze, aimed at women and children. It has Chinese elements because she couldn't think of a better way to make the mysticism of series fit well.

Dragonball is not really the same thing. It is a comedic Journey to the West combined with Jackie Chan's Drunken Master that then just becomes its completely own thing. It isn't necessarily wuxia, though it started as one thematically, it's just Dragonball. It's shaped more heavily by Toriyama and his editor(s) adapting to the Japanese market like any shonen series does. Toriyama was forced to write it so they'd let him end Dr. Slump. Dragonball is Toriyama just completely making a wuxia-style setting up that then goes bonkers because he wrote Dr. Slump, so of course it does, but then shifts back to a pure fighting series because that is what the market wanted.

All three countries influence each other's comics industries in strange ways due to their history with each other. Obviously, Japan has the biggest influence, but from post WWII to the 1990s, Japanese media was banned in Korea. In that time, Korea was more directly influenced in content and art style by wuxia and other comics from China directly in contrast. Korea's industry exploded in the early 2000s thanks to their shift to the webtoon format. Chinese manhua was then deeply influenced the webtoon format (easier to read on phones, and you scroll through pages rather than flip) as well. Now Japan is shifting to color comics and web-only series. One big circle.

Solo Leveling is a web novel, that was adapted into a very popular webtoon.

[MFauli]

Historically, at the time both were developed and launched, Japan was deeply influenced by Hong Kong cinema the same way the US was, just explosion of content from the territory that people became very enamored with. So no, I mean the whole plot in general of Ranma 1/2 is explicitly wuxia and written to be one. It's a Japanese author making a wuxia series because she wanted to tap into the craze, aimed at women and children. It has Chinese elements because she couldn't think of a better way to make the mysticism of series fit well.

Dragonball is not really the same thing. It is a comedic Journey to the West combined with Jackie Chan's Drunken Master that then just becomes its completely own thing. It isn't necessarily wuxia, though it started as one thematically, it's just Dragonball. It's shaped more heavily by Toriyama and his editor(s) adapting to the Japanese market like any shonen series does. Toriyama was forced to write it so they'd let him end Dr. Slump. Dragonball is Toriyama just completely making a wuxia-style setting up that then goes bonkers because he wrote Dr. Slump, so of course it does, but then shifts back to a pure fighting series because that is what the market wanted.

All three countries influence each other's comics industries in strange ways due to their history with each other. Obviously, Japan has the biggest influence, but from post WWII to the 1990s, Japanese media was banned in Korea. In that time, Korea was more directly influenced in content and art style by wuxia and other comics from China directly in contrast. Korea's industry exploded in the early 2000s thanks to their shift to the webtoon format. Chinese manhua was then deeply influenced the webtoon format (easier to read on phones, and you scroll through pages rather than flip) as well. Now Japan is shifting to color comics and web-only series. One big circle.

Solo Leveling is a web novel, that was adapted into a very popular webtoon.

I guess what I don't understand is why you'd create a label for a very specific kind of story. "A story where a character grows stronger, using chinese mythology, and martial arts, is wuxia." And a story where a character goes on a date with someone and proposes while wearing a diving usit is suixia. Made that one up, ofc, but that's why I have a hard time accepting these terms.

Scifi is scifi
Fantasy is fantasy
Shounen is adventure aimed at boys
Shoujo is aimed at girls
Seinen is for older audiences
and so on

Wuxia and Xianxia sound like terms for such specific story setups that you could create hundreds of "genres" that way. Feels unnecessary imo. But that's just my ignorant opinion and I wouldn't have talked about it if you hadn't completely trashed Solo Leveling, lol

[KrayZ33]

I think the show will be enjoyable up until a certain point.
That's how far (and a bit beyond before I realized it) I read and enjoyed the source material as well.

After that it really became quite boring and pretty garbage.

So... season 1 might actually be enjoyable to watch for me.


The ranking system of S,A,B,C,D,E class hunters should tell everyone what this show is about, as we've seen 500 shows like this before and those who do read manwha and isekai stories, probably have read another 5.000 of them. (you know, the ones with names that have like 60 words in them)
And they all suffer from the same errors and mundane story telling. All 5.000 of them.

All 5.000 of them start with them being quite fun, until the author just throws random shit and deus-ex-machina abilities, items and situations into the fray, because they have no flipping idea how to keep their story "entertaining" anymore. They literally have to invent stuff on the fly for stuff to even work out, or to make it not "more of the same we had in the last 100 chapters".

But at the same time, I enjoy almost all 5.000 of them before it gets to that point.. or sometimes even beyond until every remotely intelligent creature on the planets would start thinking: "Okay buddy, this is Goku level of nonsense you are just throwing at me now"

The very first episode, the statue room scene, most likely is what most people got into the series and I believe the anime did it just as well.
You were clearly able to see how everything else was like 10% effort (the explanations on how the gates work and what hunters do etc. - it was so freaking boring to listen to, lol) and the statue room got 90% of it even though it was like 10% of the episode.


The reason why I think the statue room is so good is because it feels like they are actually doing some dungeon crawling and the "Gamemaster" gave them something to figure out, as they are quite clearly not powerful enough (as seen in this episode already)

[Ryllharu]

Xian - immortal beings. The word is the same word used for those mythical heroes and beings in Chinese folklore. "Demi-gods" is just as apt.

Xia - specifically implies a person who is brave, chivalrous, righteous and defiant. Hero/vigilantes.

It's a subgenre of wuxia. No different from isekai being a subgenre of fantasy.

[MFauli]

Xian - immortal beings. The word is the same word used for those mythical heroes and beings in Chinese folklore. "Demi-gods" is just as apt.

Xia - specifically implies a person who is brave, chivalrous, righteous and defiant. Hero/vigilantes.

It's a subgenre of wuxia. No different from isekai being a subgenre of fantasy.

Yeah, but Xianxia just feels like further specification. You could have an isekai-xianxia. Immortals and a brave hero, that's part of so many anime or stories in general, putting a label on it now ... I mean, sure. Imo it's just part of many stories.

[shinta|hikari]

The reason is because these specific sub-genres are really popular, so much so people generally seek out almost exactly the same type of stories. Having a name for them is convenient when doing searches and filtering results.

These sub-genres also use a ton of the same tropes, enough that it would make sense for them to be classified as one sub-type.

[neflight86]

...but how's the show? Is this going to be a mess like God of High School again?

[Kraco]

...but how's the show? Is this going to be a mess like God of High School again?

That's impossible to know. The first episode was decent enough, but it's just the first episode.

[KrayZ33]

What Kraco said.
Season 1 might be "slow enough" for it to be enjoyable.
First episode was okay, but it already shows signs of the source material being "not so good".

I think you'll like it enough for the first 3-5 episodes or so before you can make that judgement yourself.
After all, it's going to be the zero to hero kinda thing, I think you and most other people (me included) like these kinda things.
MC is a completely useless dude that can't do shit on his own right now and the show is called "solo leveling" - take a guess what's going to happen in terms of story.

It's always when that "hero status" is achieved, it starts to move into a really boring territory most of them.

[KrayZ33]

I actually watched episode 1 again because a guy told me how great he thought the first episode was..... (He gave it a 10/10 wtf)

I was surprised and started rewatching...and honestly, now after watching it twice I like it even less, lol.
The worldbuilding is horrible.

Guy in suit (no matter who that character is) drops information about how everything works, with images flying by. The lowest, easiest, and least interesting way to do worldbuilding.
People saying shit like "Oh no, our "RANKS" are too low" (oh okay, that kinda felt forced though..)
The captain mentioning "our guns don't work anyway..." (hmm okay I see)

Then after all that, the freaking association dude explains EVERYTHING for the dumb people, literally everything we've seen with actual images first, even if they weren't all that great.
It's like they went for the "show, don't tell" approach and then said "ah naw, we really have to actually say it out loud, or they'll miss it".

I honestly think a 5/10 for that first episode would be a fair judgement. The animation was real jank from time to time too (the scene in which MC hid behind a stone and the group was fighting against werewolves and goblins)

If they had started with the Gate mission, like the manwha did, I honestly believe it would've been a better episode. The attempted worldbuilding and explaining made everything worse in my book. Frontloading everything instead of letting us explore it is just a worse way of doing this imho.

[Kraco]

The director might have been worried about the number of episodes, or other such details, that would prevent from building the world properly. The sudden lecture was egregious, that's for sure. I'd say the director is incompetent and has no faith in the story to carry itself, but maybe the director knows the Japanese audience far better than I do.