Kami no tó

Imagine a cake where you use good quality flour, home-grown eggs and season it perfectly, but at the same time you add a splash of sour milk, throw in half-rotten apples, do not even preheat the oven, and after ten minutes you take the half-baked goop out of the oven and present it immediately to the poor guests for consumption. That is roughly how the anime adaptation of Tower of God comes across. I had the privilege of reading the Korean original a long time ago, and the extent to which this adaptation has shown itself formidable in conveying the spectacularly mysterious atmosphere of the original manga, along with a reasonably-paced dispensing of the story, sent a shiver of surprise down my spine. All the characters are about as solid as marshmallows, their depth is comparable to that of a puddle, and it is hard to muster up sympathy for any of them. They shuffle about like figures in a panopticon, the audience learns little more about any of them than their name, there is very little to discuss regarding any of the internal development of the characters, and if the characters are not screaming at you, the pace and suspense of the story definitely are. The level of the drawing regularly reminded me of the early days of my experiments with the Paint app, but at least the animation saves it a little, and so does the soundtrack. So, for the soundtrack and a few good moments that remind you that the original Korean manga draft is several light-years ahead in quality I give it 2 stars. (16.10.2020)

Tower of God is a bizarre mishmash. I haven't read the original manhwa, but I forgave a lot of the things that pissed me off about the first series when I read the comments of disappointed people. Unfortunately, the second series, which is supposed to be more faithful to the original and leave almost nothing out, only deepened everything that bothered me about the first one. If I overlook the overuse of deus ex machina, I can at least praise that the author is quite good at small plot arcs. But it doesn§t matter when it has absolutely horrible worldbuilding and characterization. After 26 episodes, a person has no idea how the world, abilities, organizations work, what other races besides humans are here, and the worst thing is that I don't even care anymore. Anime is just a collection of random NPCs with a random number of eyes who have nonsensical dialogues with each other and look very emotional while doing so. If they had at least some depth and goals so that you could care about someone, but no, on top of it all each character is also extremely dull drawn (which is definitely the author's fault and not the fault of the people who adapted it). The animation is below average, the attempts at humor are desperate, one can only thank Kevin Penkin, who can at least create a good atmosphere with his music. 45% (09.10.2024)