Solo Leveling - Vol. 1 Ch. 98

[Lord_Hentai]

First they demonize US. Ok author, we get it, you don't like America for whatever reason. Then we see Russia mentioned in negative tone, and China is just absent.

Then we see Korean anchor talk about "South Korea becoming another nation to clear the S rank dungeon", ignoring the Japanese contribution... Then we have a Chimera ant arc ripoff with even Meruem showing up with signature decapitations. As if there weren't enough ripoffs already in this one comic. How about we have that beast guy nuke the place after dueling the new ant?

Or will the remaining Japanese S ranks get fodderized while Koreans kill the queen with 0 casualties? Will every Japanese raid participant die, Koreans kill that new OP ant and get out unscathed with zero casualties alongside their narrating cameraman as heroes? Now that's straight up nationalism. This kind of nationalistic undertones was also what turned GATE into hot garbage.

I thought this was going to be clean of nationalism but I was mistaken. Author even left out the MC from the fight just to show us how superior dem Koreans are compared to Japanese and don't need the not-Kirito-Saitama-Guts-Ainz-Tatsuya-SelfInsertGenericKoreanPersonality-WhateverTheFuckHisNameIs to win.

At least the art is very good and the story is "so bad it's good" so I will keep on reading and drop this shit if it gets too boring. I just get mad when I see authors putting their petty nationalistic views in their work. I'm writing a comment to get this off my chest.

 

[Ashen_Mask]

@Lord_Hentai if the story stays as close to the novel, you are in for bit of surprise, sir

 

[xXxSleepyDragonxXx]

@Lord_Hentai To be fair, not a lot of people inside and outside the US view its government to be an all good entity. The US government has used (and still use) their military power to do some very questionable acts and for very questionable reasons. The same can be said about the other military superpowers of the world (Russia, China, etc.). With that in mind, I will be interested to see how the power balance of the of this story’s world will be like with the appearance of hunters. And how Japan will fair when a fair number of their hunters die.

What I do agree with is the question on why the MC didn’t act sooner to join the fight. Didn’t he put his shadow soldiers into the shadows on the other S-Rank hunters earlier? What was his reason for that? Just for shits and giggles? I expected him to “shadow switch” (forgot that skill name) to join the fight as soon as he realizes that some hunters died. Why else would he put shadow soldiers in their shadows?

 

[angerybord]

@Lord_Hentai

First, nice username.
Second, I agree with SleepyDragon that the US and other countries' military has performed at least some...morally questionable actions.

Third, while the television dude did say that Korea was about to join them, the hunter only said "we" which could include the Japanese as a part of their raiding party. I'm guessing that the anchor just said it for the sake of rallying national pride, or because the Korea team did a lot of heavy lifting for killing the queen, her guards, etc while the Japanese played a (super important) supporting role.

Also the quote used by the anchor is not actually from the light novel so it's likely added by the artist. Granted in the ln the Japanese were just straight up evil whereas in the comic they aren't framed in that way for the most part.

Finally,

Spoiler

yeah, if you thought the Koreans weren't gonna get thrashed before Jin woo teleports in to flex his shadow army with all the buildup that ant was given you're dead wrong. Also also, on the topic of nationalism, in later arcs, at least in the ln, other countries and people from them (ex: Russia, USA, Japan) just straight up act dumb while korea seems to be fine bc Jin Woo just does everything for them. Don't know if that counts but when reading I kinda thought that Japan and the US would be way more competent.

tldr: REEEE Y U DISAGREE WITH POULAR OPINION THAT SOLO LEVELING GOOD !1!?/??!!1 or something like that

 

[Grimson-Gurdian]

@Limbowo @Scorpion7373 @Myumyuh @DrDuckling @Moth Thanks a bunch

 

[etherealwing]

*happy excited noises*

 

[YellowRice3]

So they didn't make japan hunter betray korean hunter in manhwa version

 

[Vegetablesucks]

Meruem? Is that you?

 

[Suckerforshipping]

Fucking shit— JINWOOOOOOOOO WHERE ARE YOU??

 

[dega230989]

everyone using meruem.. when im about to say kamen rider.. damn.. im childish and old.. (!!-_-)a

 

[Ebial]

@Silwith Oh thank you so much that makes so much sense. I thought I had it all wrong.