Solo Leveling Season 2, Episode 6 Is The Most Visually-Stunning Episode Yet

The following contains spoilers for Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow-, available on Crunchyroll.

The sixth episode of Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow- picks up from where the last one left off, as the Hunters Guild’s secondary strike team find themselves in a horrific situation deep within High Orc territory staring death in the face. S-Rank (pending) Hunter Sung Jinwoo didn’t want to interfere, but after seeing the strike team captain get clobbered, he jumps into action, not realizing the audience he will attract.

This is by far the most epic episode of the Solo Leveling anime to date, with the familiar touch of the same animator who gave us the brilliance of Sung Jinwoo vs Bloodred Igris in season 1, creating some of the most satisfying animation of Winter 2025.

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Solo Leveling: Who Is Kargalgan? Jin-Woo’s New Shadow Soldier Explained

Jin-Woo met Kargalgan during the Hunters Guild Arc in Solo Leveling. So, who exactly is the High Orcs’ leader and Shadow Army’s latest addition, Tusk?

Attracting All Kinds of Attention

Various Parties Find Themselves Drawn to the Dungeon

Cha Hae In visits the A-Rank Gate where the Hunters Guild secondary strike team is currently fighting for their lives. She plans on going in, but she finds the leader of the mining team waiting there. She asks if he has any weapons she could borrow, but all he has is mining equipment. At first, she declines the pick axe he offers but upon being pressed about it, she gladly takes up the tool, giving us a much-needed chuckle-worthy moment before returning to the dark and violent reality facing Son Kihoon and his team.

Cha Hae In is not the only outside factor who enters the Dungeon after hearing that Sung Jinwoo has entered, with the Hunters Association’s Supervisor Woo Jinchul following her into the Gate not long after, due to the fact that Jinwoo’s pending S-Rank status makes him a target for ongoing surveillance.

The interactions taking place outside the Gate were great because they were a quick break from the intensity of what’s happening inside, with decent humour, like when Woo Jinchul arrived and one of the miners who tried bullying Jinwoo on his first day overheard that the Supervisor is there to keep an eye on Jinwoo. It was just the right dose of goofiness for the kind of episode we got.

Faced With the Overwhelming Reality of Death

Son Kihoon Shows His Stuff, But It’s Nowhere Near Enough

At Kargalgan’s castle, Son Kihoon and his team of Hunters are shocked by the sheer numbers of High Orcs, but also take note of four especially powerful individuals who could level an entire city on their own. As captain of the strike team tasked with closing the Gate, Kihoon felt it was their responsibility to prevent a Dungeon Break at all costs, but his bravery wasn’t nearly enough in this situation.

When he comes to the decision to strike at the orcs first, Kihoon is shocked but not swayed to see himself charging at the Dungeon Boss alone, with his teammates rooted in place by fear. When Kargalgan unleashes his killing intent, it drills home the fact that none of them will leave alive, but that fear reaches a fever pitch when Kargalgan explains why he had them come all the way to his headquarters: they will be picked off one by one and slaughtered for the sake of entertainment. Even when faced with monstrous strength and the insignificance the orcs have assigned to human life, Kihoon’s ability to engage the enemy is worthy of respect.

Needless to say, Kargalgan made quick work of him, slamming him into the ground and ceiling several times using gravity manipulation magic. All the other Hunters could do was watch as their leader was being tossed around like a ragdoll, but at some point, Jinwoo intervened, saying he’d only held off that long because the Hunters Guild has rights to the Dungeon, but their current predicament is life-threatening. He asks Kihoon, who is bloodied and beaten, if he can take on all the monsters in the Dungeon. Kihoon agrees, as if instinctively knowing that Jinwoo would be their saviour. Jinwoo is confident going into the battle, describing it as a bad matchup for the High Orc shaman, summoning a legion of Shadow Soldiers. Elsewhere in the Dungeon, Cha Hae In is slowly making her way towards the Boss Room, working through several High Orcs unscathed.

“Let Me ‘Solo’ ‘Em”

Absolutely Stunning Animation Shines in Episode 6

Upon seeing Jinwoo’s Shadows, the members of strike team B are obviously awed, but what follows their “oohs” and “aahs” at this point are most likely some of your own, as the episode starts to deliver some of the most visually satisfying combat sequences, and buttery-smooth animation that one witnessing it could only call a triumph.

As you’d expect in scenes with many moving parts (like armies or large skirmishing groups), there was liberal use of CGI, but this served only to add to the textures we were treated to in this episode, with the usual feel of the series being supplemented by the CGI and the strangely satisfying middle ground seen in the appearance and movement of the Shadows extracted from High Orcs.

Impact frames, while present, were brief, with a familiar “mixed-media” approach to that seen during the Igris fight in season 1, as episode director and storyboarder returns Takayuki Kikuchi cooks up yet another visual feast, adding a lot of interesting visual elements to the intensity of the Kargalgan battle. There were wide, sweeping pans, dynamic tracking shots where we’d get front-row seats of some of the carnage, including Igris, Tusk and Ice Bear’s brawls against some of the High Orc “Shitennō“.

Those brilliant sequences made up for whatever qualms one would have about CGI in the episode, and that’s before the main event: Sung Jinwoo vs Kargalgan. The shaman is surprised to see his army on the back foot, so he finally gets up from his throne to fight seriously. The members of the strike team try to get involved, but Kargalgan curses them immediately, calling them impudent for attempting to “claim the stage” when they’re merely the audience. He tries to enact curses on Jinwoo, but Kindairu’s Blessing negates those pesky status effects, giving him the space to unleash his Shadow Mages, enhanced by the Orb of Avarice, to return fire.

All Too Familiar

Jinwoo’s Brand-New Shadow Experiences The Same Death

Kargalgan is pushed to the limit, with his forces dwindling and even his most powerful soldiers turned into Shadows. Enraged, he gigantifies, the sheer size difference being easily reminiscent of the events that took place in the Cartenon Temple Double Dungeon Incident, which Jinwoo directly addresses. The High Orc shaman unleashes a powerful spell that fires beams of dragon fire from countless maws that open up across the battlefield, mowing down Jinwoo’s shadows and even his fellow orcs in one fell swoop. Unfazed by the transformation, Jinwoo whips out his signature dagger twirl-and-catch move in midair, stabbing Kargalgan in the eye in the process. To him, a bigger foe just means a bigger target. Kargalgan is clearly pulling out his top-drawer spells for this fight, but the gulf in class is too great.

Woo Jinchul enters the Boss Room just as Jinwoo wraps a giant chain around Kargalgan (like he does that golem in the opening sequence of season 1). Kargalgan has one final stand against his own top four generals, and after being overwhelmed, he has a vision of his own death at their hands, one eerily similar to the one Jinwoo suffered on the altar of the Cartenon Temple. After beating the Boss, Jinwoo extracts his Shadow and names him “Tusk”, having forgotten the name “Kargalgan”. He was so engrossed in the battle that he didn’t notice Woo Jinchul or Cha Hae In enter, meaning that both them and the strike team all bore witness to his powers.

Full-Circle

From Humanity’s Weakest to Possibly Its Strongest Weapon

When it’s all over, Son Kihoon shows just how much of a class act he is by thanking Jinwoo for saving their lives, and not prying into his circumstances too much. After that, Cha Hae In’s set-up as a romantic prospect for Jinwoo is all but complete as she blushes and asks the other Hunters if he “thought she was weird”.

There are a few interesting things about this episode of Solo Leveling Season 2, but one of the best things was how it parallels the very beginning of Jinwoo’s journey. Like then, he was a seemingly unremarkable part of a Hunter team that was unknowingly stepping into a death trap which was in some way deeply connected to the makings of the Solo Leveling universe and the origins of the Gates.

However, as Jinwoo noted in the previous episode, the key difference is that when met with the choice, this group did everything they could to spare his life where the others ran for theirs. The respect Jinwoo developed for them over the course of the Raid is partly what saved their lives, and confirms that his humanity remains intact despite his inhuman strength. Kargalgan’s final moments were a nod to Jinwoo’s back then, which is a full-circle moment of sorts as the weakest Hunter once dubbed “Humanity’s Weakest Weapon” cemented his place as of its strongest, overcoming the same kind of overwhelming terror that once permeated his final moments.

Solo Leveling

Release Date

January 7, 2024

Directors

Shunsuke Nakashige

Writers

Noboru Kimura

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  Taito Ban

  Shun Mizushino (voice)

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  Genta Nakamura

  Kenta Morobishi (voice)