Tower of God

Tower of God

Tower of God anime series cover art
Tower of God

Series Overview

Tower of God (Kami no Tou / 神之塔 -Tower of God-) is an action, adventure, mystery, drama, fantasy series — at least according to the genres it’s tagged as on MyAnimeList. Really, the best way to think about this series so far is that it’s a shounen battle series like Naruto, One Piece, My Hero Academia, etc.

However, what sets it apart from those series isn’t actually anything the series itself does; it’s where it comes from. The Tower of God anime is actually based on a manhwa, which is just a Korean manga/comic.

Since this series comes from Korea, that probably means we’ll get to see some different tropes and references that we wouldn’t normally see in Japanese series. But unfortunately, since I know nothing about Korea, I couldn’t tell you if any of that stuff was included in this first season.

The one thing I can say may have been Korean in the series are the names of the characters, but even that’s just a guess. Some of the names sound Korean to me, but as I said, I have no idea. Then there are other names that have clearly been distorted into Japanese for the anime. And finally, the protagonist’s name was straight up translated into Japanese.

I think the fact that Bam’s name was translated to “Yoru” (夜) for the anime signifies that his name is important. In English, his name translates to “Night,” so we’ll probably learn something more about that later on.

But names and Korean references aside, Tower of God is your standard battle, fantasy series in many ways. There’s a magic system called Shinsu, a bunch of different races, and a tower of 100 floors (I think that’s how many there are) that our main characters are trying to climb.

Main Characters

Bam is the protagonist of the series and is what’s known as an Irregular. Irregulars are those who were able to enter the tower by their own abilities and were not invited into the tower. That doesn’t really mean much though, because even by the end of the first season it’s unclear exactly how someone is selected to enter the tower.

However, what you should know about Irregulars is that they have the potential to be extremely powerful and wield the ability to “change” the tower. Basically, he has overpowered potential like every shounen battle series protagonist ever.

Khun is another one of the main characters. He’s the brains of the group who always comes up with a plan to tackle whatever obstacle appears before him. Khun is also a member of some well-known family, but nothing else about his family has been revealed just yet.

Khun holding a dagger and a crown from the anime series Tower of God
Khun holding a dagger and a crown

Rak is the third main character and the only one who isn’t human. We haven’t been told exactly what species Rak is, but he’s basically just a humanoid alligator. He wields a spear in battle and is constantly on the lookout for powerful prey to test himself against.

Finally, we have Rachel, the fan-favorite character. Rachel is Bam’s childhood friend whose dream was always to reach the top of the tower so that she could see the stars. She doesn’t actually do all that much in this first season, but I have high hopes for her in the future.

When I said that Rachel is the fan-favorite, I was joking. Most of the community seems to hate her, but I actually think she turned out to be quite an interesting character.

What I’m Expecting from Season 2

The first season covers the entire prologue of the series. Which, if you ask me, was a bad call. I’ve heard from a few fans of the source material that the anime moved extremely fast through the content. And even as someone who doesn’t know the source material, I could tell that was the case.

There are multiple instances per episode where explanations of how things work are skipped entirely. I know there are going to be people who say something like the anime was “showing, not telling,” but that doesn’t apply here. They skip out on a large portion of the world-building altogether and even failed to actually explain the rules of the tests the entire season was based around.

To make a comparison, it would be like if you watched the chunin exam portion of Naruto, but you had no idea what jutsu and chakra were and the rules of the various exams were either not explained or explained incorrectly.

Rak, Hatz, and Paracule from the anime series Tower of God
Rak, Hatz, and Paracule

I have a lot of bad things to say about this first season of Tower of God, but if you want to read more about that, I suggest you check out my individual episode reviews.

Despite all the issues with season 1 that arose from the pacing of the anime, I actually have very high hopes for season 2. And the main reason for that is that I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen in season 2.

That might sound like a bad thing, but at the end of the prologue, we got a tiny glimpse into what the future of the series is going to be like. And from that glimpse, it looks to be a much better story than what you would expect from watching the prologue alone.

Conclusion

Overall, season 1 of Tower of God is a 7/10 from me. It definitely had problems, but it was an enjoyable watch and did enough right for me to consider it good. And assuming the pace gets toned down a bit, I think it could become one of the most popular anime of the next few years.

I do also want to mention the music before wrapping up this review. Both the OP and ED were performed by Stray Kids. I’m not familiar with that group, but I thought they were good songs. The soundtrack was done by none other than Kevin Penkin, who you probably know from Made in Abyss.

As we all know, Made in Abyss had the best soundtrack of 2017. But then Kevin Penkin went on to do the Shield Hero soundtrack, which I think is actually terrible. Luckily, he seems to be back on form, because the Tower of God soundtrack is extremely good. It’s awe-inspiring like the Made in Abyss soundtrack but in a much more suspenseful way.

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One Reply to “Tower of God”

  1. I would recommend to atleast read first season (up to what anime covered) of its webtoon. Reason is for better understanding as anime cut lots of lore and explanation and even changed few things which contradict future events (like about Ghost guy and Ren)

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