Solo Leveling: Ragnarok

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It was only about a year ago that my friend told me that a sequel to Solo Leveling featuring Jin Woo's kid was in the works. I was like "What the hell, that's gonna ruin the series". And well, here I am, reading this.

The story is very similar to its predecessor in the holistic sense, blame it to the prequel's horrible ending of everyone forgetting about everything. Well let's not go to that aspect. This one expands in on the story left behind by the saga of Jin Woo. The story now focuses on our protagonist Sung Suho, the son of Jin Woo. He has ... innate powers of the Shadow Monarch so it makes him pretty busted and a bit less interesting to watch. The immediate evil here is now Itarim as opposed to the Monarchs. So you can witness a little tweak here and there in the story but the overall structure is still similar, you are the weakest player but only you have the power to level up. The story relies a bit too much on the plot armour and the survival aspect of the original being missing dissapoints me, as that was arguably the best part. So it is now purely action fantasy. But still it does not prevent it from being a fun little read. The action is top notch, art is still better than almost the entirety, the story is still fun to read, it has still got its humorous tones, the characters are also good, where seeing past characters genuinely puts me on a simle. So I see plenty good reasons for you to read this. Only time will tell if it will live up to its expectations.

1 word, Disappointing. 2 words, Fucking Disappointing.

While I get the take on zero-to-hero like in the first book, the protagonist of this sequel has a disappointing start.
Not only was his father a monarch, his mother has the potential of an S-Ranker. Going by that logic, even if Jinwoo's E-rank potential pulled Hunter Cha's leg, Suho's potential should have been either a C-rank or a B-rank. His innate ability to utilize Monarch's Authority(even though its an Authority given to the top creations of the Creator, I dunno, probably Inheritance), is outright useless since it consumes Mana every second, couple that with maintaining shadows as weapons, his ... starting line was a Joke. Suho, as a baby can utilize that authority with no hardship, now, he can barely sustain that for half a minute(baby Suho is literally a genuine monster, what's with adaptation?).

Another disappointment was the team up with monarch descendants setting. What are Monarchs? They are destruction Incarnate, borne to destroy everything their Creator created and everything else in existence. It would have made more sense for the Monarch's descendants to ally with Itarim's apostles, take control of the now ownerless universe and spread destruction to others after everything's over. I guess it still makes sense a little, with the monarch duking it out with Itarim, its still a type of destruction that they'll be doing.

tl:dr; It has a disappointing start compared to the first book and they are overturning our understanding of SL's Universe.

PS: I now understand why they forgot what Monarchs are, this is not a story that came out of the original author's hand, but was written by someone else.

Just reading the few first chapters makes me feel agitated.
Our main character SungHo or whatever the fuck that guy's name is is so..awful, the way he obtains his abilities are dogshit without any stakes, and the latest chapter I read made him comment on behalf of his father the problem with that there is. HE BARELY KNOWS HIS FATHER. Sure, I get it it was supposed to be a like father like son moment but it just fails completely.
Stardust balls thingy feels so out of place and random, it just suddenly appeared without a foreshadowing and then became a massive plot point over the fall ... of the demon realm? Holy shit.

This manhwa feels like an insult to the original Solo Leveling and the progress sung Jin woo made in that. In the original there was a very obvious power struggle at the start of the series, while this one just felt... Like another 'Im just built different and I have better genetics' type of mc manhwa (stuff like regressors for manhwa or Isekai mc for mangas).

I pray that the next few chapters I read and are publish would at least live up to the solo leveling name.