Solo Leveling

Episode 6

With this episode, we get the metaphorical death of the good-natured, innocent boy that Jinwoo started as. More and more over these first six episodes, Jinwoo has channeled his rage at the unfairness of the world into the power to survive. It's a simple fact that the weak are preyed on by the strong—be that the monsters or the humans that hunt them.

Yet, despite being abandoned in the double dungeon—even after being left to face the spider alone—Jinwoo doesn't turn his anger upon other people. There is nothing to suggest that he wouldn't have just escaped the dungeon with Jinho and reported what happened to the authorities if given the chance. Even when our villains of the episode try to get Jinho to kill him, Jinwoo doesn't lash out.

In the end, it's the mixture of him being attacked with lethal intent and the system forcing him into a life-or-death battle that makes him take that final step and become a murderer. And so he kills the entire party (sans Jinho) brutally and efficiently—alternating in his mind between a mantra of survival of the fittest and that the system is forcing his hand.

However, it's important to note that being willing to kill now—i.e., perceiving hostile humans the same way as monsters—does not make him evil or heartless. Rather, Jinwoo has built a line in his mind between “enemy” and “friend.” This is why he is never aggressive toward Jinho in the least—even though killing Jinho would be the pragmatic thing to do (as it would hide both his true powers and what he did in the dungeon). He doesn't even threaten Jinho to keep quiet about what happened when they are being debriefed. This is because Jinho has done nothing to put himself in the enemy category.

And perhaps even more telling about Jinwoo's new mindset is the scene at the end of the episode. He is so at peace with what he has done, that his only thoughts are for his sister—that he's happy he made her take an umbrella to school.

But while the character work is spot-on in this episode, the show continues to undercut its drama. Several times, we randomly break away from the action to half-introduce characters that will factor into the story going forward. On one hand, it's nice to have these characters feel like a part of the world even before they become directly involved in Jinwoo's story. On the other, while I can see keeping up with characters like Haein and Gunhee would make sense given their importance in the overall story, spending time with the likes of background characters like Gina and Heejin over focusing on Jinwoo's life-or-death struggles seems like a baffling choice.

All in all, this is a strong episode of Solo Leveling—even if it is brought down a bit by its pacing. While Jinwoo's body change last episode was a bit sudden, his change in mental state has been a gradual process—and that makes him easy to empathize with even if he is no longer the character as we first knew him.

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Solo Leveling is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

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