So the episode starts with a ship captain explaining to his soldiers that their weapons are futile for attacking them. They can only leave it to the hunters. Who is them. Well, it’s explained in the next shot where we see a bunch of soldiers carrying swords and shields gathered up in a forest clearing.
They also have magicians with them, and they seem to be fighting gigantic red ants. These hunters are unfortunately not having a good day, and these super ants are kicking their asses.
Just as things seem dire for new hunters show up and defeat the ants with ease while healing the injured hunters. From earlier, we can already see that the S-ranked hunters are a class apart from the hunters.
They end up turning the tide for the entire squad and leading the charge. The narrator explains that more than a decade ago, these portals or gates started popping up all over the world, which connected this world to another dimension filled with monsters and magic beasts. Unfortunately, normal weapons can’t even harm them.
Only those with awakened special abilities called hunters can fight these guys. All these hunters are further classified into different ranks, starting from S,, A,, B,, C,, D,, and finally E.. Here where they talk about E,,
they also show the face of our main protagonist, Sung Jin Woo. The twist here is once your hunter powers have awakened, no matter what you do, you can never increase your rank.
We jumped into the present day. This is where Sung is introduced. Everyone is greeting him and talking to him, and it feels like he’s a well-known personality among hunters. Well, he kind is. He’s famously known as the weakest hunter. When the other hunters see him, they always get happy, as it usually turns out to be an easy level dungeon.
You understand here that being a hunter is an occupational hazard under Hunter called Juhee is introduced to us. She’s a slender looking woman with long brown hair and light blue eyes. She’s got an overprotective sister kind of vibe asking Seung about his injuries and worried about his wellbeing.
During the barrage of her questions, Seung tells her to focus their attention towards the leader, as they’re probably going to head in soon. This is where the raid leader introduces himself as Seung Chi-ul. He also requests to be the leader and everybody agrees because he is the highest ranked out of all of them.
Again, here, the status of your ranking is everything in this world. This is further realized when you see a pan shot of Seung holding a small knife. Stating that with his income, this is the best he can afford. He also says he must do his best and then we see them all entering the dungeon. Entering the dungeon.
The shot changes from the dungeon to the headquarters of the Hunters Association. The president of the Hunters Association just met up with their government.
He explains that the government wants to avoid a dungeon break at all costs, and at the same wants the Hunters Association to maximize the treasures retrieved from those said dungeons in these goods.
The crystals granted from the S slain magic Beasts are called magic Gems. They can be used to make strong weapons to defeat stronger magic Beasts. You can also use the mana from Dungeons to create weapons, but it’s not as effective. These weapons are explained to be better, safer, and greener than any resources or conventional weapons.
Mad has made until now. The Magic Gems can be sold for money too. The government is trying to find a way to use magic, gems, and mana to create electricity. This is why hunters are extremely important to the government at this point. Here we pan back to the dungeon where Sung is holding a bloody crystal in his hand and breathing heavily.
He looks happy to have retrieved magic gem, but that happiness is expunged by a creature swinging his sorted. Sun Sung tries to defend, but his small knife ends up breaking and Sung gets stabbed into abdomen. To be honest, a creature looks a lot like a goblin. Goblins are usually pretty low-ranking monsters, and it seems to be no different here.
Juhee comes to the rescue by healing Sung. While Sung is getting healed, he’s looking around at his environment. Every hunter is in some way or the other, holding their own. Some are fighting the goblin-type creatures. Some are cutting through werewolves and lizard men. They’re fighting by using swords, bows, magic, anything but they are holding their own.
You can feel the embarrassment and disappointment Seung feels while getting healed. All he can do in Dungeons is get hurt. The best he could be is bait for monsters. Joohee adds insult to injury by stating that something bad will happen to him if he can. Continues under Hunter Path. Right now it’s his stomach.
After a point, it would be his entire body. Meanwhile, the others collect their loot and state that there are no mana veins in this dungeon, which means a lower payout for the dungeon. Again, here, the lower ranked hunters can be compared to daily wage workers trying to earn a living. Nobody’s doing it for the glory.
They just want to take care of their family and provide. In the case of Seung, he’s got the worst deal out of all of them. He’s risking his life for low-yield gems that probably won’t even cover his medical bills, let alone provide for his family. While you are realizing the fate of. A hunter calls out to everybody and shows a cave protruding inwards.
This means more treasure to be found normally. Such anomaly is reported to the Hunter Association, especially after the boss has been eliminated. But as we saw before, everyone wants to earn decent money, and since it was only a D-rank dungeon, the majority decided to venture further, which obviously includes Sung.
We also get a glimpse of. Sung’s mother in the hospital and his sister in school, which are his driving forces to work in such a low-reward, high-risk field. Venturing into the unknown Cave. As the merry band of hunters walks down the path of this cave, a discussion strikes, time is of the essence. After all the gates closes in half an hour after the boss is defeated, ung apologizes to Joohee as it was his swinging vote that got the hunters into the cave, and she voted against the exploration.
She diverts the attention back to Sung stating that if the stab wound by the goblin-like creature has been higher, he’d be dead. Dunn gets hit by another realization. He’s getting saved by his B rank Hunter. Almost every time he enters the dungeon, she tells him to thank her by taking her out for lunch.
Suddenly this hunter group reaches the actual boss room. Now hold on a minute. Just take a look at this ginormous door. It doesn’t look like anything close to the architecture they were looking at before. I mean, it’s got a mind query kind of vibe and that boss room door looks like a. Gateway to a masquerade ball.
Any person without any common sense would realize that this room ain’t the room. You wanna go in underprepared. They say certain words to describe their surprise, but I feel like it is being taken too lightly. Everybody brushes off their concerns and marches together into this boss room. Again, we’re pulled back into the Hunter’s Association where the president, Go Jun-hee, is speaking to a group of new hunters.
The doors open to this huge circular room that is being lit by bluish fire torches all over it. You see some statues surrounding the hunters.
This particularly reminded me of the Sorcerer’s stone when Harry Ron and Hermione sees the life-sized chessboard trial to reach the stone. There is a lot of foreshadowing here. This merry band of hunters isn’t going to be enjoying the atmosphere for too long. Once you get the room from a hunter’s angle, the statues are towering.
Not life size. Now I’m getting a doctor who vibe. If anybody remembers the weeping Angel episode, those statues are creepy. Some of these guys are holding musical instruments, but that doesn’t make the statues any less creepy. Then they realize there is one statue that is larger than all the other ones, and it’s wearing a crown.
Now, after taking a leisurely stroll into the boss room, they realize. Hey, where are the monsters? Ooh, look, the floor looks like they have magic circles carved into them. There’s something written on this statue. Oh, it’s written in ancient language still. They aren’t frightened. And leader Song reads the commandments of the Cartanen Temple.
First, worship the God.
Second, praise to God.
Third, believe in God.
Juhee interrupts in between and states that the other statues were looking at them. Its eyes moved. Those who did not obey will not be able to leave this place alive. Song finishes reading the lovely warning, and the door gets locked.
A hunter tries to open a door and gets axed by a big statue. Now everybody’s panicking. It’s like nobody learned anything from Sword art online. As the statue looks at Sun, he recalls all the life-threatening situations he’s been in, and for example, the first time he went for a raid, he got. Separated from his team.
One time he got trapped in a maze and almost starved to death, or at that time he got injured in an E-ranked dungeon. This is when the statues had moved its eyes, blasted fire from its mouth in a circular motion and incinerated people Sung, realizing that air trapped is repeating this in his head. I’m going to die.
I’m going to be killed. And that’s where the show leaves us. What a great first episode. I loved how true the animators have been to the artwork. The first episode did a great job of setting the premise of this show, the rules of this world, and especially the hard cold truth that you rank and to a certain level, your fate are decided for you the moment you’re awakened to your hunter powers.
We meet the world’s weakest hero, Sung, Jin, Woo, and we know that most of this merry bad of hunters. It isn’t going to make it. What can we expect from the second episode? Well, without spoiling too much for you, you’re likely to meet Dina, a Titan-like Monster, and see Sung probably trying to figure out how to stay alive.
We will be doing a full breakdown of solo leveling episode by episode, so stay tuned. Personally, this first episode made me feel my two years were worth the weight, but I wanna know what you guys think. Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below, and also mention your predictions for the next episodes.
Also Read: Black Clover M: Rise of The Wizard King Goes Global: Anime-Inspired Game Hits Android and iOS
I am Atul Sharma, As a full-time blogger, my focus is on delivering news articles on this platform. Your visit to my blog is highly appreciated. Thank you!