Rating - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"With his mother finally cured of Eternal Slumber, Jinwoo decides to sit out of the Jeju Island Raid to look after her. However, he is ultimately forced to change his mind when a monstrous ant shows up during the raid and starts slaughtering S-Ranks left and right."
The Jeju Island Arc is the 13th arc in Solo Leveling, a webtoon adapted from the web novel by Chugong, with art by DUBU (REDICE STUDIO) and story by h-goon. This arc collects chapters 90-107 of the webtoon.
We have finally done it, an arc that not only topped the first one but scored a full rating from me.
Let's get into the details.
PLOT
Going into this arc, I felt like it was going to be intense, and I was not wrong. We were treated to unrelenting chaos that has you on the edge of your seat in disbelief.
Previous arcs have briefly gone over Jeju-do and what happened there, as well as how things are getting progressively worse to the point where immediate action must be taken. That is what this arc is all about, a team of S-Ranks from Korea and Japan head to Jeju-do in order to deal with the ant infestation once and for all.
We definitely lean more into graphic content for shock factor in this one, so you might want to prepare yourself for this one.
WORLD-BUILDING
The only comment I have to make here is that, one downside of the System and the abilities and skills it grants Jinwoo, is that we know exactly what he is capable of. Every move an opponent makes against him, we know exactly how he can counter it.
CHARACTERS
Since this arc features a group of S-Ranks going on the raid, we are naturally introduced to a litany of characters. Ma Dongwook, the master of the Fame Guild, as well as several Japanese characters under Goto Ryuji, the top Japanese hunter. The one thing I didn't like about this arc, is that a prominent flaw of the series, is how the characters were dealt with.
We do also get appearances from Jongin (Hunters Guild master), Yoonho (White Tiger Guild master), and Hae-In, which I did like, mostly because I like the dynamic between Jongin and Yoonho. While I did like them, Hae-In, on the other hand, is still a character who isn't as prominent as I was expecting her to be, which is an issue.
Moving onto Jinwoo, he does make some bad decisions in this. He chose not to participate in the raid since his mom just woke up (though he had the time to take his jog...). It is odd that he would pass up the chance to go on an S-Rank raid, also one as important as this. This shows a fault of Jinwoo's character, that he does tend to focus more on himself (even though he does do a lot for other people).
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
This is the kind of arc where you need to take a bit of a break afterwards to process what just happened. For anyone who read this while it was updating...I don't know how you did it.
So, while this arc was intense, atmospheric, and full sit on the edge of your seat action, it does reveal a lot of the weaknesses of a story like this.
Because this acted as the culminating battle for Season 1, it did have a proper ending that rounded out the season nicely.
WARNING - SPOILERS AHEAD - PROCEED WITH CAUTION
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We've got a guy over here who looks like Terror man.
His haircut is also atrocious
Admittedly, you can see the tension between Korea and Japan through this with the way the Japanese characters are depicted.
Will it not become an anime then if Japan doesn't want to animate it?
Everything will be fine...well it ain't not that you just jinxed yourself.
Byung-gyu came out of retirement for this...yeah...he is so dead.
… The heads are flying in this one...oh my.
Not too happy that a bunch of interesting characters were introduced, only for them to be killed in one shot.
This is why I always end up spoiling things because I need to know who lives and dies.
So, in my mind, it makes no sense for the goal of the Japanese to be to kill the Koreans.
Like they were just gonna leave them there, but you didn't kill all the ants, so they would eventually fly on right over to your own country
The difference between the strengths is nuts.
Jinwoo casually took a punch to the face from the ant that decapitated most of the Japanese hunters
Oh thank god, Jinwoo didn't keep Byung-gyu in his army.
I got a bit emotional there for a second, the smile shared between Yoonho and Byung-gyu got to me.
We finally get to see the face of the American National Level Hunter and...he looks like a goat.
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