Kami no Tou

This is the a train wreck on fire diving straight off a cliff. And we all watch it because its interesting to see things fall so hard. Tower of god, heavily promoted and even more praised for the only fact that it is a webtoon. I went in with high hopes but its not just disappointment that brought me to a score of 4. The only redeeming point is that the opening and ending is kinda catchy. ••••• ART ••••• This looks like more paper drawn art style, close to the webtoon. I think this was a bad choice because the animation looks lazy by the lackof movement, action and detail. The art felt underwhelming and rather boring. It didn’t make the characters pop out or made the Shinshu (their magic?) enchanted. I would say it is easy to look at because the calm colors and easy going detailing. The lighting of this is subjected to this low detailing. It either feels to bright or to dark. Characters don’t have much shadows, the shadows feel muddy or it is simply to bright. At one of the tests the whole thing in general was to dark to see clearly. To actually make an almost black scene and giving the impression of being dark are different things. In terms of lighting it fails to make the surrounding more appealing and thus lacks depth. ••••• SOUND ••••• Well this was terribly hyped up by the fact that Kevin Penkin composed it. The soundtrack is indeed fitting and feels warm. The soundtracks are well coordinated and fits the timing of actions. It creates an relaxed/calmed sphere where all the characters act al happy and friendly. And that is exactly the downside to it. The tower, presented as a heavy task to climb, didn’t make me tense or hype me up for anything. It really misses a theme song or upbeat mix to make you sit closer to the screen. ••••• STORY ••••• I would say that the story is one of the two main factors why this anime was such a dumpster fire. The pacing is so off, even as a non-manhwa reader I feel that it is wrong. The beginning starts without any explanation of the situation or world. While this may seem as “explore the world with MC-kun” it left an awful after taste in my mouth, because we didn’t explore anything at all. Bam (mc) just pop in a new environment and is told to “climb” in order to find his lost girl Rachel. He doesn’t question it, prepare for it or anything an OP isekai mc would do. But Tower of God is not comparable to isekai so I’ll leave that out. In the end after 13 episodes I’m still puzzled by most of the things that happened so quickly in episode 1-3 without explanation. Then again, going in totally blind, I don’t know the amount of test and how the test will be more difficult each time. So some test pass by, mostly battle royal with (forced) teamwork. Most people who take the test are called regulars. Someone who isn’t born from the tower is called an irregular. So it is understandable that Bam doesn’t know anything at all, but it seems so weird to see that the regulars aren’t that knowledgeable of their world. Test may differ, but if you know that you have to get violent, learn to estimate people’s power and get some killer moves. Sadly enough the real combat prowess was left at exactly 5 people for comic relief. Waisted potential and not world immerging. As far as world building goes, it is almost non-existent. The commentary alone is not enough, the mc doesn’t discover things on his own and there is basically no explanation how anything works at all. The feeling of world discovery is killed off by some humor and that makes the world feel underwhelming. The anime show several times the image of a tower, practically reaching heaven, as an image of the tower but how the areas are set up simply doesn’t add up. The commentary and sloppy flashbacks don’t add anything either. At the end of the whole 13 episodes you’ve to accept that “oh there is a world and they happen to be in a (test) space”. The introduction of “whatever you desire is at the top of the tower” makes me think that the test should be hard and the participants even harder. Oh boy, never did it let me down deeper after I had my hopes high. Oh and there are some powerful weapons. No explanation what so ever. They simply exist. Good to know. Except that the “regulars” are a bit ignorant of this. The fights feel rather boring to watch. The outcome is 110% predictable. I guess I don’t have to say who continuously pass the tests after you’ve seen 4 episodes. I expected a lot from the second test. It was supposed to be a bloody battle royal. Alas we get to see boring anti-climatic encounters. This scene feels underwhelming because the defeated are only announced, thus missing 99% of the real action. ToG is consistent, because the rest of the fights feel exactly the same. Underwhelming, disappointing and tensionless. It feels disappointing because the other regulars are so unbelievable weak. The fall pit of ToG is that it wanted to show how strong the main characters are by making the rest unrealistic weak. This does not only feel bland, but takes away all risk and tension. You don’t start to question IF Bam would succeed his test, but with what ass-pull. The tags action and adventure are heavily abused. There are multiple hints of a vast amount of lore for ToG. It acts like the backbone for most explanations and surprises. This includes the rankers, the princesses of Jahad and shinshu. And again, all explained to little about. These topics leaves to much questions open. While these concepts should be very familiar with the “regulars”, surprisingly it isn’t. Shinshu is said to be a building block of the tower, yet it remains unused and to mysterious. It would have done a great service if at least the commentary about it gave a bit of information about it. In the end it feels like Bam is wearing full heavy armor suit. Plot armor. Anything and everything he does, he pulls off somehow. While it is the intention that Bam would successfully climb the tower, it doesn’t feel believable or realistic in anyway. You get all the events shoved up your throat and you have to swallow it all, believing it is the “natural” route. The subtle hints towards his great hidden power to his comrades till death are simply not satisfying to watch. There is no hardship to overcome. It feels like nothing is at stake. The connections between the characters feel as flimsy as the line “I want to see them all smile”. To contribute to this, all characters are very willingly to go with this madness. In short, Tower of God fails miserably to present an appealing, dangerous and adventurers world. The concept of the tower feels like a lame excuse to keep the characters going. ToG doesn’t give me the slightest feeling of world immersion. ••••• CHARACTES ••••• The second main factor why this animated webtoon flopped hard. The cast was so weirdly put together. I can see the good intention of adding bold, goofy, sleepy, silent, loud and tsundere characters, but that is exactly the problem here. All the main characters can be summed up in few words. The wacky flashbacks don’t really add to character bonding for the viewer. It simply shows something sad and then blatantly moves on. There is no edgy to the seemingly mysterious characters nor is there a really funny moment with the clowns. The way characters react to each other is often being surprised or angry (in a comedic way). I would ask myself, are there no normal reactions? Another weak point is the incredible bad character development. All characters feels simply not serious or really interesting. Khun may be a bit interesting, but that is mainly because almost anything relevant is left out. BAM – pronounce it as yohru. he is the most boring mc I’ve seen. No grit, no courage (stupidity doesn’t count) and no likeable or relatable character traits. Seeing Bam on the level of a caveman is pretty sad. He has no way to actually fight. He has no strength nor the knowledge of wielding a weapon. That’s why it feels like extra thick plot armor to have the best shinshu output. In short, he is the quiet ever-smiling and optimist mc who magically knows how to bind everyone together. Bam also feels very passive and way to relaxed about climbing. RACHEL – pronounce it as raah-hel. If I have one fully loaded gun and I sat in a room with Myne of Shield Hero and Rachel, I would shoot the whole clip in Rachel. For some reason Bam yearns for Rachel. I don’t understand why, again because his relationship with Rachel is so weakly explained. Whenever Rachel showed up, it was in one way or another plan annoying. Just seeing her being passive aggressive against Bam is irritating. Her selfish excuses don’t really back this up or rather is so badly presented, it doesn’t feel like a legit reason. RAK – so he is supposed to be a hunter. I don’t see him as anything else than a clown. He doesn’t make jokes, his character is a joke. We see him exactly 2 times in action, other than that I think he is only there to be there. He adds a bit of balance in the party without being a character himself. KHUN – a more mysterious character. Set up as a mastermind and schemer, he acts like the smart guy of the group. He might be an interesting character. He has a sad back story and now he is back on his feet for I think revenge. He looks like a half decent character. LERO-RO – the only likeable character in the anime. Unlike any other character we get to see some of his thoughts and opinions. He is seemingly the only one who question things which aren’t clear and tries to do his job. Its sad that we don’t get to see more of his character or his character traits. ••••• AFTER WORD ••••• This feels like the worst anime of 2020. I went in with high hopes of spectacular battles, teeth gritting scenes or get some chills. Tower of God lacks in interesting character bonding and world building. I think the amount of praise and love for this is to much for something of this “quality”. I won’t recommend this to anyone. You’re better of picking up anything else like Children of the Whales or Dorohedoro which does everything better.

This review may contain vague spoilers but it is mostly spoiler free. Scenario: You need to write an extra test to give to the main character Bam. What would you think is the best test to give to him? A: Give him a trial to do only by himself, thus strengthening his character and showing what he is capable of without others helping him? B: Give him a trial to do mainly by himself, thus still showing what he can do and at the same time rounding out other characters? C: Give him a trial to do nothing, where his only job is to stand still and havehis friends protect him? If your answer is C, then you might not mind some of the others problems in the show, but if A, B, or another option, you might have a rough time making it through the series without many questions about things that don't completely make sense (yes, I know that the test was done that way for a spoiler reason, but I am talking about the writer needing to at some point develop the main character). Tower of God is the new adaptation of a Korean Manhwa by the same name (which I haven't read) animated by Telecom Animation Film (a subsidiary of TMS Entertainment previously called Tokyo Movie Shinsha) well known for the anime Orange and for its recent dive into the Lupin III franchise (Lupin has always been attached to the studio but this newer sub-studio took over some of the projects). They generally do a decent job. However... The directing for this series is lackluster, thus causing the show to feel lackluster. The director, Sano Takashi had almost no prior experience in full series directing before this (he has only directed one full series and the majority of one other, neither of which you have probably heard of), so it is a mystery as to why he would be chosen to direct a property as popular and complex as this one. The storytelling is unfocused and the narrative is choppy. The decision (probably from the production committee) to pack so much into 13 episode definitely didn't help either. Another possible detrimental component is the music/OST. While normally a soundtrack by the legendary Kevin Penkin would be a welcomed addition, it doesn't matter how good a soundtrack is if it isn't integrated properly into the right scenes. To be fair, this probably wasn't his fault, but more likely that of the sound director Yamaguchi Takayuki, the same person responsible for the infamously bad Index III sound effects. While I can't say for certain who messed it up, I wouldn't be shocked if they told Kevin Penkin to read the source material and make an epic soundtrack, then it was just placed wherever the sound director wanted. The soundtrack features some amazing epic soundtracks similar to Lord of the Rings, but are used in such random scenes that it is almost comical. Some scenes like the silent atmospheric ones work, but then the same ones are used for action sequences and those just really don't work at all. The OP and ED are both average. Nothing special and even a little lazy. Having a quarter of the OP being a sporadic black screen with credits seems like an odd directing decision. Though a few shots are gorgeously animated. The songs get better after a few listens but neither of them are that great. One really neat thing about Tower of God is that they focus a lot on the side characters, giving them unique personalities and plenty of development...if only it did the same to the main character, Bam. Of course, you wouldn't know he was the main character if the series didn't make it obvious from the start since Bam has less screen time than many of the side characters and is so boring and flat that he really shouldn't be the main lead. The show would be much better and have a lot more focus if they removed him and made Khun or one of the Princesses of Jahad the main character. Most of the side characters are likable enough and detailed enough to have their own side series, which is a good thing for any series. Of course, I am sure that later on, he will have more screen time and be more important, but for this season alone Bam is very underwhelming and an annoyance whenever he is on screen...which thankfully isn't a lot. This could have been another great example of Baccano, Durarara, or Fate/Zero where there are many main characters and there isn't one obvious one to rally behind, thus making the stakes more thrilling, but when Bam is the obvious main character, it slightly lessens the impact and importance of the other characters backstories, which shouldn't be the case of a show that is so determined to flesh out as many of them as possible. In the end it seems to go the Hunter X Hunter route of having a lot interesting side characters, but at least Gon wasn't a bland character like Bam is and Gon has plenty of screen time.The characters would have been a perfect category if Bam had been more developed this season. Returning to the opening paragraph, even the tests seem to take for granted that Bam shouldn't do anything to stand out as the main character. The narrative of the show thus far, and even the scene itself, made it seem like Bam would finally have a crucial role in a test, setting up a perfect chance for his character to grow, even if just a little. Instead of that however, they just give him the luxurious role of doing nothing while being protected by his friends. Of course, maybe that was the intention of another character, but it would have been better if used as an opportunity to do at least something with his character. Even earlier, when that character gets injured by another character, he isn't even angry, which he should be. He is just like "why did you do that?". There should definitely be more of a reaction there. The Japanese dub does a good job voicing the characters, except for Bam of course, which is where the saving grace Johnny Yong Bosch steps in for the English dub to give Bam more personality from the line deliveries alone. He conveys way more emotion and charisma than the original dubs voice work for Bam. Of course, that might have been the idea, to make him sound like a lost puppy, since he is, but the blandness of a voice can still make a character seem too boring, which is never good for a main character. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I really like the art and animation for this series. Of course, if it looks like Lupin (come on, the close up shoe shot in the OP is straight out of a Lupin scene) then of course I would, but I think that it is a unique enough art style to set itself apart from its shounen peers. The series has colorful characters and backgrounds and the animation, while not always consistent, never looks too lazy. There are some nice looking fights in the crown game and a few other spread throughout. While it isn't top tier shounen fight material, the animation delivers a solid showing and definitely isn't the weak link. The weakest link would belong to the pacing of the story and the effect that it caused to the story itself. This season is really similar to the hunters exam arc from Hunter X Hunter, but while that arc was able to effortlessly glide through the tests at an even pace, thus making the tests themselves fun, many of the towers tests are so rushed that not only do you not fully understand the rules, the tests themselves with the exception of the crown game aren't enjoyable to watch. The rushed story is also all over the place and many things are unclear, from character motivations to tower mechanics/explanations. Some episodes compete to see which one can jump around to the highest number of scenes the most amount of times. There will be an epic fight scene, just to randomly cut to a boring scene, to randomly cut to a random not important fight scene, done multiple times within one episode using the same musical piece. While a good director might be able to pull off those transitions with competence, it just didn't work out well here. These types of shows are tough to rate, since while it is entertaining (if you like these type of shows) and I did get enjoyment from it, there are a lot of flaws to point at. I am already re-watching it in English and I will definitely watch season 2 when (if) it airs, but the apex example of a show for me is when I am not questioning the show but rather just enjoying the watch. Overall, this show in entertaining but has many flaws. It has great side characters, mystery, and a intriguing world, but it's also poorly directed, has a bland main character, and stops at a weird spot. Score 8: Good and had some great elements (There is a possibility that I might bump it up to a 9 after the dub finishes airing, but I doubt it.)

Watching Tower of God unfold every episode is like reading a comic book. Starting from the first page, you read and flip each page to see what's new. From every one of those pages, you may find something that catches your eye, or something that gives you an underwhelming sigh. Tower of God unfolds its plot with principles that seemed intriguing at first. But as more and more pages are turned, the anime slowly dies and leaves me with little to get excited about. Helmed by Crunchyroll as one of the leading projects of the Summer lineup, this is not an anime that deserves suchamount of hype. First, I do want to say that I am an anime original viewer so coming into this show is a fresh new experience. On my first viewing, Tower of God reminds me of the classic Hunter x Hunter as the protagonist is faced with challenges to overcome. It’s the sort of adventure that chronicles how much our characters can achieve or fail. We follow their journey to climb the mysterious Tower and the awards that await them at the top. From his journey, we meet protagonist Bam, who had been searching for his friend Rachel. The show pits him into a deadly challenge but promises the answers of his desire should he succeed. Now the question arises how much should we care about his desires or in fact, his journey to reach the very top. Crunchyroll has been heavily promoting this show and I actually do praise them for the effort. It’s a Korean webtoon adaptation after all and this is one of the first full TV anime. Making an impression is important as more webtoon adaptations are coming in the future. Tower of God stands with a lot of genres that combines elements of fantasy, adventure, mystery, and action. While there’s also drama in the mix, I would say it falls short but I’ll get to that later. For now, understanding what Tower of God is important so you’ll have a reason to watch the show as the plot follows Bam and his adventures. Throughout this adventure, he encounters many new faces. Whether friends or foe, he responds to them cautiously to avoid consequences. Remember, this Tower contains mysterious properties almost no one understands and what awaits with each step to the top is a new challenge. From my initial impression, Bam seemed like an outsider that needs an immense amount of character development. He’s part of this world where no one knows who he is except his friend Rachel. And searching for his friend is used as a plot element rather than exploring more of his own character. At its base, Bam is a kind person but with little social skills. To put it simply, he is like a lost child that needs guidance, someone that needs a helping hand. He also has a distaste for loneliness and desires to be with Rachel. Now of course Bam isn’t the only character carrying the show. Soon, we meet the intelligent Khun, a young man with a complex personality as compared to Bam. He is almost like his foil, a character who is independent and knows how to play his cards to get what he wants. Throughout the series, he uses his strategic mind to manipulate others and is someone difficult to read. No one knows his true endgame goal although he has a keen interest in Bam. Based on the author’s interview, he is perhaps the most human character we encounter as his actions are realistic and often methodically planned ahead. To me, watching Khun’s character role is far more intriguing to see what cards he’ll play. And of course, let’s not forget Rachel, the best friend of Bam and his source of motivation to climb the tower. After finding her, Bam vows to help her reach the top to fulfill her desire. With that desire, it’s clear that Bam treasures Rachel as a special friend. That’s to say, Tower of God tries its best to get us invested into its character relationships. It unifies their relationship as a character pair built on trust and friendship. But does it really work? On some levels, it has an emotional impact but from this season alone, it is not enough. Bam and Rachel’s relationship doesn’t undergo much change or development after the two are united. Despite being prominent characters of the story, I find myself more invested into other supporting characters such as Annak and Endorsi. In fact, the anime actually devotes efficient amount of storytelling on Anaak’s background story. Even Rak and Yuri are worth watching for their personalities. The lack of charismatic traits for both Bam and Rachel drags this show down and their relationship exemplifies mediocrity. Let’s not forget the ultimatum of Tower of God. We have to always remember the story is an adventure and each step along the way is similar to a phase of a long test. From the beginning, our characters are being tested to see who is worthy. Bam, Khun, Annak, Endorsi, and Yuri are just a few examples. Questions emerge on how much these tests are worth watching and although the stakes are high, it’s not easy to always get invested into them. Let’s face it, most of the action in this show feels the weathered down and the studio (even with Crunchyroll backing up the production), didn’t fully capitalize on its choreography. The visual quality is subpar at best that looks similar to an animated comic book. It has sketchy visuals without much shading and the character designs looks less detailed than I had anticipated. This all comes down to preferences but Tower of God isn’t a show to praise for its art. But for the soundtrack, I do give praise Kevin Penkin’s music composition. The OST is not just worth watching but does hype up various episodes and important moments in the show. Let’s not also forget the OP theme song with its lyrical tune and effective usage of its cinematography. However, it’s a shame the voice acting of the main characters can’t compare to the music composition. Even characters like Annak and Endorsi hardly sound appealing despite their more lively personalities. Tower of God is one of the most talked about show of the Spring season but with 13 episodes, you know this isn’t the full story. What it tries to set up is a story of adventure, challenges, relationships, but none of them really justifies its hype.

Tower of God is a hideously ugly, embarrassingly incompetent, grossly corporatist shitstorm built upon a trite mess of an overhyped SAO fan-fiction which doesn’t even have the creativity or sensationalism to be outrageously offensive or unacceptable beyond its hysterically unfounded popularity. Having heard nothing but its alleged excellence over the years, I desperately sought out the manga in light of the anime’s shocking lack of any quality whatsoever only to be immediately nauseated by the exact same brain-numbingly amateur storytelling and vacant dialogue which the anime had just assaulted me with. Drowned in the confused vapidities of a writer who couldn’t possibly have escaped theclutches of puberty, supported by ESL internet stans lacking even the tiniest modicum of emotional maturity, and delivered by an understaffed and underfunded animation studio contracted by an American licensing company comprised of SJW marketeers and money-hungry *** ******* utterly unfamiliar with industry practices and deluded enough to think slapping a genius musician and a six figure advertising budget on a project is enough to make it worth anyone’s time, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Tower of Gaud. This did not feel like a genuine story birthed of imagination or inspiration. Rather, it felt like the work of a moody teenager so frustrated at his own lack of talent, he just up and re-skinned his favorite fantasy isekai light novel in order to live in this illusory reverie wherein he actually created his favorite work of art, whether or not that work of art was actually worth imitation nor whether his rendition of it was actually fucking decent in any way, shape, or form. I welcome you to judge me for having read Fifty Shades of Grey, but I have, indeed, read that book, and of all the media I’ve ever consumed, it alone reminded me of Tower of God the most, and it’s the reason I began this review calling it a borderline SAO fan fiction. After all, Fifty Shades of Grey began as a Twilight fan fiction, and if you read the book with this in mind, it becomes abundantly clear. The characters in Tower of God are so empty in personality and motivation because they are so obviously caricatures of other characters from other stories, and the plot line is so undefined yet paradoxically derivative because it’s so obviously an emulation of another narrative, so at no point is the show really doing anything other than presenting you with cardboard cutouts atop a stage of papier-mâché and expecting you to care about anything they’re doing for any reason other than the fact both you and its braindead author are drooling fanboys of selfsame works who can get off on familiarity alone. Everything is just trying to be a plot; the characters just sit around and talk about the plot, yet never is there a sense of them being real people who are interesting or who I wish to see do anything. From where I’m standing, wholeheartedly caring about some plot when the lifeless drones lobotomizing me with it are archetypical, mass-marketable, self-insertable Barbie Dolls and Ken Dolls so mechanical and uninspired as to be existentially dreadful is simply daft. Even if you are happy to slurp down the same generic mass of media sludge devoid of even a beating heart to pump the corporate oil through its veins, I still can’t see you investing in a show where NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENS! The amount of episodes which passed over my dried, reddish eyes before someone actually SAID SOMETHING was so depressingly unbelievable I repressed it from memory. Now, I don’t mean to say this show is literally without speech. In fact, no one ever shuts the fuck up, but nobody ever says anything substantial. “Reach the top, and everything will be yours.” “I must reach the top, whatever it takes.” “At the top of the tower exists everything in this world, and all of it can be yours.” “The tower can give you all you desire.” Every single line of dialogue in this show takes the mocking irony of the word “chuunibyou,” accepts it with pride, and then attempts to become even more cringeworthy and intellectually worthless than the last, and each successive line of vagueness serves only as a shameless carrot on a stick leading anyone without the foresight to notice down a contextless rabbit hole where creativity and artistic innovation go to die deplorable, pitiful deaths. The nonexistent sense of time and place combined with the equally absent sense of mystery and intrigue makes said lack of contextual knowledge not only unengaging, but downright infuriating. You’re expected to give a single shit about wooden characters getting thrown in and out of contrivance after contrivance, episode after episode, fighting battle after battle with a totally undefined and nonsensical magic system until the show finally ends, the end goal is no less hazy, and you’re finally relived of your suffering. The tone is utterly nonexistent, cutting from people getting their brains blown out from a sniper bolt to some goofy looking monster twisting that very same sniper like a spoon and letting its rifleman run free in a cloud of dust like a scene out of Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, or interspersing would-be intense battle sequences with chibi art comedy only to continue on as if nothing happened and assume the little tone initially there decided to stick around even after their kindergarten sense of humor had made its embarrassing appearance. The show only bothers to hide its absolute technical incompetence under a veneer so thin, it inherently relies on the complete and total ignorance of the viewer to actually obfuscate any of the blatant cost-cutting at hand. It’s riddled with enough post-processing effects to make a ufotable show look cel animated, but whereas that studio will at least put in the time and effort to build a cohesive aesthetic around how abundantly digital their anime are, this show used these effects to merely get by. These digital crutches which this passionless cripple of an anime used to parade its garish color design and equally thoughtless slapdash character designs ultimately did little more than make the former even more blown-out and migraine inducing and the latter even more bizarre looking given the fact nothing about the character art is hand-drawn except for the linework itself. And if the designs weren’t outlandish enough on their own, the incessantly off-model frames and flatly shadeless facial gradients which I hesitate to even call art make every character look even more gawky and retarded than their non sequitur dialogue already does. The staff animates movement, I mean, because they have to, but they never dare animate propulsion. A character will brace for an impact, but the second they’re hit and launched airborne, the animation immediately stops dead in its tracks, and the most recent frame proceeds to be pathetically clicked-and-dragged across the pseudo-artful, harshly colored, Microsoft Paint looking background art as a still image. Even if you’re so new to the medium of animation and so blind to the technique behind its craft to actually think any among these meager scribbles to be presentable, I still can’t see anyone with legal vision standing in approval of the downright abrasive CGI and its unabashedly poor compositing which was vomited over any scene which required any level of intricate effort to draw. Hilariously begun with a Korean Linkin Park music video for an opening theme, every episode is just as horrific as the last, as there is simply no redeeming qualities to be found in this show’s visual presentation whatsoever, and if you were hoping Kevin Penkin’s soundtrack saved it, prepare yourself for the most inept sound direction in the history of television. But first thing’s last. Can a corporation really buy your approval, and will you, Mister or Miss Cash Cow, continue your patronage upon the realization they tried to do so? This is the real question at the heart of Tower of God and the real reason I’m here seeking your attention. Many spheres of entertainment have had to ask this grim question in the past when they, too, became populous enough for corporations to see their fandom as healthy investments, but with Funimation now holding seats of influence on Japanese production committees, it’s time for us in the anime community to ask the same. Tower of God is a crushingly uninspired mess of trite ideas and vapid elements stacked atop one another so high, even its stature as a pile of artistic shit starts seeming impressive, but it feels it can get away with its countless offenses not out of a sense of confidence in itself, but out of a sense of confidence in you. Using your technical blindness and unshakable genre loyalty as insurance, it bets it can make a profit despite being awfully made, pointlessly directed, and vacantly written not because it thinks the critics will love it regardless, but because it knows you will buy it regardless. And as far as I can tell, it made the right call. This isn’t just, “Oh, look. A-1 Pictures is cheaply adapting another best selling light novel, Bones is cheaply adapting another hit in Weekly Shounen Jump, and both adaptations will be wildly successful despite all.” This is different. This is a foreign entity penetrating the industry and using their knowledge of your domestic consumer habits to pitch a feigned project at the lowest cost margin it can specifically manufactured to milk impressionable fans up to the highest profit margins it can, and they did it by gaining industry clout with a popular subscription service you pay for to support the anime you love, but which they use, instead, as a hedge fund for an American convention and their own original productions. Industry is a machine, and you are its fuel; this is okay, because capitalism and the free market are good things. But this isn’t about economy, this is about identity, and if you want to identify as an enabler of the creative death of your favorite form of entertainment, then by all means, go ahead. Crunchyroll Originals™ await you with open arms. Thank you for reading.

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