Ranking the Best Manhwa That Are Just Like Solo Leveling

At this point, the Solo Leveling franchise can only be regarded as a phenomenon, with the anime continuing to break records and enthrall its audience week in, week out, and an entire “Shadow Army” of different projects coming out at around the same time. Last year, fans got to enjoy the franchise’s first game adaptation with the Solo Leveling: ARISE RPG, and in the currently airing Winter 2025 anime season, Solo Leveling Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow- raises the bar set by the first season, satisfying the demands of a fanbase that has been dreamed of days like this.

Long story short, Solo Leveling is heavily sought after, but there’s only so much of it despite all the various developments across the board, so here are a few of the best manhwa that are just like Solo Leveling. This is a list of titles that are incredibly similar to the series, so much so that they could be described as “Solo Leveling in a different font”. Bonus points if they have any reference to solitude or leveling up in their title.

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Like with Japanese light novels, manhwa titles have leaned towards the highly expository format that has gained notoriety due to its frequency in the titles of many isekai narratives. A lot of titles have English forms that have streamlined their original Korean titles to retain some of the meaning but cut away the extra terms. “Solo Leveling” is a great example of this, as it is actually called “Na Honjaman Rebeleop“, which translates to “Only I Level Up”, hence the Japanese title “Ore Dake ga Level Up na Ken“, which is more like “The Story in Which Only I Level Up”. Some of the titles that are about to be mentioned will be humourous in that sense, as some Solo Leveling lookalikes lean heavily into the fact that they’re Solo Leveling lookalikes (consider the title “Leveling Up Alone”), which isn’t inherently bad.

Tatsuki Fujimoto, the author of Chainsaw Man himself, has referred to the series, which may go on to be regarded as his magnum opus, as a “bootleg Jujutsu Kaisen“, so it could even be argued that there is space in the industry even for titles that aren’t blatant rip-offs, but may still borrow quite intently from a particular source. It can be argued that this borrowing can lead to stagnation as the same character archetypes, tropes and story beats are used from title to title, stifling the possibility of growth of a medium, but there’s also space for more than just one thing. Without further ado, here are some of the best manhwa like Solo Leveling.

5

Return of the Disaster Class Hero

One of Solo Leveling’s Cousins

• Author: SAN.G (story), BGman and HEATS (art, adaptation) [REDICE Studio]
• Genres: Action, Fantasy, Supernatural
• Published: December 2021 – ongoing
• Platform: Tappytoon

Return of the Disaster Class Hero follows a man known as Lee Geon, the thirteenth of twelve saints blessed by the Zodiac constellations with power to protect the world from monsters called “Calamities”. Despite not being blessed by a Zodiac God like the others, Lee Geon became the most powerful of the saints, incurring the envy of his colleagues, who went on to betray him and leave him for dead in the Tower of Demons shortly after he dispatched the Demon Lord. For twenty long years, the twelve saints took credit for his heroics, and spread a false narrative in which Lee Geon sacrificed himself for their sake; however, he has finally fought his way out of the Tower, and is ready to exact his revenge on the people who betrayed him.

The first thing that makes this similar to Solo Leveling is the art, but beyond that, the concept of Calamities, as well as the Saints blessed by their Zodiac Gods, are reminiscent of the Rulers of Solo Leveling, who were all “fragments of the Brilliant Light”, the Absolute Being. Like Solo Leveling, Return of the Disaster Class Hero features a situation where a sole hero is left for dead in a Dungeon full of powerful enemies, but being trapped there for over a decade more closely resembles the situation faced by Sung Jinwoo’s father, Sung Il Hwan. The series also has a similar edginess to Solo Leveling, and just like how one reads Solo Leveling knowing that Sung Jinwoo will defeat his enemies, you read Return of the Disaster Class Hero knowing that Lee Geon will triumph, albeit without the journey to power. Lee Geon also undergoes what could be considered a reincarnation, or at least something similar to what Jinwoo went through after his “death” in the Cartenon Temple Double Dungeon Incident.

4

Leveling Up Alone

Solo… Leveling?

• Author: Sinfeel, BANGDOG
• Genres: Action, Fantasy, Supernatural
• Published: April 2021 – ongoing
• Platform: Tapas

The hilariously named Leveling Up Alone is so similar to Solo Leveling, it may as well be an alternate timeline of its events. The story begins by introducing the carnage that took hold when monsters began appearing all over the world from portals. A strange-looking young man crashes a meeting of world leaders, offering humanity a solution: the power to beat the monsters in exchange for the Earth’s participation in a multidimensional space alliance. 28 years later, the world is in turmoil and human civilization at the brink of collapse, but having taken up the young man on his offer, humanity now has a fighting chance with the rise of Hunters, individuals whose powers have awakened, but protagonist Lee Han Yeol, isn’t so impressive.

Working as a porter to support those fighting on the front lines, Han Yeol has no powers, but tries to save a fellow porter who was left for dead during a battle against a giant lizard, and winds up attracting the beast’s attention. In a desperate situation, Han Yeol’s latent powers finally activate, and he hears a second voice in his head: that of Kabis, the newly awakened “Ego” who will serve him on his journey. Leveling Up Alone is so similar to Solo Leveling, the main character, a weak and broke nobody like early Jinwoo, even has an ill parent he takes care of, he’s left for dead in a terrifying situation and even has his own version of the System. What’s cool about this is that it combines the “videogamified”, fantastical dark reality of Solo Leveling, with some That Time I Got Reincarnated As a Slime and some early Kaiju No. 8, because porters also have to clean up after successful missions. What’s cool about this exploration of the subtropes is that his “System” enables him to create Skills, but just like Jinwoo, Han Yeol is a special Hunter capable of getting stronger over time.

3

Solo Max-Level Newbie

Leveling By Yourself, That Is to Say, Solo Leveling

• Author: swingbat, WAN.Z [REDICE Studio]
• Genres: Action, Fantasy, Supernatural
• Published: February 2022 – ongoing
• Platform: WEBTOON

REDICE Studio strikes again. The best thing about this one is how many aspects of the main character are similar to Sung Jinwoo (anime has this, the variants of Sword Art Online’s Kirito, or, to some extent, the “Ayanami Rei Expy”), firstly being “handsome Korean guy A”, and the fact that he wields a dagger. In the world of the virtual reality game Tower of Trials, humanity has lost hundreds of thousands of lives trying to conquer the Tower of Trials, which threatens the complete destruction of humanity if it isn’t completed before the timer runs out. It is a “trash” (word that rhymes with ‘witty’) game that isn’t fun, but tortures its players with its difficulty, but Kang Jihyeok, the first player ever to clear it, ends up having fun discovering countless ways to beat the game, dedicating eleven years of his life to its dungeons.

One day, he receives an email about an update, but he plans on retiring as a streamer and putting the game away. He passes out after a night of drinking, waking up to upload the footage from his last game session when he sees the news: the Tower of Trials has appeared in reality, and if it isn’t cleared in 90 days, humanity will perish. It seems different enough, until you realize that the Tower of Trials appears in Solo Leveling as the Demon Castle Dungeon, where Sung Jinwoo collects the ingredients to craft the Elixir of Life. The overlapping of the game’s mechanics with real life is also different in this, making for an interesting perspective in which there are multiple Players instead of just the one.

2

Player Who Can’t Level Up

SOLO IL-LEVELING

• Author: Tae_A, Parrot Kim, GaVinGe
• Genres: Action, Fantasy, Supernatural
• Published: February 2022 – ongoing
• Platform: Tapas

The setup is blow-for-blow the same as Solo Leveling, with monsters and magical beasts pouring from a portal or “Gate”, and some people developing superhuman powers. This time; however, the main character, Kigyu, awakens as a “Unique Ability Player” (so an S-Rank Hunter) and is almost scouted by this world’s Satoru Gojo. There are different Player classes, with everyone being able to level up to some extent, but unfortunately for Kim Kigyu, five years since he was identified as a Player, he is unable to level up at all.

This puts an interesting twist on a similar origin story to “Humanity’s Weakest Hunter” Sung Jinwoo, as anyone has the potential to become a Player, but only a select few will awaken with Unique Abilities. Just like in Solo Leveling, Kigyu ends up in a dangerous situation that shouldn’t have taken place within the part of the Dungeon he frequents, and he finally discovers his Unique Ability: Ego’s Partner, granting him the ability to link with an entity known as an Ego and use its abilities, acting as a conduit for its power like Sung Jinwoo is to the Shadow Monarch.

1

The Gamer

Before Solo Leveling

• Author: Song Sangyong (story), Sang-A (art)
• Genres: Action, Fantasy, Supernatural
• Published: September 2013 – July 2024
• Platform: WEBTOON

Obviously, Solo Leveling has tons of inspirations, and it might not be possible to pin down every single one to the exact stories that inspired its author, but fans have seen the connections to RPGs, fantasy and even manga, like Hunter x Hunter; however, there is a WEBTOON that was extremely popular in its heyday, during the earliest days of official English translations of manhwa that may be one of the identifiable inspirations. The Gamer is an aptly named title in which the world of protagonist Han Jihan becomes like a game, giving him the ability to see a HUD superimposed over his reality.

The Gamer is itself a product of various inspirations from the same wellspring, coming up in a time when lots of popular “videogame reality” titles were gaining popularity in anime, manga and manhwa due to the explosion of adaptations of successful light novels from websites like Japan’s “Shousetsuka ni Narou”. Because the protagonist levels up from day-to-day activities, you’d think it’s a lot less intense, but immediately introduces other strange supernatural abilities. Watch out for this one, though, the official English translation isn’t the best, but you can definitely regard The Gamer, as a hall of famer, in this particular niche.