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In the early days of WEBTOON and official English translations of manhwa, there was an immensely popular long-running action, dark fantasy title that played with the well-explored concept ofoverlapping videogame mechanics with reality, long before the overwhelming success of titles likeSolo Leveling. While it by no means pioneered this particular trope, nor is it even the very best the trope has to offer in the realms of anime, manhwa and manga,DICE: The Cube That Changes Everythingwas once upon a time a brilliant and unique exploration of a narrative in which a character gains the ability to alter their own “base stats” much like the Level system now ubiquitous in RPGs, but what was brilliant about it was the way this concept was taken to a very dark place.
Put in contemporary terms,DICEis a story that’s sort of like ifSolo Levelinghad multiple characters who were identified as “Players”,not just Sung Jinwoo. If it sounds chaotic, you don’t even know the half of it. Here’s whyDICEis worth reading, especially for fans ofSolo Leveling.
DICE Plot and Background Information
The story ofDICEfollows Dongtae, a constantly bullied and downtrodden teen at the bottom of the social hierarchy with no prospects, or friends who harbors romantic feelings for Eunjoo,the prettiest girl at his school. One day, the popular transfer student named Taebin offers Dongtae an opportunity to change his life forever, but he leaves abruptly, unable to bear the thought of his crush falling in love with the handsome new kid.
Unbeknownst to Dongtae at the time, Taebin was trying to get him involved in a strange game in which performing tasks sent to one’s cellphone from an entity named “X” earns a Player “dice”, which they can then roll to earn points that they can invest in their own attributes, literally changing themselves overnight.
A series of events leads Dongtae to engage in a scuffle with Taebin after coming into possession of one of the strange blue dice, which he accidentally rolls, changing its colour and starting off his new life as a “Dicer”; an individual who performs tasks given to them to earn more dice – the cube that can change everything.DICEwas written and illustrated by Yun Hyunseok and originally ran on WEBTOON from May 2013 to July 2021, with the English version running from July 2014 to November 2021. The series goes down asone of the most popular titles in WEBTOON history, with over 200 million views and 1.3 million followers on the platform, who have given the series a rating of 9.28/10.
Similarities Between DICE and Solo Leveling
Zero to Hero and Getting the Chance to “Start Over”
The biggest similarities betweenDICEandSolo Levelingare the fact that both titles employ some aspect of videogame mechanics as the core mechanic in the story. InDICE, the strange app that “X” uses to contact the Dicers offers them various Quests that they must complete to earn a number of Dice that they can then roll to earn plurripotent Skill Points. However, at a certain level, the Dice begin to vary in their rarity and potential, with A-Rank Dice being able to grant the user one of six pre-defined superpowers.
The “X” messages are much like Jinwoo’s Daily Quests and the notifications that he seescourtesy of the System inSolo Leveling, which treats him like a Player capable of leveling up his character, and certain Quests give rise to much rarer, much more useful rewards, like Rune Stones containing high-leveling Skills and various artifacts.DICEalso has a complicated, high-stakes endgame that is several orders of magnitude grander than its starting point.
How Is DICE Different to Solo Leveling?
“A New Challenger!”
The main difference between these two titles and their explorations of similar tropes and sub-tropes lies in the directions taken with the “videogamification of reality” aspect. InDICE, the simple concept, which should merely have been the shared secret of only two individuals, spread to their entire school, creating a host of Dicers in a set of unprecedented circumstances that “X”, who more and more rapidly begins to resemble some kind of being akin tothe cruel and sadistic Absolute BeinginSolo Leveling, relishes as entertainment. The exposure of the Dice to countless formerly normal people creates a major imbalance not only in the previously established social hierarchy of their school, but also essentially changes a significant fraction of the population into superhumans, much like Hunters inSolo Leveling.
However, their position could more closely be compared to that of the warringRulers and Monarchs ofSolo Leveling’spre-history, but in terms of the parallels between both narratives resting on the “videogamification of reality” thing, the Dicers are effectively Players in the same way Sung Jinwoo is, not to mention the various similarities between the early versions of Dongtae and Jinwoo, as well as their taller, more attractive post-inciting incident selves. The parallels and differences to Solo Leveling make DICE a highly recommended manga for Solo Leveling fans who might want a taste of something that hits some of the same notes a little differently to what you’d expect.
Solo Leveling
Cast
A-1 Pictures' Solo Leveling is an anime based on Chugong’s popular web novel. Set in an unforgiving fantasy world where hunters explore dungeons filled with monsters, the vulnerable Sung Jinwoo gains a significant power boost after he is picked to be a solo player by the System.
