Tower of God is an awful clusterfuck of anime cliches haphazar | Saretta Doppini

Tower of God is an awful clusterfuck of anime cliches haphazardly stitched together. Somehow its pseudo-deep story has tricked thousands of people into thinking it’s good. I’m in awe that this miserable fanfiction got an anime adaptation.

Becoming popular is the reason why ToG was adapted. Crunchyroll milked it because it was their prized cash cow, more interested in money than creativity. It recycles familiar anime tropes, plot points, and character archetypes to create the anime equivalent of Frankenstein’s monster.

Tournament arcs are successful, so the entire show will be a tournament arc. Superheroes are trendy, let’s add superpowers. People like comedy right? Let's add nine or ten comic relief characters, they'll love it! We'll even shoehorn a school into the Tower. Fantasy stories make tons of money too, so we'll say outside of the tower is a sprawling fantasy world. That way we won't have to write it, instead, we'll just call it a mystery. Genius. Perhaps I may be mistaken. I've heard it gets better later on, but I don’t care how long it takes to become worth watching. I’m not reviewing chapter 400 of the manhwa. I’m reviewing this season.

The premise is simple, but the execution is threadbare. Those attempting to climb the Tower strive for riches, influence, and the power to become a God. They've been living inside it forever. How has it shaped their lives? I have no clue what the world is like outside of the tower. Maybe it will be explained in the next season. Constantly it is implied there is a huge fantasy world out there, but it’s never actually shown. Rather than organically introducing the setting, characters, and politics, the show haphazardly drops names and exposition onto the audience. Thankfully, the author knows how poorly explained everything is, so he writes blog posts to fill in the blanks because he doesn’t know how to integrate information into the story. The paper-thin plot is played up to be mysterious, but the biggest mystery about ToG is how the hell it got so popular.

This UNIQUE and ORIGINAL story follows a boy named Generic Male Protagonist, his Cool Guy friend, and a Comic Relief character. Our hero embarks on a quest to find the Generic Girl. Where did she go? She entered the tower, the Tower of God! Despite being told not to pursue her, Generic Male chases after her anyway! For as long as Generic Male, AKA Bam can remember, he has lived in a cave beneath the tower. One day, Rachel the Generic Girl found Bam. For better or worse, she taught him about the world. She became a mother figure to him and his love interest. Uh-huh. I have no clue what her perspective on their relationship is. Does she love him too? Or did she just pity him? I have no idea what Rachel's life was like before she found Bam. How did Bam live before being “saved” by her? How long was he trapped? The show wants us to sympathize with him, but it's impossible. He is a potato with arms, legs, and a face. Despite trying to leave him, Rachel groomed him to be loyal. She told him, “Betraying a girl’s trust is the same as betraying the whole world,” but Bam is a brainless mouth-breather so he believed her. This is how he became the world's biggest SIMP.

At the beginning of his journey, Bam is granted superpowers. Out of nowhere, one of the Tower’s Princesses of Jahad meets Bam at the first level. She presents him with a mighty sword. Why? Because she’s bored. When it's convenient for the plot, she reappears to remind us she exists. Ingenious character writing. Luckily for Bam, a ghost babe is living in his sword and she grants him even more power. Why? Because she thinks he's “cute.” Do you see the trend? Bam gets everything he needs without putting in any effort (almost like the author). He is a Deus Ex Machina magnet because using cheap plot devices is easier than writing character development. The longer Bam is on screen the more he looks like a human-shaped punching bag. Bam is the audience’s avatar. He doesn’t need a deep personality, but it would've been nice if he had one.