Solo Leveling Season 2 Arrives in the UK
Fans of Solo Leveling can rejoice as Season 2 of the hit anime will come to UK theatres on 4th December 2024, with both subbed and dubbed versions. The collaboration between Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures Entertainment will see the release of a movie-style animation of the first two episodes of the new season preceded by a recap of Season 1, which will function as a reminder of what happened but also give the series fans a taste of what’s to come in the new year. The movie will be titled Solo Leveling: ReAwakening while the series premiering in 2025 will be titled Solo Leveling: Arise from the Shadow.
I was invited to a press screening of the movie at the Sony Pictures Entertainment offices last week, and I had high expectations. Many anime fans know that new seasons are not always as good as first ones, so I was a tiny bit worried. I wanted the new season to be as good if not even better than the previous one, and thankfully I wasn’t disappointed.
Solo Leveling: ReAwakening lasts around two hours. The first hour (rough estimate) is a recap of Season 1, from Episodes 1 to 12. This way even viewers who haven’t watched it or are not familiar with the general plot can familiarise themselves with the series.
In a world similar to ours, mysterious gates have started to appear all over the globe. These gates lead to dungeons full of monsters, and if they are not cleared by set times, the dungeons will ‘break’, leading monsters to invade Earth. To fight these monsters and clear the dungeons, some humans have awakened special powers and thus become hunters. Sung Jinwoo is a hunter in South Korea, but of the lowest rank! He’s an E-rank, the weakest of the weakest, also nicknamed the weakest hunter of all mankind. However, one day he and his team find more than they bargained for in a dungeon, leading Jinwoo to re-awaken with the ability to increase his power and his rank. While some other hunters have gone through reawakening, no one else can change his or her rank. Now Jinwoo needs to follow the missions assigned to him by the system, which appear to him in a game-like window that only he can see. Jinwoo needs to become stronger and find out what the system is and what it wants with him if he wants to protect the people he loves…and all of humanity!
The first season was full of action and gore. As the manhwa, the anime as well doesn’t shy away from violence and blood, so maybe think twice about watching it (or reading it) if you’re squeamish. If instead you don’t mind the sight of blood and decapitations, then be ready for a lot (and I really mean a lot) of fighting. We left Season 1 with Jinwoo doing a job-change quest which leads him to gain a ‘shadow monarch’ title. What it means exactly, you’ll have to wait and see (or read if you can’t wait for it), but in Season 2 Jinwoo starts putting his new powers—and title—to use!
He soon ends up in a double dungeon —a low-rank dungeon that hides a stronger dungeon inside it. The survival rate is really low, but it’s not Jinwoo’s first rodeo. He can test his new skills, but it won’t be long before his new powers are revealed to the world. How will his fellow Koreans react? Will he be able to save his mother from the magical coma she’s in? What’s the system and the power assigned to him? So many questions are still left unanswered, and I can’t wait to find out the answers!
While Season 1 set up Jinwoo’s character and background and also introduced quite a few characters that will become prominent the more the series goes on, it’s in Season 2 where viewers can expect to see Jinwoo’s powers in full (we knew of the shadow soldiers since the Season 1 series poster!). Already in the first couple of episodes we can see Jinwoo’s growth and the battles that are coming his way—both from monsters and humans alike. If you can’t wait until January to watch it, the cinema release is your best option to get a preview of what to expect. However, if you’ve watched the first season recently, I’d advise against it as half of the movie is just a recap of what you’ve already seen.
I watched the movie in Japanese with English subtitles, and a small issue for me is that there is no differentiation from one character to the other in the subtitles when someone is speaking. If you can recognize the different voices of the speakers, you won’t have a problem, otherwise you might need to understand who is speaking from the context.
Solo Leveling started as a web novel written by Chugong. It then got adapted into a manhwa by h-goon with illustrations by Dubu (Redice Studio). A-1 Pictures studio worked on the animation released on Crunchyroll in 2024 and they came back for Season 2 as well. Fans of J-pop and K-pop will also be pleased to know that the new theme song will see a collaboration between LiSA (Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba) and Felix from the K-pop band Stray Kids.
Tickets can be bought via the official movie website: Solo Leveling:Reawakening
