Transcript

Speaker: The thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast do not reflect that of an invalid caste. Enjoy the show.

Speaker: Hi, you're listening to Life Blood, a podcast about manga, manhwa, light novels and other types of comic books. I'm your host, Crypt, the Ancient Blood, and I'm here to geek out on all the good stuff, so if you like what you hear, let's go.

Speaker: In this episode, I fly Sulu again as I jump into a title that I've been holding back on since Lifeblood began. I'm talking about Sulu Leveling, the South Korean action fantasy web novel written by Choo Gong, also known as Only I Level Up.

Speaker: was first realized on the digital comic and fiction platform, Kakao Page, in July 2016. In November of the same year, solo leveling was then published in full by DNC Media's popular label, like all good web novels. The title spawned a webtoon that was also serialized on Kakao Page in March or April 2018. This adaptation was illustrated by Jang Soong -Rak, AKA Doubu,

Speaker: the CEO of Redai Studio, who unfortunately passed away on July 23rd, 2022. The manra ended in December 2021 with a total of 179 chapters. The light novel ended with 270 chapters, which were compiled into 14 volumes.

Speaker: Solo leveling is set in a world like ours but unlike the earth we know, mysterious gates to another world appear filled with vicious monsters. Humans develop magical abilities to combat this new threat, but everyone acquires these powers and even among the gifted, there are huge power gaps between them. These superpowered humans are called hunters and a guild system is created around their existence, leading to multiple factions, prestige and whatnot.

Speaker: There's even a ranking system that ranks the characters based on their abilities. The story begins with Sun Jin -woo, a new rank hunter and possibly the weakest in the world. After a brutal dungeon run in which most of the party of hunters were killed, Sun is left for dead when he is suddenly saved by a mysterious force that logs him in as a player and grants him the extremely rare ability to level up. This is a big deal.

Speaker: Because once a hunter discovers their powers, their abilities are measured by their country's respective authority and ranked, it's almost impossible to outgrow your rank. So essentially, Sun gets the ability to rank up from E to D, C, B, like, as far as he can go. As you can tell, it falls into the popular manual and web novel trope of game systems within the real world. There's a whole bunch of them anyway. Also shares a lot of Isekai DNA.

Speaker: from the overpowered protagonist to their ability to get increasingly stronger through what Mike called a cheat ability. It doesn't matter that it lacks the usual reincarnation or forcefully transported into another world, they're just really similar. So it's kind of like Sakai without the world switching. Not only is Sun able to level up, but he also gains access to more abilities as he does so.

Speaker: including strong magical loot that other hunters do not have access to. So overall, it's just a cheat. This includes even the hunters from the world's biggest guilds like Arging, White Tiger, Fiend. This guy literally has things that the best don't have access to, or at least some.

Speaker: most of the best as you can expect some will meet many other hunters as he continues to level up all in an attempt to find out what the system is the system that gave him his abilities where the gates came from why they have monsters why did they all of that stuff plus or minus

Speaker: Chu Gong's writing is really nice and simple. This makes the story easy to digest and you'll find yourself whizzing through all 350 plus pages of the light novel in only a few hours. The story is complete.

Speaker: sounds funny to say it but yes that is actually true lots of stories don't get finished because of one reason or the other but anyway the story is complete so Yanon the publisher or any other publisher that decides to pick up the book if Yanon drops it will definitely be able to bring the remaining volumes to English I believe the sixth is out and we should be expecting the seventh volume next year I've only read the

Speaker: First volume of the light novel It's also a good time to be a fan of solo leveling as there's an upcoming mobile game from net marble Yes, we know their track record, but check out videos. The game looks really good You want pictures also have an anime series in the works that's premiering next year as well so plenty good stuff for solo leveling fans and

Speaker: While this episode makes the solo leveling light novel its focus, I think I can mention the art as one of the pros, even though it doesn't feature any prominently, I think just the covers. But then we get to see the same art in the manga, oh sorry, manhwa. And it doesn't seem to lose any of its quality, so there's no disconnect between the light novel or the manhwa, like you just jump from one to the other, at least as far as the art goes.

Speaker: The man who is also in color, which is another pro, especially for those that hate black and white comic books. Our hero, Soong, doesn't really have any particular character traits that make him stand out for me. He's kind of like every generic hero in the genre. Calm, cool, and awkward with ladies. Kind of sounds like me as a kid, I think.

Speaker: I'm not a fan of stories with overpowered heroes. In real life, I enjoy a good challenge. I think it's evident in the kind of games I play and the kind of work I do.

Speaker: now this means i don't really like titles like solo leveling that focus on giving us overpowered characters because i feel like there's no challenge there's no real growth but in this story's defense song's journey to the top is not an easy one like he still struggles works hard even though he's overpowered but he's just

Speaker: Like, he just has too many cheats. It's like, I don't know, playing any game with cheat codes on. So you always have this advantage over everyone else, despite difficulty. The title says it all, but I would have loved it if Jugong shared the spotlight with some of the other characters in the story. And when I say that, it's not like they don't feature them.

Speaker: It's just I don't know what I prefer more in -depth content regarding those characters as well. I read the manga I think almost halfway through and that was a few years ago and during that period I don't think I ever noticed any deep character development for the other like hunters and heroes humans and all that. Conclusion

Speaker: my first contact with solo leveling was with the manhwa like i mentioned before and i had a lot of fun with it like really enjoyed it i believe it stood out to me mostly because of the art though and the powers soon accumulated character designs and other characters powers um the monsters the battles themselves they're all great

Speaker: But these lend themselves to a visual, medium, modern text, which, I can't believe I'm saying this, is why I prefer the manual to it. Like, normally I prefer the originals, but in this case, I prefer the manual that came after the visual novel. Okay, well, there's also the web novel, but usually I don't count web novels since it doesn't go through the rigorous editing that the light novel does.

Speaker: Solo -loving story is nice, but there's nothing new. It doesn't do anything new. I think it's good enough. After all, there are millions of people around the world that love it, and for several of them, this was their first contact with manhwa or web novels or light novels.

Speaker: So I guess it's done a lot for the medium. In summary, solo leveling is lots of fun, but doesn't make it into my top 10. And so it took me this long to decide whether I would cover it in this season or not. Reading List

Speaker: There are lots of people that will love solo leveling and for all of you that do, have picked two more titles that should get your blood pumping. It's got dungeons, guilds, hunts for XP, that kind of stuff. Now for the first, if you watch or read it, then pick up the light novel. It's that time I got reincarnated as a slime written by Fuse and illustrated by Mitzvah.

Speaker: There's also manga and anime with a couple of spin -offs if you'd prefer any of those other mediums, but this is a good one in Kamis, especially for any Sekai fan. Another recommendation is the Japanese light novel Dungeon Busters, written by Touma Shinozaki and illustrated by San Regan.

Speaker: Think of this one like mature solo leveling with an emphasis on a group of people trying to level up various skills instead of one person. Like the protagonist creates a company and he's thinking about his taxes and all of that and trying to get a group of people together, make the business sustainable so that they can complete dungeon runs.

Speaker: the 666 dungeons that appear in the world and for some reason humanity only has 10 years to complete them or everything comes to an end. So yeah, to our motivation to become an entrepreneur.

Speaker: For those of you that aren't fans of the dungeon crawling genre, but still enjoy a good isekai, there's only one title I'll mention. It's not going to be anything close to shonen. Well, okay, let me not say it's not close to, but it's not shonen, it's shouju. And I'm talking about Fushigi Yugi, written and illustrated by Yu Watase.

Speaker: I think this was one of the first mangas I ever I was ever gifted yeah and it's not bad like even if you're a testosterone field shonen fanatic I think fushigi yugi has enough action in it to satisfy you but then also enough romance to keep you reading I don't think romance will turn you off it's also a classic

Speaker: I think it was first published in the 90s sometime in 90s so yeah oldie what a goodie and that's it the end of lifeblood episode 9 and the first season I hope you enjoyed the show and find the title to read from today's selection hopefully solo love me

Speaker: The show will be back in a couple of months, so keep an eye out on the Lifeblood and Annabel Leucard social media channels. I've had a great time with you all and can't wait for Bigger and Better Season 2. Don't forget to like, share, subscribe, review on iTunes, Spotify and any other podcast platform that you love. Links provided in the show notes.

Speaker: a few little links and so we get a kickback if you make any purchases through them so thanks and that's it keep leveling your fandom skills and see ya