Ju-Hui Lee

Solo Leveling began in South Korea. It started as a web novel by the writer Chugong, which first came out on the KakaoPage app in July 2016. In 2018 it became a popular webtoon, a comic made to be read on a phone, drawn by the artist Jang Sung-rak, who goes by the name Dubu. The Japanese studio A-1 Pictures made this anime version. It is directed by Shunsuke Nakashige, and the music is by Hiroyuki Sawano. The first season aired from January to March 2024. The story takes place in a modern world that changed about ten years before it begins. Strange portals called gates started to open in cities. Each gate leads to a dungeon full of monsters. If no one clears a dungeon in time, the monsters can break out into the streets. At the same time, some people woke up with special powers. These fighters are called hunters. Every hunter gets a rank, from E at the bottom to S at the top. A national Hunter Association and many private guilds hire hunters to clear the gates, and the best ones are rich and famous. One big rule shapes this world: once a hunter wakes up, their power never grows. Your rank is your rank for life. Sung Jin-woo (his name is also written Seong Jin-U) is an E-rank hunter. Other hunters joke that he is the weakest hunter in the world, because he gets hurt on almost every job. He does not fight for glory. His mother has a strange magic illness called Eternal Sleep, and she cannot wake up. Her hospital bills are huge, so Jin-woo keeps taking dangerous jobs to pay them. He also looks after his younger sister, Jin-ah, who is still a student. Everything changes during one raid. Jin-woo and his team find a hidden second dungeon inside a normal one, a rare and deadly thing called a double dungeon. The group is trapped, and Jin-woo nearly dies. When he wakes up, he can see a floating screen that no one else can see. It is the System, a program that gives him daily tasks, rewards, and points, almost like a video game. For the first time in history, a hunter can level up. Jin-woo starts training in secret, gets stronger step by step, and tries to learn where the System came from and what it wants from him. Along the way he meets people like Yoo Jin-ho, a rich young man who becomes a loyal friend, and the S-rank hunter Cha Hae-in. The show is a dark, fast action fantasy. It has bloody fights, scary monsters, and moments of real danger, so it is best for older teens and adults. A big part of the fun is watching a weak, kind person slowly become powerful, and seeing how other people react. Sawano's loud, dramatic music adds to the big battle scenes. The opening song, "LEveL", was made with the K-pop group TOMORROW X TOGETHER. The anime was a large hit around the world. At the 9th Crunchyroll Anime Awards, it won several prizes, including Anime of the Year, Best New Series, and Best Action. A second season, called Arise from the Shadow, followed in 2025.