Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow- Ep. 21 “It was All Worth It” is very peculiar in that it treats Jin-woo’s actions throughout the episode as heroic or even comedic. However, even a cursory examination of what he actually does makes you gape at him in shock. From abandoning a key ally deep in enemy territory to experimenting on his mom without any backup plan to not including his sister in his family reunion, Jin-woo comes off as someone decidedly less heroic than what the story insists he is.
Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow- Ep. 21 “It was All Worth It”: Details
Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow- Ep. 21 “It was All Worth It” is the ninth episode (you can read my review of the anime film containing Ep. 13-14, and then Ep. 15, Ep. 16, Ep. 17, Ep. 18, Ep. 19, and Ep. 20 here) of the second season of this dark urban fantasy and portal fantasy action anime, and the 21st episode overall. You can read my reviews of all 12 episodes of the first season here.
Said anime series is the anime adaptation of the South Korean web novel and webtoon of the same name by writer Chugong and featuring illustrations by Jang Sung-rak (aka DUBU), with h-goon adapting it into a manhwa form later. A-1 Pictures (Black Butler, Sword Art Online, Lycoris Recoil) is the animation studio behind this anime film. Crunchyroll is the company licensing this anime film for its global release. Save for in SEA region, where Medialink is the company licensing this anime film there.
Production Cast
Yūya Horiuchi is the director and storyboarder behind Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow- Ep. 21 “It was All Worth It”, with Shigeru Murakoshi as the writer, and Chiaki Furuzumi as the chief animation director. As for Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow- as a whole, Shunsuke Nakashige is still the director, and Noboru Kimura is still the screenwriter. Yasuhiro Okumura is the background art director, Yuji Kondo is the editor, Tomoko Sudo is the character designer, Hirotaka Tokuda is the monster designer, Toshitaka Morioka is the CG director, Naomi Nakano is the color designer, Ryo Tanaka is the sound director, Daichi Iseki is the VFX director, Sotaro Shiriaishi is the prop designer, Hiromu Oshiro is responsible for motion graphics, and Hiroyuki Sawano composes all the music we hear in the anime film.
Speaking of that music: the opening theme song for this second season is “Reawaker” by Lisa (feat. Felix of Stray Kids). Meanwhile, “Un-Apex” by TK from Ling Tosite Sigure is the ending theme song.
Voice Cast
Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow- Ep. 21 “It was All Worth It” features the voice of Taito Ban (Aleks Le in English dub) as Sung Jinwoo.
Other notable voice roles in this episode include Riho Sugiyama (English voice unknown) as Esil Radiru, Yuri Amano (English voice unknown) as Park Kyung-hye, Haruna Mikawa (Rebecca Wang as Sung Jin-ah, Banjō Ginga (Kent Williams in English dub) as Go Gun-hee, Makoto Furukawa (SungWon Cho in English dub) as Woo Jin-chul, Hiroki Tōchi (Christopher R. Sabat in English dub) as Baek Yoon-ho, Reina Ueda (Michelle Rojas in English dub) as Cha Hae-in, and Satoshi Mikami (English voice unknown) as Goto Ryuji.
When and Where to Watch
Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow- Ep. 21 “It was All Worth It” made its airing and streaming (aka. simulcast) debut on March 1, 2025. You can watch this episode only on Crunchyroll. In fact, you can watch this entire anime series only on Crunchyroll due to it being an exclusive there.
Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow- Ep. 21 “It was All Worth It”: Synopsis
Alas, Solo Leveling is an ongoing anime series. In fact, Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow- Ep. 21 “It was All Worth It” only just made its debut five days ago as of this writing. Thus, I shall give you the official synopsis from Crunchyroll in place of a spoiler-filled plot summary. You can check synopsis that out below:
Jinwoo tries to cure his mother with the Elixir of Life while preparations for the 4th Jeju Island Raid begin.
Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow- Ep. 21 “It was All Worth It”: The Good
If I had to pick the best thing about Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow- Ep. 21 “It was All Worth It”, it would have to be the animation. In fact, it’s the only good thing about this episode, in my opinion. A-1 Pictures continues to put out some very high quality animation regardless of anything else.
In particular, the animation for the scene where Jin-woo’s mom wakes up is very nicely animated. The animation team totally went ham on everything in that scene, from strands of Park Kyung-hye’s hair blowing in the breeze from the open hospital window to some very complex facial animation when Jin-woo starts crying. At the very least, they spared no expense for this episode in terms of animation. It even perfectly complemented the emotional moment of the scene and made that one scene the best thing about this entire episode, which is nice, but…
Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow- Ep. 21 “It was All Worth It”: The Bad
Alas, the amazing animation isn’t enough to make up for the very poor story of Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow- Ep. 21 “It was All Worth It”. It’s not even the writer’s fault. It’s because this is exactly the story that Chugong wrote for the original web novel, which has seriously questionable moments here for Jin-woo.
The first strike is Jin-woo abandoning Esil in the middle of enemy territory after she’d accompanied him there. When she’d been previously and explicitly depicted as being middle-ranked in terms of strength, and definitely not able to fight her way out. This is right after she had just helped him land a critical blow on the boss as well. It really takes someone with zero empathy and no sense of gratitude to do something like that, but the most galling thing is that the story portrays this comedically. As though abandoning a key ally is funny. For the record: it’s not.
The second strike is Jin-woo giving a potion to his comatose mom…after he’d literally just wondered if it will have any effect. Most sane people would have a medical professional check the potion before applying it, right? Or even have that medical professional standing by precisely in case it didn’t work, right? Apparently, not Jin-woo, who just pours the potion down his mom’s throat because a magical video game tells him it would cure her.
The third strike is Jin-woo not telling his little sister about him trying to cure their mom until long after he’d done so. The little sister that the story had previously portrayed to be close to. Either Chugong didn’t know what being close to someone means, or Jin-woo apparently just wanted their mom all to himself when she awoke? Either way, it’s the third strike that made me give this episode a low a score as I did.
If you want some anime with better stories, then I suggest watching Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Kaiju No. 8, DDDD, DAN DA DAN, Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II, Zenshu, and/or Blue Box.
Tune back in to THS to find out more about Solo Leveling and other anime when we do. And leave a message in the comments section if you agree with me about the story of this episode.
