The dark spirit of the Ant King, BERU, gets the spotlight in a newly released shadow visual for the Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow- TV anime series. The second season first debuted in Japan on January 4, 2025 and aired for 13 episodes, with the finale and 25th overall episode being released on March 29, 2025.
Many staff members from season one are working on the second season, including Shunsuke Nakashige as director, Noboru Kimura as series screenwriter, Tomoko Sudo as character designer, Chiaki Kozumi as sub-character designer, Hirokatsu Maruyama (Season 1 co-main animator et al.) and Yoshihiro Kanno as action director, and Hirotaka Tokuda as monster designer. A-1 Pictures is once again in charge of the animation production.
Meanwhile, the anime’s returning Japanese voice cast stars:
- • Taito Ban as Sung Jin-woo
- • Reina Ueda as Cha hae-in
- • Daisuke Hirakawa as Choi Jong-in
- • Hiroki Tochi as Baek Yun-ho
- • Banjo Ginga as Go Geon-hui
- • Makoto Furukawa as U Jin-cheol
- • Genta Nakamura as Yoo Jin-ho
- • Haruna Mikawa as Sung Jinah
The first season aired in Japan on January 6, 2024 and ended on March 31, 2024. A compilation film titled Solo Leveling -ReAwakening- screened in Japan from November 29, 2024 to December 12, 2024 and in North America on December 6, 2024.
The anime is based on the 2016 South Korean web novel written by Chugong and illustrated by the late Dubu (Redice Studio), which released a total of 13 volumes and a side story. A webtoon manhwa illustrated by the latter was released afterwards in 2018, with 13 volumes published as of November 2024. H-Goon later took over the series’ webtoon adaptation in the latest volumes being published in Japan after Dubu’s passing. Yen Press has published both the web novel and webtoon in English print.
Crunchyroll is streaming Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow- worldwide, along with bilibili and Netflix. The former describes the series as:
It’s been over ten years since gates that lead to another dimension have begun appearing across the world. The battles between the magic beasts inhabiting the dungeons through the gates and the human hunters who have awakened the abilities to fight them show no signs of ending. Ordinarily, a hunter’s abilities do not change upon awakening, with their rank never increasing. However, the low-ranked Sung Jinwoo, known as “The Weakest Hunter of All Mankind,” gained the ability to level up through battle during a raid on a double dungeon.
Having completed a job-change quest that earned him the job “Shadow Monarch” and command over an army of shadows, Jinwoo heads into battle seeking the ingredients for the Elixir of Life to save his sick mother.
