Summary
Solo Leveling's flashy battles lack substance, as seen in the endless duel between Jinwoo and Igris. Anime's emphasis on visuals over story and character development leads to endless battles. While still a strong series, Solo Leveling falls short when it comes to creating memorable and emotionally impactful fight scenes.
A-1 Image adapted from Level up alone was praised for the flashiness of its battles, but the most recent episodes show they're missing some key elements. While Jinwoo fought against the boss monster Red-Blooded Igris visually interesting, but it struggles to justify its purpose to the overall story or as a memorable duel. In other words, it feels pointless.
Although the anime carefully captures Jinwoo bouncing around the arena while fighting an armored ship, in the end, it fails to produce anything meaningful. The war did not even produce adequate payoff when considered on its own merits. Instead, when faced with a difficult question, Jinwoo succeeded not through inherent virtue but through dumb luck and a lot of screaming.
While Solo Leveling is still a strong series with a lot of merit, this fight proves that its style lacks substance, even though it tries its best to pretend otherwise.
Jinwoo and Igris's seemingly epic match lacked reason to care about it
Original webcomic created by Chugong
The fight against Igris in episode #11 of Solo Leveling is considered one of the climaxes of the story, to the point where it was even teased in the anime's opening. While it was initially fun to see Jinwoo and his armored foe hurl each other across the throne room, the fight quickly devolved into two blurry figures punching each other with nothing to show for it. To the end, when Jinwoo defeated Igris, it was just a happy accident – the knife stabbed into the eye slit on Igris's armor. While there's a lot of sketchy, fun animation dedicated to the moment, it's purely decorative.
It doesn't help that the significance of the war has become murky. While Jinwoo had the overarching goal of curing his mother's illness, Igris did not stand in the way of that. Instead, the whole incident was the result of Jinwoo trying to complete the “Job Change” quest. Solo Leveling's power growth is often circular for that reason. A lot of complex animations were created, just to end with Jinwoo's strength gave him the right to earn more powerwith an invisible helmet as a reward for Jinwoo risking his life.
Good fight scenes need more than flashy animation
Jinwoo's reliance on game skills and brute strengthIt's disappointingconsider the problem-solving skills he demonstrates in Episode 2. Igris's armor could present a reasonable problem to solve with his arsenal, but instead, A-1 replaced characterization with visual noise and ended with just a lucky stab.
Expensive but unexciting battles have also been seen elsewhere in the series, such as in Episode 9, where despite the unique nature of knife fights, Jinwoo's battle with Kang Taeshik just became a showdown between skills in the game. The best fight scenes in anime have emotional fights and uniquely choreographed sequences that make a differenceand until now, Level up alone There are very few of either.
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