Tower of God

===================================================== Spoiler-Free Review! Before reading please, know that I've only watched the anime :) ===================================================== Tower of God is based on a Korean webtoon of the same name by SIU (Lee Jong Hui.) It's an interesting take on the shonen genre and seems to take a lot of inspiration from other anime. If you climb to the top of the tower, any question you have will be answered by the tower's King Jahad. The main character Bam finds himself wanting to climb the tower in search of an important girl to him named Rachel who entered the tower to see the stars. In order to climb the tower he must complete a series of tests to see if they present too much of a danger. Right off the bat, by episode 3 you can tell the story of this first season bears a striking resemblance to Hunter x Hunter's Hunter Exam arc and hits very similar beats, albeit not nearly as good. Some of the concepts from Tower of God are actually really cool like the tower itself or the princesses, but they end up being executed very poorly with little payoff. My favorite part of Tower of God is the characters, even if some are clearly inspired by characters from other anime, they all are very unique from each other and present a nice balance. Relationships between the characters, though, are contrived and unnatural just like the story.

The whole test and challenges to see if you can climb the tower, however, is a desperate attempt to recreate the charm of the aforementioned Hunter x Hunter: Hunter Exams arc. Being inspired by a story isn't bad, but Tower of God is shameless in how it takes from it. Each of the challenges to proceed in the test are lifted directly from it but are made needlessly complicated in order to distance itself from the original creation. This ends up hurting what could've been an interesting inspiration. Another concept taken straight from Hunter x Hunter is Shinsu, which is clearly inspired by nen but with no clear rules and no actual importance to the structure of the abilities. There are plenty of smaller things you could nitpick but the rest is just simple inspiration. To me, though, it sometimes feels like bad Hunter x Hunter fanfiction with the characters switched out.

Some of the concepts from Tower of God are actually pretty cool. The tower itself is really interesting and some of the twists & turns the story takes are cool but they never give a solid enough payoff. Most of the important moments in the story feel like they come too soon and are shoved in just to keep you watching. It all feels rushed just to get to the next section of the story. My biggest issue with Tower of God was how contrived the character relationships were. They give no effort to build the relationships between them and instead just tell you they're friends now with no real reason. It feels very forced and by the end, you don't really understand why the supporting cast cares so much about the Bam when there's barely been a relationship between them. Instead, they just straight up tell you they're friends now and there's no buildup or conflict to warrant their newfound relationships. The best character relationship is between Bam and Rak, where you actually feel like it's been built and earned. Rak also provides the only good comedic lines, but comedy is subjective.

All in all, Tower of God feels like a poor attempt to recreate Hunter x Hunter with a twist. The character relationships don't feel earned and the story is lacking originality. There were some great and original ideas thrown in the mix too, but they were either executed badly or overshadowed.