Tower of God

[HasuMasu]

Just finished Part I, I'll wait for Part II to finish before reading again.

What I have to say about Part I is that Baam and Rachel piss me off to no ends, maybe Baam will be better in Part II but for the most part it was the people around them that were much more interesting.

[Log]

Originally Posted by Kleeyook

But the life span of people in the tower is really long. It usually takes hundreds of years for a ranker to climb to the top of the tower and the guy who does it the normal way and climb up the fastest is Mezuk (whatever his name is) who is an irregular ranked 4th and he took 50 years to climb up.

Everyone in the tower understands how hard it is to climb the tower, with only 2 in 10 millions regulars can do (I don't understand why 2) which also means that over 99% of those who climb together with you will fail along the way. Imagine you have to team up with new faces every single floor in order to pass the test. There's noway they can climb up to the top together since almost 10M of the same generation will fail and 1 or 2 will pass. Why bother if you're weak and the best you can do is relying on others. If it's elimination rule then you're finished. I also thinks that instructors can only be found on 2nd floor and maybe the rest of the floors there'll be instructors that you need to pay money to get.

Well, the whole thing about TOG is weird anyway. A single floor is as large as America continent and there's billions of people live in each floor. The world is so large that I wonder how could they keep track of people there...

We're not sure yet how the long lifespan works. It's explained by the author that it's related to shinsoo. So possibly the less you master shinsoo the less longer you live.

2 is just a rough estimate likely. It's likely sometimes more then that sometimes less then that.

Even weaklings can dream and hope right? There's a chance that they could get lucky and climb the tower. Especially since the tower grants wishs supposely so it's worth it.

Originally Posted by Detective-san

Just finished Part I, I'll wait for Part II to finish before reading again.

What I have to say about Part I is that Baam and Rachel piss me off to no ends, maybe Baam will be better in Part II but for the most part it was the people around them that were much more interesting.

Why does Baam piss you of? He was fairly likeable in part 1 and even if he was somewhat weak he eventually realized that and trained to make himself stronger.

[Soverence]

I like the change of cast from season one to season two, I am sure that the cast from season one will reappear at some point, but the best thing about the series was all the interesting characters and the new cast seems just as strong as the original in my opinion up to this point.

Now the battle between the FUG guy (drawing a blank on his name and too lazy to look it up xD) and the ranker should be one hell of a battle, I am hoping that we get to see most of it and not just like the ending.

[Tenchi Hou Take]

Originally Posted by Soverence

I like the change of cast from season one to season two, I am sure that the cast from season one will reappear at some point, but the best thing about the series was all the interesting characters and the new cast seems just as strong as the original in my opinion up to this point.

Now the battle between the FUG guy (drawing a blank on his name and too lazy to look it up xD) and the ranker should be one hell of a battle, I am hoping that we get to see most of it and not just like the ending.

You mean Baam the main character of part one. Really I'd imagine at least his name would have stuck after reading through the story.

[SoFarGone]

Originally Posted by Soverence

I like the change of cast from season one to season two, I am sure that the cast from season one will reappear at some point, but the best thing about the series was all the interesting characters and the new cast seems just as strong as the original in my opinion up to this point.

Now the battle between the FUG guy (drawing a blank on his name and too lazy to look it up xD) and the ranker should be one hell of a battle, I am hoping that we get to see most of it and not just like the ending.

Baam is the FUG guy but he is going by Viole.

[Tenchi Hou Take]

Originally Posted by SoFarGone

Baam is the FUG guy but he is going by Viole.

Yeah but you'd expect he'd at least remember the former, even if Viole isn't a particularily memorable or well mentioned name.

[Kleeyook]

Dudes, SIU is a troll. let's hope that he won't troll us with Viole not being Baam but another person! I somehow started to hate SIU because he seems to think trolling us makes his comics interesting. I already got mad when Lahel just betrayed Baam.

BTW, seriously, if life in the tower is so bad that the weak can get killed easily and you can't do anything aout it, why don't Zahard's guards come killing Baam directly before he climbed up the tower, or at least hire assassins. This series somehow doesn't make much sense. It's always normal to eliminate the threats before they become dangerous.

[Tenchi Hou Take]

Originally Posted by Kleeyook

Dudes, SIU is a troll. let's hope that he won't troll us with Viole not being Baam but another person! I somehow started to hate SIU because he seems to think trolling us makes his comics interesting. I already got mad when Lahel just betrayed Baam.

BTW, seriously, if life in the tower is so bad that the weak can get killed easily and you can't do anything aout it, why don't Zahard's guards come killing Baam directly before he climbed up the tower, or at least hire assassins. This series somehow doesn't make much sense. It's always normal to eliminate the threats before they become dangerous.

I don't think you quite understand the scale of it all. There's 100,000 rankers in the tower, that means the number of people climbing the tower must number in the millions most probably 10's. Quite litterally the tower, is a country if not a continent. You can't exactly send down guards for one fug guy when there's likely millions of people around.

Most probably it'll be case of expecting him to die in higher levels one way or another.

[Odd]

Originally Posted by Kleeyook

Dudes, SIU is a troll. let's hope that he won't troll us with Viole not being Baam but another person! I somehow started to hate SIU because he seems to think trolling us makes his comics interesting. I already got mad when Lahel just betrayed Baam.

BTW, seriously, if life in the tower is so bad that the weak can get killed easily and you can't do anything aout it, why don't Zahard's guards come killing Baam directly before he climbed up the tower, or at least hire assassins. This series somehow doesn't make much sense. It's always normal to eliminate the threats before they become dangerous.

I hate how all plot twists (good or bad) nowadays have just been branded as "trolling" full-stop.

Also, people were going to come and kill Baam sooner or later — you forget travelling in and around the tower can take months or years — That's why Yu Han Sung and Headon devised the plan to fool people into thinking Baam was dead early on.

[Kleeyook]

The plot twist in TOG is as good as in Air Gear or slightly better. At least TOG follows the rules in the match with a twist like betrayal while we have absolutely no idea how Air Gear would go...

There are like 100,000 rankers but only 134 floors explored till now. All rankers are ridiculously powerful compared to regulars, even the climbing Zahard's princess like Androssi is no match to any of them fighting fairly (Ren while she teams up with Anak or Quant with handicap while Baam slow his movement) so the chance of some random rankers in the nearby or the same floor coming to assassinate Baam is quite high.

But then again, Baam is supposed dead so... But since FUG oppose Zahard and the Ten Families, shouldn't they just send their rankers to get rid of the members like the police getting rid of the criminals?

There are too many things left unexplained in this series.

[bludvein]

Can you really call them twists in Air Gear? Its more like the author just randomly decided "let's make it that way!" when he woke up to write it. That doesn't even count as a twist in my book.

To have that compared to TOG makes me sad

[Kleeyook]

Originally Posted by bludvein

Can you really call them twists in Air Gear? Its more like the author just randomly decided "let's make it that way!" when he woke up to write it. That doesn't even count as a twist in my book.

To have that compared to TOG makes me sad

Come on, TOG has a lot of flashback that is kinda misleading too. The difference between SIU and Oh Great is that SIU plan to use that twist from the beginning while Oh Great! just does whatever he wants.

The prologue of TOG season 2 is kinda misleading. The things left unexplained with be explained later, but looking at how Wangnan is now, I suppose it won't make much sense why we have him as the cover guy instead of Viole. And well, both main leads are shrouded in mystery that I have no idea off.

I know it's a huge mistake to compare SIU to Oh Great! since SIU seems to plan the whole thing from the beginning with hints on various scenes (which of course, will be a mystery until SIU decided to use the twist and explain it) while Oh Great! adds whatever he wants.

And that's why I call SIU the biggest troll ever. He plan the whole development in advanced before start publishing his series online, then slowly explain things and terms that we can never know beforehand since it's his fictional world, not even based on ours, as well as many gags and parodies from other series. Every characters are so suspicious and that's probably why you all say they're interesting since Baam's only goal is so clear.

I kinda admire that but you all said it's boring, while I don't see the point of climbing the tower since even rankers aren't omnipotent and we have no idea what they actually want to acquire on the top, at least they can never become king since there is Zahard, they can never marry Zahard's princess since it's prohibited, they can never become the richest since the Ten Families wouldn't want that, they can never become equal to the family heads since it's just impossible etc. the whole thing about the top of the tower exist everything is really unclear since, there are so many things they have to give up while climbing and I can't see people getting resurrected from death either.

Remember how Baam said to Yu Hansung that without Lahel, climbing to the top is kinda meaningless, Yu hansung just smiled, and Baam got betrayed by Lahel after that... But Baam is very right though. The thing about getting everything they want at the top is clearly a farce since the people who climb the tower seem to change their initial wish. This is a foreshadowing from SIU of what all regulars will become...

[Tenchi Hou Take]

http://comic.naver.com/webtoon/detai...96&weekday=mon

Raws out (there really should be any issue posting the link considering the author actually gets money from the views).

Anyway the lead up to the potential falcon punch was pure awesome.

[DarkSkiper]

They should name Viole/Baam Copy Ninj... No wait, that name is already taken.
By the looks of it Viole/Baam really did hide his true power if he goes up against a ranker like it's nothing...

[Aquillion]

Originally Posted by Tenchi Hou Take

I don't think you quite understand the scale of it all. There's 100,000 rankers in the tower, that means the number of people climbing the tower must number in the millions most probably 10's. Quite litterally the tower, is a country if not a continent. You can't exactly send down guards for one fug guy when there's likely millions of people around.

Most probably it'll be case of expecting him to die in higher levels one way or another.

According to the author, every floor of the tower is the size of North America. Not the tower as a whole, but just one floor of the tower. It's not even like a continent, it's more like a multiverse.

(Though we usually only see the inner tower, which is obviously much smaller, since that's where the testing takes place.)

As for plot twists and trolling: I think you have to look at Baam and Rachel's relationship more closely. It's more complicated than it looks, especially in retrospect. The most important thing to understand is that Rachel does not want Baam following her. She left him behind and told him not to follow. He's, basically, a stalker, and I think part of the cleverness of the story is how it uses fairy-tale motifs (and Baam's overall innocence in the first volume) to obscure this.

But look at the first page again. Rachel is fleeing; Baam chases her down, grabs her, tackles her to the floor and tells her never to leave him. She tells him she's going and asks him to forget her. In response, he promises to stalk her for the rest of her life. This is not a healthy relationship.

When he goes into the tower that can grant any wish and asks it to grant him Rachel, that is an incredibly creepy request. (In his defense, I don't think he really understands this. But it's still key to understanding the story.)

Look at how he behaves towards her on the second floor. She's right there. He knows she's right there. Why doesn't he approach her? Because he's afraid she'll say no. No, he knows she'll say no, because she already did. And she's his sole reason for being in the tower, so what exactly is he waiting for? What else is going to happen? Baam is passive-aggressively stalking her. There's no other way to describe it.

He only approaches her once he believes she's been crippled. Because the issue was forced? Because she needs him now? Sure. But that doesn't change the fact that he's also only approaching her once he believes she can no longer say no, since she's been crippled and now has to depend on him. Again, look at this from Rachel's perspective! It is creepy. It's terrifying, especially if she understands how dangerous Baam really is.

I'm not saying that that excuses everything she did, but I think it helps explain why she was able to do it. Her relationship with Baam is not healthy. It was never healthy.

(I think the author wrote it that way deliberately. That is -- yes, he's trolling you, but it's not pointless trolling. He's making a point. I think that Tower of God is surprisingly aware of gender issues -- pay attention to how Anak's mother's decision to "keep her child" is described, too, and Androssi's intense curiosity about that story. The crime Anak's mother committed -- and the story all but says it outright, since it notes that she was only condemned when she refused to give up the baby, not simply for being with a man -- was asserting control over her own body; the womb-imagery in that page deliberately plays it up.)

Tower of God is, basically, a deconstruction of traditional shonen fantasy (the author said as much in his blogs, IIRC. He said that he considered changing it to a more traditional story when it became popular, but decided that he'd always hate himself if he did that -- I take this to mean that he feels that Tower of God does have something to say.) Baam is a deconstruction of the flawless perfect innocent protagonist with incredible hidden potential -- his princess doesn't really love him; his power is viewed as freakish and terrifying; and his innocence shatters the first time he experiences any real loss.

(I also think, though, that the story isn't supposed to be totally fixated on him. Androssi and Anak's story occupied at least as much of the first chapter as Baam's -- the big climactic fight there was Anak trying to avenge her mother and Androssi deciding to risk her position to support her. The author said in his blog that the story isn't going to be "Baam and the leechers" or anything like that, the way typical shonen series tend to devolve into one superpowered protagonist carrying along a bunch of minor characters.)

[Soverence]

I know who Baam is, but I am not totally convinced he is Viole, just because of the way that the author likes going about things, is he most likely Baam? Yes, but I am not totally convinced that he is, if is wasn't I wouldn't be totally shocked either.

Someone once made a interesting argument before that the main character of this series isn't actually Baam, that the main character is the tower itself, and I would have to agree with that statement. Whenever I read forums of this series, the most discussed topic is usually the tower and its existence, what is the tower? how big is it? why does it truly exist? Well Baam might be the "main character", the tower is a much more interesting entity then the main character in my opinion.

As for people not seeing Lahel's betrayal coming you had to be a little blind. I found that her betrayal was hinted at for quite awhile before the actual betrayal happened. The atmosphere around her and just the way she showed up in the series screamed *I am not going to allow for a happy ending*. If I had to guess for a reason right now, it might revolve around the idea of Power corrupts all or that she knows Baam's true identity. People say that her betrayal was stupid, but the way the author likes to slowly progress the story, we will learn the reason why later on I am sure, don't think we have seem the last of the series.

And for those comparing this to Air Gear, HA. And let me say it again, HA. Tower of God has stuck with the same tone and direction since the very beginning, nothing has really dramatically changed (Even the new main character reminds me a lot of Baam from season 1). Air Gear took a turn to the crazy house about half way through, until I start seeing sex orgies and World Ending Gods in TOG, I can't even compare them.

[Log]

For anyone that's interested the latest chapter of the raw is out on naver. It's interesting to say the least.

Also the author did a Maple Story x Tower of God crossover which has been translated. It's quality. Best art thus far. To bad it's likely a oneshot.

For those of you that don't know what Maple Story is, it's a online game where you have several classes to chose from. It's sorta like a bastardized version of WoWC. The crossover is celebration of the 9th anniversary of Maple Story.

Here's the links for the raw:
http://comic.naver.com/webtoon/list....59&weekday=mon

Here's the link for the translated Maple Story x Tower of God one shot:
http://imageshack.us/f/193/120518maplestory01.png/
http://imageshack.us/f/696/120518maplestory02.png/
http://imageshack.us/f/688/120518maplestory03.png/

[Kleeyook]

Judging from Baam's behavior, I think he's kinda like the hero from Braid, who is the stalker chasing after the princess, who fled from him (spoiler for anyone who haven't played this indie game).

But seriously, in flashback we saw how Baam tried to get out of the cave but couldn't and gave up, then Rachel came to be his companion before she started to get bored and wanted to see the stars (which I doubt is there to be seen inside the tower) and tried to climb up. Baam didn't let her go and tried to obstruct her, that behavior might be the result of his faliure to get out from there by himself and he didn't know he COULD get out. You know, when the companion you ever fucking have in your entire life tried to run away from you leaving you behind helpless, you'd just act like Baam.

I still think that Baam should get over it and start a new life since he's already out from that hole though.

[Log]

Originally Posted by Kleeyook

Judging from Baam's behavior, I think he's kinda like the hero from Braid, who is the stalker chasing after the princess, who fled from him (spoiler for anyone who haven't played this indie game).

But seriously, in flashback we saw how Baam tried to get out of the cave but couldn't and gave up, then Rachel came to be his companion before she started to get bored and wanted to see the stars (which I doubt is there to be seen inside the tower) and tried to climb up. Baam didn't let her go and tried to obstruct her, that behavior might be the result of his faliure to get out from there by himself and he didn't know he COULD get out. You know, when the companion you ever fucking have in your entire life tried to run away from you leaving you behind helpless, you'd just act like Baam.

I still think that Baam should get over it and start a new life since he's already out from that hole though.

The only thing in Baam's life was Rachel though. Rachel was Baam's light for a long time thus the main conflict in his character is getting over Rachel. Baam wouldn't be as interesting if he didn't have such a unhealthy fixation with Rachel. This fixation is his major difference from typical main characters.

[fanty]

The artwork in that crossover looks absolutely awesome. Shame the actual comic doesn't look like that (Though it has definitely started to look much better lately).