Solo Leveling Ep. 11 “A Knight Who Defends an Empty Throne” basically puts Jin-woo in a fight against an optional boss. RPG video game fans will know what I’m talking about. You know those optional boss fights that are far more difficult than anything else in the game, and usually gives some kind of massive reward upon beating it? Yeah, this episode is basically that kind of fight, and little else.

Solo Leveling Ep. 11 “A Knight Who Defends an Empty Throne”: Details

Solo Leveling textless key visual.
Jin-woo is in the process of getting to that one at the top of that building.

Solo Leveling Ep. 11 “A Knight Who Defends an Empty Throne” is the 11th true episode (you can read reviews for Ep. 1, Ep. 2, Ep. 3, Ep. 4, Ep. 5, Ep. 6, Ep. 7, Ep. 7.5, Ep. 8, Ep. 9, and Ep. 10 here) of the first season of this kinda sorta urban fantasy action anime, minus the sole recap episode so far. 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.

Takayuki Kikuchi directed and storyboarded Solo Leveling Ep. 11 “A Knight Who Defends an Empty Throne”, with Noboru Kimura as the writer, and Chiaki Furuzumi as the chief animation director. Shunsuke Nakashige is still 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. 11 “A Knight Who Defends an Empty Throne” features the voice of Taito Ban (Aleks Le in English dub) as Sung Jin-woo. Yeah, he’s basically the only main voice role in this episode. Other notable voice roles for the side characters though include Genta Nakamura (Justin Briner in English dub) as Yoo Jin-ho, Banjō Ginga (Kent Williams in English dub) as Go Gun-hee, and Daisuke Hirakawa (Ian Sinclair in English dub) as Choi Jong-in.

When and Where to Watch

Solo Leveling Ep. 11 “A Knight Who Defends an Empty Throne” made its simultaneous airing and streaming debut on March 23, 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. 11 “A Knight Who Defends an Empty Throne”: Synopsis

This guy is back, and just in time too!

Alas, Solo Leveling is an ongoing anime series, although the season finale is just in the next episode. Thus though, you will get the official synopsis for this episode from Crunchyroll, instead of a spoiler-filled plot summary. You can read that below:

Out of the blue, a “job-change quest” pops up in Jinwoo’s window. Feeling that it may help him get stronger, he enters the gate. Inside, he fights wave after wave of enemies, culminating in a knight who brings back memories of the Cartenon Temple.

Solo Leveling Ep. 11 “A Knight Who Defends an Empty Throne”: The Good

Solo Leveling Ep. 11 "A Knight Who Defends an Empty Throne" screenshot showing Jin-woo grabbing a swung sword with not-so-bare hands.
I know this doesn’t look good for him, but it beats being dead.

As per the norm, it’s the action of Solo Leveling Ep. 11 “A Knight Who Defends an Empty Throne”. In fact, much of the episode is basically one long extended action sequence between Jin-woo and the optional boss creature. All with the anime series’ typical combination of fluid action and high quality animation. It’s basically Sword Art Online in terms of action fluidity and animation quality, which is quite fitting considering that A-1 Pictures in fact counts Sword Art Online as one of their works. You can even see some of their influence in the anime, even in the fact that the main character bears somewhat of a resemblance to Kirito.

And yet, even though the action sequence is the star of the show, there’s also bits and pieces of other plot going on in the background of the story of this episode that’s quite intriguing. Even though much of that plot is disjointed from Jin-woo’s story, it does at least give us some interesting worldbuilding for the setting. And who knows? Maybe those other plotlines will intersect with Jin-woo’s story…one of these days. Hopefully.

Oh, and Jong-in’s cape was just hilarious to me. It looked cool, but all I could hear was Edna Mode from The Incredibles screaming “No capes!”. Just an amusing thought there.

Solo Leveling Ep. 11 “A Knight Who Defends an Empty Throne”: The Bad

Solo Leveling Ep. 11 "A Knight Who Defends an Empty Throne" screenshot showing Jin-woo parrying a sword strike from the Knight Commander boss.
It may be a foregone conclusion and we have no idea what the story of this boss is, but at least it looks good.

Honestly, my complaint here is similar to my past complaints about this anime: the story of Solo Leveling Ep. 11 “A Knight Who Defends an Empty Throne” is too simple. The entire optional dungeon could’ve been an opportunity to build up a story of the dungeon through worldbuilding, lore, and even some dialogue from the knights. Instead, it just feels like Jin-woo having the usual wave upon wave of enemies being thrown at him. Even the optional boss of the dungeon, despite being a humanoid being and even having the title of “Knight Commander”, has literally zero words of dialogue. The only clue we get to their personality is in their actions, and while the action is pretty stylish, it doesn’t leave much room for character exploration. Maybe it’s just me, but I like my action with a bit more story to it, like in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. Just a thought here you agree or disagree with.