Solo Levelinghas one big flaw that turns many would-be fans away—and which one classic anime fixed years earlier.Solo Levelingfollows Sung Jinwoo, a boy in a world where hunters are contracted to take down monsters festering inside gates that sporadically appear. Hunters are typically divided into ranks based on their power levels, andit’s very rare for those power levels to change at all. That’s not the case for Jinwoo, though, who awakens to a bizarre set of RPG-inspired abilities and obligations like inventories, quests, and leveling up after a mission gone wrong.
As people are eagerly awaitingSolo Leveling’s third season, there’s another anime worth checking out.Solo Levelingshares many surface-level similarities withWorld Trigger. Both are predicated onthe idea of paranormal gates which present an existential threat. However, the thing that most setsWorld Triggerapart also shows its avoidance of a huge problemSolo Levelinglocked itself into early on.
Solo Leveling’s Biggest Problem Has Always Been Its Writing
Solo Leveling Loses Itself Almost Immediately, Thematically And Narratively
It’s easy to feel alienated bySolo Leveling’s writing. Especially if one is used to the MMORPG gimmick, its presentation feels over-explained. More importantly, Jinwoo’s relative isolation presents a creeping thriller-like feel at times when his secret is discovered (or when that even comes close to happening), but italso prevents his relationships from having much depth. The characters fans feel like they’re supposed to care about (like Lee Joohee) are under-explored because of the anime’s singular emphasis on Jinwoo.
This is particularly a problem when it comes to the first season. Some might even characterizeSolo Levelingas “style over substance”, abusing flashy animation tocover a story that’s all too narrow. Although the second season has demonstrated more depth with the start ofthe beloved Jeju Island arc, and the manhwa does correct this by showing there’s more to the gates than meets the eye, some ofSolo Leveling’s core writing problems remain.
World Trigger Rewards Every Solo Leveling Fan Who Gets Through The Early Slog
World Trigger Becomes A True Competitor For Solo Leveling
Fans (or would-be fans) ofSolo Levelingwill find a great counterpoint inWorld Trigger. WhereSolo Levelingfocuses primarily on Jinwoo and the struggle with the invading magical beasts,World Triggerconsiders the daily lives and relationships of its characters as much as anything else. Furthermore,World Trigger’s counterpart toSolo Leveling’s magical beasts, called Neighbors, have more complexity. One of its leads, Yuma Kuga, is a Neighbor himself—whose ultimate desire is to live among, and be understood as, human.World Triggermakes up for somethingSolo Levelingstruggled with from the start: giving its other characters due time, making the relationships that feel like they’resupposedto be important actually important.
World TriggermatchesSolo Levelingin the feeling of hard-earned growth for which fans love the series. The biggest payoffs inSolo Levelingare when one gets to see the real-time rewards of Jinwoo’s struggles, and althoughWorld Triggerdisperses this bounty among its entire cast,the interplay of suspense and payoff is definitely there.World Levelinghas a slow start, but it doesn’t take all too long to pick up, improving tremendously after the first season. AlthoughWorld Triggerseems less dark thanSolo Levelingon the surface, it tackles darker subject matter by virtue of being willing to give its characters more definition thanSolo Levelinggave itself room for.
