Perceptive viewers might’ve noticed that something is a bit off about Solo Leveling Ep. 7.5 “How to Get Stronger”. In fact, you might feel more than a bit of déjà vu at seeing this episode. Yes, that’s right. Only seven episodes in, and there’s already a recap episode.

Solo Leveling Ep. 7.5 “How to Get Stronger”: Details

Solo Leveling textless key visual.
You remember the events of the past seven episodes? Certainly, they don’t think so.

Solo Leveling Ep. 7.5 “How to Get Stronger” is the…seven and a half or eighth episode (you can read reviews for Ep. 1, Ep. 2, Ep. 3, Ep. 4, Ep. 5, Ep. 6, and Ep. 7 here) of the first season of this kinda sorta urban fantasy action anime. Said anime is the anime adaptation of the South Korean web novel and webtoon series of the same name by Chugong. A-1 Pictures (Black Butler, Blue Exorcist, Sword Art Online) is the animation studio behind this anime.

Interestingly, we don’t know who is responsible for Solo Leveling Ep. 7.5 “How to Get Stronger”. However, we do still know that Shunsuke Nakashige is the director of Solo Leveling overall, with Noboru Kimura also being the writer for the same. Hiroyuki Sawano is the composer of the music you hear in the anime.

Speaking of music: the opening theme music for Solo Leveling as a whole is “Level” by Sawano and Tomorrow X Together. Meanwhile, “Request” by Krage is the ending theme music.

Voice Cast

Solo Leveling Ep. 7.5 “How to Get Stronger” features the voice of Taito Ban (Aleks Le in English dub) as Sung Jin-woo. That’s it. He’s the only voice in this recap.

When and Where to Watch

Solo Leveling Ep. 7.5 “How to Get Stronger” made its airing and streaming on February 24, 2024. You can watch this episode only on Crunchyroll at the moment. In fact, you can watch this entire anime only on Crunchyroll for the moment, due to this anime being a Crunchyroll exclusive at the time of this writing.

Solo Leveling Ep. 7.5 “How to Get Stronger”: Synopsis

Is a synopsis for this episode even necessary?

Frankly, I’m not sure a plot summary or synopsis is even necessary for Solo Leveling Ep. 7.5 “How to Get Stronger”. After all, I would just be restating the plot of the previous seven episodes of this anime. Nevertheless, you are all going to get the official synopsis from Crunchyroll. You can read that below:

Jinwoo recaps the events of the story so far, from his humble beginnings as the Weakest Hunter of All Mankind to his newfound power and renewed purpose.

Solo Leveling Ep. 7.5 “How to Get Stronger”: The Good

Solo Leveling Ep. 7.5 social media visual.
Ah, the best moments from the episodes that you just saw.

I guess the one good thing about Solo Leveling Ep. 7.5 “How to Get Stronger” is that it provides a way for new viewers to catch up on the story. If you don’t care to rewatch the first seven episodes or if you somehow forgot the general plot of the anime for some odd reason. It’s not much of a good thing, admittedly. It’s just the only thing I can think of for this recap episode, given its utter lack of any new content.

Solo Leveling Ep. 7.5 “How to Get Stronger”: The Bad

Solo Leveling Ep. 7.5 screenshot showing Jin-woo leaning against a ruined building after being attacked by Cerberus.
It’s as bad as what Jin-woo is going through in this screenshot.

Okay, there’s no two ways about it. Solo Leveling Ep. 7.5 “How to Get Stronger” is overall a terrible episode. All entirely due to one thing: the fact that it’s a recap episode. That alone makes it an episode worth skipping in its entirety.

To start with though: we need to understand why recap episodes exist. Their sole purpose is to act as fillers so that the animators can broadcast something, anything, while the animators work on the animation for the rest of the anime. They basically exist because the animators haven’t finished animating the rest of the anime yet, and they don’t want to skip a week. It’s especially relevant for Solo Leveling. As you might’ve noticed from all the previous episodes so far, the anime features some very detailed and high quality animation, and in a consistent manner to boot. All that high-quality animation takes a lot of time and effort to do. It’s understandable that they would rather give us a recap episode rather than rush out low-quality budget animation. It’s even commendable to some degree.

My beef with this recap episode stems from it being a straight-up recap of everything that’s been happening up until Ep. 7. There is not even a second’s worth of new animation. Not even a single line of the dialogue is new. It’s just old scenes and old dialogue stitched together into a recap. They don’t even try to make it funny, or at least interesting. This is why I give the recap episode such a low score, even beyond its very existence.

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