Tower of God

Just trying to be the voice of reason. The webtoon is absolutely no masterpiece, nor is this anime. But both highly enjoyable. And Ive re-read part of S1 after each episode aired to compare.
There have only been a handfull of moments they adapted different or cut which I thought would be nice additions. But in my opinion that is counter balanced by the handfull of improvements they did.

The line about Bam following his heart as you mentioned is the biggest loss. Bam stopping the sword attack during the hide and seek game was drawn so bad ass. The little line about Bams pocket, which made the administrator part more intimidating. And I believe another sentence very early on. The speed from Quant was animated awkwardly but you absolutely got the feeling he is in his own league and impossible to beat.

Serena was focussed on equally in the webtoon, with the exception of her funeral, which was a very nice addition as it got some world building with the endless WW2 like graveyard.
Or the stabbing of Rachel made way more sense, int he webtoon she just slumped down without ever seeing her get hurt. The bullgame was made more interesting as the webtoon most of the game was very forgetable. The moments between the two princesses are nice and done better as the webtoon. Especially how they animated her flashback was done very well.

But looking at this adaption it is not like you are missing crucial information. As for the adaption have weird comedy, I can simply point to the webtoon, as the comedy in there is way more present with a lot more chibi and in some times it is awkwardly placed as well. I would say the anime cut down the comedy moments.
Sure they use the chocolat joke a lot where the webtoon switched to bananas instead but Rak is stuffing his face just as much, just with different foods in the webtoon. As said before if we are complaining about the chocolat bars then we are at nitpicking level. I dont care if it is chocolat, bananas or whatever.

As for the pacing something I also mentioned multiple times, marketing wise it makes sense to fully adapt season 1, which is probally a studio decission. Because you want to end on the point where we are now. And it makes the opening for S2 all the more interesting. (Though Im interested how that will work out as the mystery will be very hard to maintain in anime form, gives a lot more away as a still frame drawing. You probally get what Im refering to.)

So far this anime gets a solid 4/5 stars from me. Where the webtoon got barely a 4,5/5 stars from me. Slightly less good mainly because the surprise element is gone. But nonetheless enjoyable and not even remotely an absolute garbage failure as you make it out to be.

I've not read that much manga which are adapted to anime but from those I read I can't list more as 2-3 which got a solid adaption (Maid-sama, Daily Lives of Highschool Boys for example). As for failures, plenty of those, Elfen Lied, Berserk, Tokyo Ghoul etc, and Sankarea is an absolute garbage fire if you want to compare. So I'm happy, ToG the anime achieved it's goal.
 
Vega said:
I thought that Rachel betraying Bam had some decent buildup across prior episodes (or at least it looked like there were obvious indications that something was going to happen between the two), unless I'm reading your post wrong.
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Nah, you're good.

There was some build-up and indication leading to the betrayal twist, but I felt the moments were too scattered and telegraphed. Kind of like how you'd hint at a certain character's betrayal in noontime dramas by making sure the camera catches them brooding in the background. ToG was the same way, only with prolonged shots of Rachel in her room and some obvious obstruction of her face.
 
Franconator said:
Nah, you're good.

There was some build-up and indication leading to the betrayal twist, but I felt the moments were too scattered and telegraphed. Kind of like how you'd hint at a certain character's betrayal in noontime dramas by making sure the camera catches them brooding in the background. ToG was the same way, only with prolonged shots of Rachel in her room and some obvious obstruction of her face.
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And Rachel just being such a fucking gross slob eating all those chocolate bars, lmao. I just kind of found that detail hilarious.
 
I only got 10 minutes in (and that was giving it some leeway because the animation was just...weird) before I couldn't watch anymore.
Nothing made any sense, the characters were confusing and even a bit dull (so the very first scene was lost on me as to why Bam was crying over that girl), there was no setting given besides the tower (what sort of world is it? Is this taking place in a fantasy world? Is it an isekai? Is it a sci-fi world? Where is this?), and just...yea.

I get that some anime like to drop the viewers in with zero knowledge or worldbuilding and put it together as they go and-or little by little (like Kekkai Sensen did), but compared to some of those this was very sloppy and poorly done. Anime like Kekkai Sensen kept me enticed; this one was putting me to sleep when it wasn't confusing the living frick out of me.
 
mdchan said:
I only got 10 minutes in (and that was giving it some leeway because the animation was just...weird) before I couldn't watch anymore.
Nothing made any sense, the characters were confusing and even a bit dull (so the very first scene was lost on me as to why Bam was crying over that girl), there was no setting given besides the tower (what sort of world is it? Is this taking place in a fantasy world? Is it an isekai? Is it a sci-fi world? Where is this?), and just...yea.

I get that some anime like to drop the viewers in with zero knowledge or worldbuilding and put it together as they go and-or little by little (like Kekkai Sensen did), but compared to some of those this was very sloppy and poorly done. Anime like Kekkai Sensen kept me enticed; this one was putting me to sleep when it wasn't confusing the living frick out of me.
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That's a roller coaster to go through in just ten minutes. It's also putting a lot of expectations on what the first ten minutes of a series is expected to deliver.
 
We have nearly reached the end of this first season of ToG. What did I think about it?
Hmmm...
This was a rough first season. There were parts that were funny and entertaining, but too much was unexplained for me to recommend this.

I'm not sure about the pacing, but some parts felt very rushed and some parts felt very slow. Some of the games went by so quickly that I didn't feel any emotional investment. Some of the character development felt odd, especially as some people leave or die without much consequence.

As far as action anime go, this was decent. I've seen better and worse.

One part that bothers me is that this season felt like an extended prologue. This is not a problem for a show like Thunderbolt Fantasy because the characters are interesting and the sheer spectacle of puppet animation was fun. This felt more like a cheat, because this felt like like we're not really seeing what's important yet. That's the risk of this story choice.

Overall, a decent anime so far. Some fun characters and a little mystery keep this fun, but there needs to be some explaining about the world or I'll drop this.
 
Why is よる translated as Bam? I don’t see any connection or reason for it. 夜 Translates to night, and that’s the translation I’m most familiar with. I can find a few others, but “Bam”, to me, seems totally made up and confusing
 
MaxwellCoffeeCat said:
Since this season is probably almost done, if I wanted to read ahead in the web comic, where would I start reading? Or would it be best just to read the whole thing?
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Like ZK says starting with Part 2 should be fine since they kept the plot of Part 1 pretty intact for the anime (haven't seen the last episode yet though). The main thing you might be confused on is the stuff involving Shinsu that they cut from the anime for some reason, but it should be easy enough to pick up on or I think they put brief descriptions in as liner notes. Worst case scenario you could binge the hell out of Part 1 in a couple of hours depending on reading speed.

Pokeswap said:
Why is よる translated as Bam? I don’t see any connection or reason for it. 夜 Translates to night, and that’s the translation I’m most familiar with. I can find a few others, but “Bam”, to me, seems totally made up and confusing
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Bam = night in Korean. The reason they have his name as Bam in the subtitles is to keep it consistent with the English webtoon translation.
 
The naming translations are annoying this series, everyone says Yoru, subs say Bam it's just seems randomly complicated for no reason. There are many Characters out there that names have a meaning beyond the name, but still just simply officially go down as the name. Yuki comes to mind from Harhuhi, they didn't bother to call her snow........... (if they did, that name drop at the end of the movie would have made her reaction make more sense in the eng dub, but that's another topic).
 
Pokeswap said:
Why is よる translated as Bam? I don’t see any connection or reason for it. 夜 Translates to night, and that’s the translation I’m most familiar with. I can find a few others, but “Bam”, to me, seems totally made up and confusing
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Tower of God is a Korean production and so that's why his name is the Korean word for night and not Japanese. But since the anime is voiced in Japanese they obviously say よる. He states in the beginning of the manga that his full name is The 25th Bam or "The 25th night".
 
Final Thoughts:

Meh.
It would have been pretty ballsy if they actually killed off generic MC and made the rest about everyone else... And perhaps quite interesting if they'd let him live, but consumed by vengeance and changing into the antagonist for the rest of the story. But as it is, there's not really anything to entice me toward a second season. I'm gonna take a wild stab in the dark at how the whole thing ends:
Rachel dies at some point right in front of Bam. Bam makes it to the top of the tower through the power of friendship and wishes to see Rachel again. Hedon probably makes an appearance around this point to be snarky and flash his devilish grin. Bam's wish is granted through paradoxical time fuckery and he wakes up in the cave with Rachel, a shitload of hair, and no memory.

Ultimately, I think there may have been potential in the setting, but it was let down by not getting to see much of that setting, lack of explanations (at least in part due to time constraints), and a frighteningly generic and uninteresting main character. I'm glad others are getting more out of it, but I don't think I'll be back if there's a season 2.
 
MistLiigh said:
Final Thoughts:

Meh.
It would have been pretty ballsy if they actually killed off generic MC and made the rest about everyone else... And perhaps quite interesting if they'd let him live, but consumed by vengeance and changing into the antagonist for the rest of the story. But as it is, there's not really anything to entice me toward a second season. I'm gonna take a wild stab in the dark at how the whole thing ends:
Rachel dies at some point right in front of Bam. Bam makes it to the top of the tower through the power of friendship and wishes to see Rachel again. Hedon probably makes an appearance around this point to be snarky and flash his devilish grin. Bam's wish is granted through paradoxical time fuckery and he wakes up in the cave with Rachel, a shitload of hair, and no memory.

Ultimately, I think there may have been potential in the setting, but it was let down by not getting to see much of that setting, lack of explanations (at least in part due to time constraints), and a frighteningly generic and uninteresting main character. I'm glad others are getting more out of it, but I don't think I'll be back if there's a season 2.
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I agree, this had the typical shounen mind control shit that initially traps viewers in, but reflecting on the series as a whole, it all feels very forgettable............

I'd probably watch the next season though, I don't particularly care if one happens or doesn't, but if it does, it's at least a worthy time waster.....................
 
Episode 13

They adapted the epilogue chapters pretty well here! I don't have much else to say about the episode beyond that.

As a whole this was flawed in spots and could have benefited from a few more episodes, but as something that crams 78 chapters or so of exposition-heavy material into 13 episodes this was done shockingly well. Certainly much better than I thought it was going to be before it came out. I'm worried about how a possible second season could suffer greatly if it has the same constraints, but regardless of how a second season turns out I'm pretty satisfied with this season as is. I wanted a solid adaptation of Part 1 and that's what I got.

Easy 4 out of 5 from me! If a second season happens and they fuck it up I probably won't bother though.
 
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