This Week in Anime

Is Tower of God Living Up to Expectations?

Nick
Ah don't be that way Micchy. We've got lots to look forward to in 2020! Why today we're even covering the Crunchyroll Original show Tower of God! Did I mention it's a Crunchyroll Original? I feel like I need to make that clear for the sake of my own safety.

I swear to god the CR app on my phone once sent me a notification about this show at 3am. I realize folks gotta promote their show but can you chill, y'all?

If there's one show you have heard about this season, regardless of if you're watching it, it's probably Tower of God, and with the season winding down it seems like a good a time as any to finally talk about it.

Yeah ToGgers is a pretty mixed bag for me. I'm not familiar with the webtoon series, or even that general fandom circle, but considering how much hype it got from its existing fanbase leading up to this adaptation I was kind of expecting something besides "Hunter x Hunter, but like, not as good."

I can only take "it gets better later" so far. I can handle watching a few episodes before a series really steps on the gas, but we're nearly a full season into this thing and we aren't even at the titular Tower of God. We're in the Waiting Room of God while all the characters take the SAT Prep Class of God before they can fill out their applications to Tower of God Community College.

Yeah that's one of the major roadblocks I ran into with this one. There's tons of implications and scheming side characters that suggest a sprawling fantasy world is out there, somewhere, but it's so vaguely defined that I can't really get a grasp on it. Like the show has a bad habit of just dropping names and titles on us for new characters and expecting us to roll with it without any context.

Oh right, Bam. You'll have to forgive me for forgetting him, since the narrative does for half the runtime.

Bam really is the albatross hanging around the show's neck. I can take inconsistent storytelling if the characters are interesting, but Bam is possibly the most passive protagonist I've ever seen. His only real act of agency is to follow Rachel into the Tower, and from there everything important or unique about him is just stuff that's attached to him. Like he apparently has super special powers, but those seem to be something he's born with. He has a cool sword that was just given to him by someone else. He skates through like 6 episodes of Tower Tests by letting his teammates do all the work and literally just sitting pretty.

Well the show seems willing to try anyway. From about episode 2 til basically this final arc Bam just fades into the background for other characters to have their own tragic backstories, and while not all of them land they are definitely more active, and therefore less boring. You mention Khun, and he has an equally simplistic backstory about betrayal and abandonment, but unlike Bam we actually see him contemplating it like a person would instead of staring into the middle distance like a lost duckling.

It really is weird what the story does with Bam. Going by the first episode I assumed he and Rachel were like, peers? Or friends? But she's literally the only person he has ever met prior to the story starting and also some weird mix of his mom and girlfriend???

More pressingly it's just too abstract of a backstory to relate to. The story wants me to sympathize with Bam's pursuit of Rachel, but it's not borne out of anything remotely human. The animals in Homeward Bound have more understandable motivation.

I somehow doubt it is, but either way it's a real bad way to characterize your protagonist. I'm with you on just dumping this boy and making it The Anaak and Endorsi Half-Hour Variety Hour.

Though I have to call out Endorsi's terrible little Oni horn. It's so tiny and deliberately designed to be cutesy that I can't see it as anything but an in-grown Moe Fang.

Girl got off pretty light with just a broken ankle. Poor Anaak literally busted her tail.

Really though, of ToG's very sizable cast those two have the most immediately compelling dynamic and story. It's tied into the larger world in a way that's actually parsable, and Anaak's quest for vengeance is a concrete goal with easily understood consequences.

Even if the particulars are hazy, the dynamic at play - a "forbidden" child trying to avenge her mother against the powers that be - is easy to grab onto, and when added to Endorsi's own complicated feelings about it all, they make for a a really engaging duo. Also the lizard girl roasts her "aunt" a lot and that's just adorable.

It almost works as a brick joke? Like clearly the most powerful character in this battle tournament show spends the whole time taking the wrong turn at Albuquerque until the next-to-last episode. But it does definitely take away any surprise when she shows up and cleans house.

That's kind of a running issue with ToG. The ideas are good but the execution or presentation feels lacking in some respect. It also has a weird problem of having like 5 separate comic relief characters who never. shut. up.

Sorry she got her sad backstory and then got out of dodge. We're stuck with Dollar Store Subaru Natsuki, an alligator, and this extra from The Thief & The Cobbler:

I guess Lauroe counts but honestly he's too much of a Mood to be pure comedy.

There's also this dude, who's such a non-entity that all I remember about him is his Nintendo Switch katanas.

OK so there's a LOT of characters here, and not all are created equal. If you want some emotional punch there's Anaak, Endorsi, and Khun. You want goofy shenanigans you have everyone else. You want...uh...freckles(?) you got Rachel.

Hahahaaaa yeah about that. So the only thing I knew about Tower of God going in was that, when the anime was announced, somebody in the ANN forums felt the need to very loudly announce how much they and the fanbase at large HATE Rachel. And I spent the whole show waiting to figure out why since her only actions in the series were eating apples and getting stabbed.

Turns out her Ultimate Villain Of Manwha level crime was to yeet the worst character in the show down a hole.

I especially love that he gets a speech about how he's changed and grown across his adventures when like...no you haven't. The only things about you that are different are your clothes and you can shoot magic water now.

Bam's whole thing is that he's so pure-hearted he refuses to betray or trick people to get ahead. This is all well and good but it defines him entirely by in-action in the story, and is undercut by how he routinely gets ahead thanks to other people being underhanded for his benefit. I'm pretty sure Khun pulls like 4 different schemes to keep him in the test.

And that's the major failing that cuts ToG's legs out from under it for me. The narrative and characters insist on making its least interesting characters as the key to everything, and it drags down any interesting ideas it could otherwise play with. Fans can tell me it comes into its own eventually, but I do not possess the patience to watch multiple seasons waiting for a story to get good.