Solo Leveling’s take on the power fantasy genre is unique, but the concepts and ideas the series blends together to get there are far from distinctive. Sung Jinwoo’s story borrows from a plethora of other series and media, from isekai anime like Sword Art Online, to video games like Dark Souls, and even seinen manga – particularly Berserk. While Solo Leveling’s shonen anime and gaming influences are pretty obvious, its Berserk influence is a bit less overt, but it does become clearer when looking below the surface. While a bit more subtle being that Solo Leveling is a series oriented toward the shonen demographic, Guts’ dark anti-hero persona is still definitely present in Sung Jinwoo.

That inspiration tends to appear in interesting places, particularly in the manhwa, which often draws its own inspiration from Kentaro Miura’s legendary art to craft some of the manhwa’s most memorable scenes. One excellent example of this came by way of a Berserk reference hidden in Solo Leveling‘s Red Gate arc, which was adapted in the first two episodes of Season 2 of the anime. Unfortunately, Solo Leveling‘s original Japanese Dub removed the reference for reasons unknown. Thankfully, it was immortalized in the English Dub’s own take on the scene, restoring a lovingly crafted nod to a series that quite literally helped mold Solo Leveling into the anime powerhouse it is today.

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Guts Plays The OP Savior Role For the Band of the Hawk

Guts Gives an Assassin Until The Count of Four in Berserk Manga Chapter 42

Solo Leveling‘s reference to Berserk hinges on a very specific moment in Guts’ story. During the Golden Age arc, Guts leaves the Band of the Hawk for a year, deciding to travel on his own in pursuit of his own dream that might make Griffith see him as his equal. During this time, Casca takes over as the Band’s leader, but they’re consistently being pursued by the King of Midland’s army. While hiding out in the woods, the Band of the Hawk has a brief moment of respite as they sit around a camp fire at night. Unfortunately, what they fail to realize is that they’re being watched by a group of mercenaries led by a skilled assassin from the enigmatic land of Silat.

Just as Judeau convinces Casca It’s okay for her to get some rest, the enemy mercenaries attack, catching the Hawks off guard under the cover of nightfall. Amidst the chaos, the Silat assassin targets Casca, hoping to cut the head off the snake of the Band of the Hawks and end the conflict quickly. Although Casca puts up a decent fight, she’s outmatched by the assassin’s unique fighting techniques, finding herself pinned down and at his mercy. The assassin orders Casca to surrender, threatening her that if she doesn’t order her men to stand down by the time he counts to three, he’ll cut off her head.

As brave and stubborn as she is, Casca has no plans of surrendering. The assassin counts to three, but just as he’s about to kill Casca, a voice from behind him counts “four” and the assassin is kicked into the dirt. Of course, it’s none other than Guts having come to save his friends. Throughout the Golden Age arc, Guts is easily Griffith’s strongest soldier and he only grows stronger over time. By the time he shows up after having been away for a year in Chapter 42, Guts has quite literally leveled up in every way. Guts had apparently spent the entirety of that year doing nothing but swinging his sword aimlessly in the wilderness. This ceaseless training turned Guts into an almost supernaturally powerful swordsman, far beyond any other human fighter – the Silat assassin included.

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Guts’ arrival as Casca’s savior is the moment where Guts definitively stands far and above any other human character as the strongest. Counting to “four” is very on brand for Guts, as he literally takes it one step further than his enemy, as he’s often known to do as the “struggler”. His edgy, anti-hero personality is on full display here, even during a period where he’s still naive enough in his blissful ignorance to hold onto any semblance of a dream. Guts has yet to stare fully into the abyss at this point in Berserk, which makes him quite similar to Sung Jinwoo in the earliest arcs of Solo Leveling. That’s likely why DUBU chose to recreate this scene during the Red Gate arc in his own manhwa.

Sung Jinwoo’s Guts Inspiration is More Apparent in the Manhwa’s Red Gate Arc

Jinwoo Copies Guts’ Tough Guy Routine in Solo Leveling Manhwa Chapter 52

Solo Leveling takes a lot of inspiration from Berserk, and never is that more apparent than during the Red Gate arc in the manhwa. After the White Tiger Guild’s strike team is trapped in the Red Gate, the party’s A Rank leader, Kim Chul, decides the best course of action is for the group to split in two. He resolves to take the strongest Hunters of the group with him to seek out and kill the dungeon boss, while the weakest of the group stay behind to try to wait things out. Of course, given the level of monsters in the Gate, this secondary group is almost certain to die, but Chul feels they have a better chance if he can take the strongest Hunters with him to handle things quickly.

As a false ranking E Rank Hunter, Jinwoo is of course chosen to stay behind, but rather than reveal his true strength, Jinwoo simply accepts this decision.In Kim Chul’s absence, Jinwoo’s group thrives, as Jinwoo’s access to his inventory via the System provides him with all the essential survival tools to make things comfortable while his group camps out. In contrast, Kim Chul’s party slowly succumbs to the frigid cold with the Gate, as well as to their hunger. By the time Chul even reaches the leader of the Ice Elves, Barca, a good portion of his party has already died of frostbite or starvation, with the rest hardly able to fight back before being slaughtered by the Ice Elves. Only Kim Chul manages to escape with his life.

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Upon arriving back at the camp where he left the “weakest” members of the group behind, Kim Chul is outraged to find everyone safe and living in comfort. Whereas Chul’s group was starving and freezing to death, Jinwoo’s group had plenty of food and enjoyed the warmth of a campfire. Unsure who to blame, Chul sets his sights on Park Heejin, the A-Rank Healer of the group, as she would be the only one of a high enough rank to possibly be to blame. Chul commands Heejin to tell him how her party has survived like this, telling her “I’ll count to three. If you don’t tell me who did this, l’ll consider all of you guilty!” Just like Casca did in Berserk, Heejin stands in brave defiance of Chul, even as he counts down to three. Just as Chul completes his count and prepares to attack, an unknown voice counts “four” from behind him, and he’s pushed face first into the snow by Sung Jinwoo, knocking him out.

Sung Jinwoo counting the number “four” before pushing Chul into the dirt in this scene is a clear reference to how Guts did the exact same to the Silat assassin during the Golden Age arc. Aside from the clear similarity in the paneling, dialogue and the overall backdrop of the scene, there are some more nuanced details surrounding the context of the scenes that make it even more obvious how much inspiration the Solo Leveling manhwa drew from Berserk for this moment. Interestingly, Jinwoo’s party also sits in front of a campfire when Kim Chul attacks, just like the Band of the Hawk prior to being attacked in Berserk. Additionally, the person being rescued is the female leader of the group: Casca, in Berserk, and Park Heejin in Solo Leveling.

The most notable similarity of all is how both Guts and Igris conclude their subsequent fights with the villains. In Berserk, at the end of his fight with the assassin, Guts cuts the ground to use the dust it blows up as a smokescreen in order to catch his enemy off guard. Similarly, in Solo Leveling, Igris cuts the ground to send a cloud of snow into the sky which blinds Kim Chul, allowing him to deal a finishing blow. This is just too obvious a reference to consider coincidental, confirming where Solo Leveling drew its inspiration from for this memorable moment.

Solo Leveling’s English Dub Brought Its Berserk Reference Back to the Anime

Jinwoo VA Aleks Le and Dub Director Caitlyn Glass Inadvertently Retained The Essence of Guts in the Manhwa

Ordinarily, the original Japanese version of an anime is usually more faithful to the source material it’s adapting than the English Dub, but that isn’t the case with Solo Leveling. The English Dub cast has truly done their best to keep the dialogue faithful to both the manhwa and the light novel, sometimes making it even more faithful to the source material than the Japanese version of the anime. One scene where that’s quite apparent is in the counting to four scene during the Red Gate arc. In the original Japanese version of the anime, Sung Jinwoo doesn’t say the single line “four”, as he does in the manhwa.

Instead, he simply knocks Kim Chul out without saying anything. In the English Dub, however, the “four” line was added back into the anime, helping to regain the essence of this scene and its original reference to Guts in Berserk. The reason for the original Japanese anime omitting this line is unclear, but the English VA for Sung Jinwoo, Aleks Le, did unveil more about how the English Dub added the line back into the scene via his X account. According to Le, “in the sub of Solo Leveling, Jinwoo’s line ‘4’ was cut from the scene where he interrupts Kim’s count (prob due to timing). After recording the ep tho, Caitlin & I both said at the SAME TIME that we wanted to put that line from the manwha in the dub bc it was just too cold.”

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Interestingly, Le made no allusion to the original Guts line in his own post, perhaps indicating that the English Dub staff wasn’t even aware of the true origin of this moment; they just kept the line because it sounded cool. Berserk’s hand in shaping Solo Leveling is too vast to remain dependent on the existence of one individual scene, so even without this more surface-level reference, it still makes up the guts of who Sung Jinwoo is as a character. Like Guts, Sung Jinwoo is someone who chooses to shoulder his burdens all on his own.

Also like Guts, he’s someone who slowly trades his humanity for power, all to protect those he cares about from evils of untold power. In fact, his death at the hands of the Architect in the Double Dungeon in the beginning of Solo Leveling bears a strong similarity to Berserk’s infamous Eclipse, though obviously toned down significantly. The influence of Berserk is obviously all over Solo Leveling, even if its tropes aren’t as apparent to casual anime fans as those of isekai or the shonen genre in general. Whether it was actually intended by the English Dub staff, or it just happened inadvertently by means of sheer causality, Solo Leveling’s coldest Berserk reference is forever immortalized in the anime.

Solo Leveling Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

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  Solo Leveling
  

  Release Date

  January 7, 2024
  

  Directors

  Shunsuke Nakashige

  Writers

  Noboru Kimura

  
  

  • Taito Ban

    Shun Mizushino (voice)

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    Genta Nakamura

    Kenta Morobishi (voice)

  
  

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  Berserk

  Guts, a wandering mercenary, joins the Band of the Hawk after being defeated in a duel by Griffith, the group’s leader and founder. Together, they dominate every battle, but something menacing lurks in the shadows.