Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - is Tower of God Living Up to Expectations?
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R.Obliv
Posts: 31 |
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To be honest, as a former fan of the webtoon, going back before the official Webtoons app even existed, I don't really think the series ever got that much better. Maybe the stuff that would be adapted in a second season of the anime would work well, but everything around the Hell Train is a death knell of blandness.
A lot of the hype Tower of God had back in the early 2010s was due to it being a new shounen manga with a lot of ambition, as a time of long runners stifling the manga scene. Also, for those that weren't familiar with HunterxHunter, it did feel very different committing to these tests. It's also important to not that some of the hype was due to the potential of the plot - often compounded by blog posts written by the author explaining how his world worked and the key players within it, causing forums to become filled with theories and possibilities. But new, better manga arrived and now ToG feels dated and bland in a more exciting scene. I do think the adaptation has pacing issues that exasperates the legitimate issues raised (the season was 80 chapters and stuff gets cut to fit 13 episodes, often little scenes that helped the characters or tests feel a little more interesting), but, a lot of the criticisms raised here are in the original webtoon, even if less glaring, and they don't really get fixed as the series progresses. The two issues that are fixed as the webtoon progressed would be that Baam actually gains agency over what happens to him and that there is a better explanation of the overall plot of the series. However, he doesn't become a good character even with agency - he get's a little more introspective but it's not like he grows a personality over night, and the plot is about as cookie cutter as it goes. Furthermore, while Baam gets a little better, he gets a lot more spotlight, leaving his more interesting supporting cast often sitting around watching. As the series progresses there is a better grasp that this is a visual medium and the structure of the chapters gets better from a craft perspective, but the writing never really does. Exposition previously relegated to blog posts end up grinding chapters to a halt, and the author seems uncomfortable with committing to his ideas, often spending chapters talking building a subplot, before abruptly deciding to end it for the sake of a twist. Basically the series starts with ensemble team games where Baam often feels lost among more interesting characters, and exchanges it for laser beam fights with increasingly obnoxious power ups where Baam does everything. The author compounds this issue when he stuffs the series with characters with a single power as their quirk, as though he thinks he is One Piece's Oda, but it ends up feeling more like Bleach's Kubo Tite. Ultimately, I would argue that the DMV floor had the best ensemble of characters and the most complex dynamics between them, even if there were few stakes. SIU doesn't sustain even that once the plot arrives. While some people say "this is the prologue, it gets better," it is important to know that other people argue this is the best part of the series and it gets worse (personally, I preferred floor 20 and 30). But if you like laser beam (well, water beam) fights, they are very impressive after the stuff covered within this anime season. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5313 |
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The thing with titles like "A Netflix Original Series" and Crunchyrolls equivalent title, is they are supposed to be seen as marks of quality. And while not all are bad, enough are that that the label doesn't do it's job. No one sees them and gets excited by them, so they fail in their purpose.
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ultimatehaki
Posts: 1090 |
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Pretty much sums up my feelings on the first episode(all I watched). The setting wasn't, well, set up. I'm not looking for all the answers just a firm ground to get some footing but it failed to do so. Last edited by ultimatehaki on Fri Jun 19, 2020 9:13 am; edited 3 times in total |
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JaffaOrange
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Perhaps it's merely a matter of semantics but it's not enough to say that something "gets better" when slogging through something that one finds boring and/or confusing. It needs to get great for the time to be justified.
So does Tower of God get great? |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4422 |
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Honestly, Netflix Original doesn't mean much to me beyond a reminder that, even if I like the show, I probably won't be able to buy a copy. |
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CrypticPurpose
 Posts: 321 |
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Every time I read one of these things, I come away with the same thought: why are these people writing about anime when they seem to hate it so much?
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Cryten
 Posts: 987 |
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I've managed to enjoy myself myself but its true that I've only really cared for the characters of Khun and Anaak. When the incident with Rachel happened at the end I found I didn't actually care that much beyond how Bam would get out of it alive.
TBH with all the actions of Rachel I have started to worry that Bam is acting similar to an abusive boyfriend. Aggressively unwilling to let her go. We have been given no information on Rachel other than her hiding from him, flinching away from him when they end up in the same test. This is contrasted by an implication that she might have something to do with the cleaver wielding big red character. Though Im still confused why Endorsi made the comment about killing everyone to Rachel. Bams only purpose right now other then pursuing Rachel seems to be a ominous vessel of super power shinsu. Also they are right in that we have had a full cour of anime and only know that the tower exists and that there is a civilisation out there consisting of tribes of different species all trying to be a harem to a king. |
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Piexouar
Posts: 40 |
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Peeps are mainly discussing the plot and characters, but my biggest issue with the adaptation is the direction. A lot of the reveals and serious moments just fell flat, they felt forced with no suspense whatsoever. The show never takes the time to breathe, it has to constantly rush through the material it is adapting. Not to mention the underwhelming animation, maybe some of the important moments would have been more impactful if that wasn't the case. It says a lot when the episode animated entirely by one person (episode 4 soloed by Murata) looks better than the rest of the series combined, usually it would be a testament of one's talent, but in this case it reflects the state of the production.
Last edited by Piexouar on Sat Jun 20, 2020 11:02 am; edited 1 time in total |
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ultimatehaki
Posts: 1090 |
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They've praised plenty of anime in this column. Stop making stuff up |
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LastPage 3
Posts: 193 |
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How much were you really expecting them to tell you in a single episode? |
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kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
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Well, I'm sure those companies hope they're marks of quality, but they're really just branding. It only becomes a mark of quality if they put it on the right things. Personally, of the 3 "CR Originals" I can recall, there was one I liked, one I hated, and this one, which I was uninterested in before reading this article and am still uninterested in after. So it's kind of a wash, really. Netflix is kinda in the same boat, since they seem to slap "Netflix Original" on practically everything these days.
As the real world becomes increasingly apocalyptic, I really think it's time we stopped making excuses for shonen anime that take dozens of episodes to "get good." I mean, honestly. In all other art forms that take more than 5 seconds to consume, there's a well-established concept of a "hook" to grab the audience's attention right away, and keep it long enough for things to get going. You never want to give everything away at the start, obviously--but you have to kick things off with something enticing, that makes people want to stick around to see more. Can't expect someone to read a whole book if nothing in the first few sentences stands out. Overzealous attempts can feel more like clickbait, but too many anime are allowed to get away with just... not really trying to hook viewers at all. Gotta admit, I don't know how that strategy even works; sure, most anime are adaptations, so the existing fanbase helps, but how did that come about with a weak first few chapters/volumes? Chicken-or-the-egg puzzle, I guess. Whatever the reason, you simply can't expect most people to plow through a long, unengaging introduction to a story to get to the good part. Not when there are so many alternatives that start strong, and continue improving. Those are the kinds of productions that most often succeed at growing the fanbase. If you like a story in spite of its, er, humble beginnings, that's totally fine--but you have to realize that other people are likely to be less patient with it, and that doesn't make you better than them. |
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ultimatehaki
Posts: 1090 |
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I'll tell you exactly what should have been done. See what life is like outside the tower and average peoples opinion on it. Made in abyss did the exact same thing masterfully that instantly hooked me (and many others) and didn't actually tell us much. All we learn as far as story in the first episode is there's a town around the abyss and people dive in to uncover its secrets and make a living, other than that we see clearly how life goes around the abyss. ToG failure to do this doesn't give me any reason to care why Rachel or anyone is so desperate to climb the tower. We don't even know where the tower is or how it influences it's surroundings. It should have went the MiA route and waited an episode or two before jumping into the tower itself or at least go in at the end of the first episode if anything. TL\DR: don't keep your setting a secret! |
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R.Obliv
Posts: 31 |
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I do just want to point out that from how you described Made in Abyss, Tower of God was clearly going for a different thing with regards to its world, seeing as how Baam is basically an isekai protagonist stumbling through something he barely understands. The difference being his original world was a cave probably in a fantasy world, and not modern-day Japan. The world building could definitely be clearer, however. Some of the vagueness of the world is the fault of the anime rushing everything, therefore not letting any story, character or world-building beats land (and it will only get worse from here if they continue adapting the webtoon), but others lie at the feet of the source material. It is odd that you focused on questions about the world outside and its relationship to the tower, however, as the outside is a giant unknown. Life inside the tower is the focus and what this season should have been looking at. All the characters you meet in season 1 who aren't Rachel or Baam are from inside the tower's residential districts after all and its those who were born in the tower that climb the tower in bulk, not the people outside. The questions that the season should have answered, which were known to many readers during the same plot beats, would be why so many chose to risk death to climb the tower and become rankers, and then why those from outside the tower are so feared. Too much of the season was focused on the tests to be honest and not answering the basic rules of how the world works. I mentioned that details about the world were known to the readers, but this was not always because of the webtoon. Now some were answered in the webtoon and are not clear in the anime because of how the adaptation handled things, however others weren't clear in either and relied heavily on the author using his blog (seriously) as a second means of exposition. As the series progressed the author realized he needed to actually discuss more in the webtoon itself and not side material, but all this information was supposed to be available to the reader to find out from early within the series. It is clear that for people watching the anime only that there was not enough information, which caused everything to feel bland and listless. A stronger adaptation would have better balanced the time it had to show the setting in more detail - maybe cut or better compact the tests, spent longer on the backstories of the cast of characters and sacrifice some of the mystery by just having Yuri tell Baam what is going on - but instead the opposite occurred and what was there would often be either cut or be presented via exposition played over scenes of other different characters doing something else - tacitly implying that the exposition and world building was unimportant. The key thing is that for Tower of God the tower is the world - however the fact that this isn't clear is a massive flaw of either the source material, the anime adaptation or both. The problem is you have a flawed work, being adapted in a way that emphasizes those flaws. Also I just want to make it clear this isn't a "read the manga/webtoon/light novel" kind of post. I'm more arguing that the whole exercise of adapting Tower of God was a fool's errand because even the webtoon relied on secondary resources to explain what was going on. Crunchyroll just didn't help by adapting 80 chapters in 13 episodes so they could have the Rachel twist moment crammed in there. It would have been smarter to have used the webtoon as a jumping off point and adapted the first season tonally without following the plot so to create a self contained story. Something like what the original Full Metal Alchemist or Ao No Exorcist anime did. If it was popular, then commission a more loyal adaptation of the webtoon with more time taken to emphasize the strengths and overcome the flaws. Then everyone can experience the disappointment of the series getting bogged down with two dimensional tower politics, subplots for side characters that accomplish nothing and a twist backstabbing every 30 chapters.[/quote] |
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Zendervai
 Posts: 197 |
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The issue I have with the setting is that they don't even really define the tower itself in any way. Like, Rachel talks about wanting to see the sky so like...is the tower sitting on top of a continent or something and the outsiders are stuck underneath it? There's no concept of scale or weight that comes through in any coherent way. There's also stuff like the tower apparently being either the property of or under the control of the kingdom Yuri is from, but that's really vague and ambiguous too. If it's in the tower...where is it? It's not higher up the tower because Yuri isn't supposed to climb it, but the first floor just seems to be an antechamber.
Vague settings are fine in some cases, and some stories get away without clearly defining their setting at all. A Series of Unfortunate Events is like that, where the...country? the series takes place in doesn't make any sense. But Tower of God leans too far towards making it vague and the result is a series that raises a lot of questions about really basic elements that it doesn't really even try to approach answering any of them. There doesn't need to be a huge infodump or anything like that, but literally anything about the setting would be appreciated. And yeah, I do kind of understand the idea of the tower effectively being the whole world and what's outside the tower isn't important, but like...the show opens (sort of) outside the tower and gives us some random minor details, like the door apparently just appearing to anyone who it deems worthy or something like that. Even something as simple as the reason they can't see the stars would have been okay. |
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2862 |
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Saying that bam is an isekai protagonist is giving him a lot of credit, Isekai protagonists bring their knowledge and personalities to the second world, bam has nothing like that.
That was really good in liar game, it made you care whether that character would "grow up" to be a deceiver, find a middle ground, or even find a different answer to that moral dilemm. |
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