Solo Leveling is undoubtedly one of the most successful anime to have launched on Crunchyroll over the past two years. It has become one of the biggest sensations in the anime industry, and there is no denying that few series will be able to match its impact. That said, because the series was already a huge success as a manhwa, it inspired many other titles to follow the same formula, creating its own subculture. While there are many manhwas similar to Solo Leveling, a new wave of anime has also started to emerge, following a similar narrative.
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A new anime, Tomb Raider King, is currently airing on Crunchyroll as part of the Summer 2026 lineup. Ever since it was first teased, the series has been dubbed a replacement for Solo Leveling. However, its premiere already made it clear that it is a perfect replacement for Solo Leveling fans, and Tomb Raider King also introduced one key improvement over the original that makes the main character’s journey even more compelling. Now that the second episode has been released, the series further solidifies that impression, already incorporating an element that Solo Leveling only introduced later in its first season.
Crunchyroll’s Solo Leveling Replacement Continues to Incorporate the Original’s Best Element
With its premiere, Tomb Raider King made it clear that it shares many similarities with Solo Leveling, particularly in its narrative structure, where a mysterious phenomenon appears in the world, and the protagonist gains a new power to overcome it. However, while Solo Leveling established that Jinwoo’s only real motivation was to provide a better life for his mother and sister, Tomb Raider King‘s protagonist, Seo Jooheon, is driven by a second chance from the very beginning, when the tombs first started to appear. This immediately establishes that, in the original timeline, Jooheon was wronged by many people.
As a result, his second chance also gives him a personal motivation to take revenge on those who betrayed him. This positions him as a far more ruthless protagonist from the outset, something Jinwoo only gradually became as he was forced into conflicts with other humans. In contrast, Jooheon already embodies the ruthless qualities that Jinwoo did not fully display until much later in Solo Leveling‘s first season. The second episode itself shows Jooheon embracing that mentality, as he does not hesitate to kill those standing in his way and even brings down an entire organization.
Meanwhile, the latest episode also sees Jooheon entering a tomb, where he uses both his ruthlessness and his knowledge of the tomb boss to maximize his gains, something Jinwoo only showcased later after growing stronger as a hunter and learning how ruthless the world truly was. In that sense, Tomb Raider King is already succeeding with elements that Solo Leveling incorporated much later as Jinwoo matured. With an older protagonist, Tomb Raider King has already become the aura-farming series on Crunchyroll that Solo Leveling only evolved into later, and it will be interesting to see where the series goes from here.
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