Solo Leveling – ReAwakening, the film based on the successful animated series available on Crunchyroll from January 2024 with the first season and coming with the second in January 2025. It is not a prequel, it is not a sequel, it is not a spin-off, and it does not clarify or deepen gray areas and mysteries left pending in the first season. Solo Leveling – ReAwakening is something different, it is the first season of the series, and not only that.
The animated film, directed by Shunsuke Nakashige (Sword Art Online) with animation by A-1 Pictures (Sword Art Online), is simultaneously the summary of the first season and the preview of the first two episodes of the second. The same story, the same characters, the same backgrounds, and the same animation, projected on a canvas (the screen) and for an audience (the movie theater) different from usual. It is what today is called experience; despite some perhaps inevitable hindrances, it works.
Solo Leveling – ReAwakening: monsters, portals, and hunters with prodigious abilities
Before the cinema, there was the highly successful South Korean web novel, the most famous and acclaimed in the world, illustrated by Chugong. Then the animated series on Crunchyroll and, finally, in theaters for three days only, Solo Leveling – ReAwakening. The progressive slippage from one format to another does not call into question the double strength of the story. One is the mix of atmospheres and suggestions: brutality and psychology, fantasy aesthetics, and intense moral dilemmas.
Two, the extreme linearity of the plot, a bitterly ironic consideration keeping in mind the chaotic and limping pace of the narration. In an attempt to summarize the important things of the first season and to anticipate, without exaggerating with spoilers, as much as possible of the second, Solo Leveling – ReAwakening runs a lot, perhaps too much. But it is hard to imagine that it could have been done otherwise.
In doing so, it loses vital information on the when, how, and why of the story, not investing enough in the construction of a rational narrative arc for the protagonist. It all happens quickly but things - the imperfect miracle of an imperfect, exciting, and crazy-looking film - still find the right balance. The mythology of the series is based on linear and captivating conventions; in addition, there is the journey of the hero (protagonist). His name is Sung Jinwoo and, at the same time, he is the weakest and the strongest Hunter. Mysterious dimensional portals, otherwise known as Gates, open up everywhere, spilling horrible creatures onto the Earth. To fight them, a group of earthlings with prodigious abilities intervenes. They are called, in fact, Hunters.
Jinwoo is among the least gifted. Hunters gather in associations called Guilds and based on their power they are placed in a classification grid. Jinwoo is an E-rank Hunter, the lowest, where the highest is S-rank. Nobody believes in him and with good reason. His powers are too weak, the most likely scenario is an inglorious death. This is what happens in the first minutes of Solo Leveling – ReAwakening, in fact, so quickly that it confuses the less informed viewer and puts the lucidity of the passionate one to the test; the second half of the film takes care of putting things right.
Jinwoo brushes death but is called back (awakened, as the title suggests) by a mysterious force that offers him the chance to become the strongest Hunter as long as he follows the instructions by completing a series of missions – bloody and extremely dangerous – tailor-made for him. Solo Leveling – ReAwakening is the story of Jinwoo’s climb to the world of Hunters and the progressive upheaval of his personality. The concern of the film – and of the series before the film – is also of an intimate and moral nature. There is not only the action.
Action and introspection, technology and fantasy
The film is a quick reconnaissance of a pre-existing and future story because there is not only the first season but also a preview of what will happen in the second; imperfection is inevitable, like the feeling of a void to be filled. The limping and uncertain pace of Solo Leveling – ReAwakening is the unavoidable limit. There is not enough time to hold everything in, the quality of the characterizations, the main course of the story and the secondary deviations, the fights, and the big question marks.
The film directed by Shunsuke Nakashige would have everything, theoretically, to fail – hasty plot, imbalance between the first and second part, attention paid to the protagonist at the expense of the supporting characters – and instead, it holds its own, does not let itself be overwhelmed by its defects and gives the viewer quality entertainment, not at all superficial. How does it manage to do it?
First of all, in the rush to put everything truly important into the story, the creative team does not forget that the strength of this animated universe is the simplicity of the starting conditions - a boy put on the margins receives a gift and learns to measure its possibilities and responsibilities - combined with stimulating reflections of a moral nature. It is the combination of opposites - action and introspection, technology and fantasy - that makes Solo Leveling - ReAwakening so successful.
If it is true that the first half hour runs fast, perhaps too fast, summarizing events and clarifying dynamics in a way that does not make it easy for the viewer to find the right references, it is equally true that it is not just a question of fights, pathos, and monstrous creatures. Much of the power of the story lies in the willingness to combine ethical dilemmas and fantasy-adventure storytelling.
In his condition as a Hunter marginalized by the rest of the world, Jinwoo reflects on the meaning of words like strength and weakness. And to the extent that the system that gives him back his life and powers forces him, due to the violent and morally questionable nature of the missions, to confront non-secondary ethical dilemmas, he also questions his identity and how good and evil coexist in the soul of man.
There is not enough of the old Jinwoo, fragile but human, in Solo Leveling – ReAwakening, to balance the ambiguity of the awakened hero, brave but morally unstable. It is the imbalance of a film that is born and develops on an uncomfortable premise – summarizing a season and something more in a film of fewer than two hours of duration – but has the lucidity and intelligence to work on itself to overcome the limits and bring entertainment, action, and reflection, to a higher level. It also depends on the quality of the animation, frankly crazy. We talk about it in a few lines below.
Solo Leveling – ReAwakening: evaluation and conclusion
Beyond the discontinuous plot, beyond the action and introspection, the strength of Solo Leveling – ReAwakening is the cleanliness, elegance, and flexibility of an animation that knows how to return with the same credibility the parentheses of the brutality of the story and the moments of intimate excavation, the world in which Jinwoo measures the extent of his powers and the one in which he questions his identity.
The animation is the definitive coherence of a film that proposes the impossible – keeping together the long time of seriality and the conciseness of cinema, the exteriority of action and psychology – and finds in the look, in the aesthetics, in the important work of A-1 Pictures and the motion graphics of Production I.G, its strong point. The chaotic and hasty narration does not scare the fan of the series, it could succeed with the less accustomed viewer. To save himself, he will have to seek his rewards in what elsewhere would have been called pure cinema, in the appeal of history and the seductive power of animation.