I’ve gotten into talking about Tower of God a long time ago, back when I had single digit followers on this blog. The posts weren’t popular at all and they were a lot of work, so I stopped doing them. As time went on, I’ve felt the urge to get back to talking about this series. Mainly because I think it’s such a fantastic story. One of the richest worlds I’ve ever read about and easily in my top 5 manga/webtoons/manwha. So you can imagine my glee when I found out that Webtoon is releasing a physical edition of Tower of God in a format they’re calling Webtoon Unscrolled. As some of you might know, Webtoons are a format of comics that’s designed to be read on a phone or other screen. Instead of having pages, it has one long page worth of comics that just keeps going until the chapter ends. This allows for almost endless scrolling and works really well for something to read during a commute. Out of all the webtoons I’ve read, Tower of God was the first and best one. A little while ago the first volume arrived and I’ve since read it. Let’s take a moment to talk about it.
Some of you might be wondering; what is ‘Tower of God’ about? Excellent question. Tower of God tells the story of the 25th Bam. The anime called him Yoru, since his name refers to night, but that sounded really weird. Bam grew up in a strange dark place all alone until a girl called Rachel showed up one day. Rachel taught him letters and all sorts of things, but one day she decided to abandon him to climb the tower. It is said that those who climb the tower get what they desire. Let’s say it’s a little bit more complicated than that. Rachel disappears and Bam is heartbroken. He desperately chases after her and then a door opens and he finds himself inside the tower. Now this is a problem. Normally the tower chooses people, but Bam came through the door by himself. Not only that, he came from a place outside of the tower. That makes him an irregular. And in the past any irregular that entered the tower has caused big waves. But Bam doesn’t seem to have much talent. He just wants to get his friend back.
To go up the tower, you need to pass tests to ascend. Bam has appeared on Headon’s floor, a strange creature that gives him a test he needs to pass to keep climbing after Rachel. The test is ridiculously difficult though and it turns out Headon is a bit of a dickhead. Fortunately for Bam, there’s someone else in the area that noticed his arrival. One of the princesses of Jahad (Zahad? Zahard?) called Yuri is near the test floors. She’s familiar with irregulars and her interest is piqued. She journeys down to where Bam is and lends him the Black March, an incredibly powerful weapon of a weapon type only a dozen exist. The weapon takes an interest in Bam and he quickly passes the test by showing zero regard for his own safety. He’s sent on to Evankhell’s hell, the next round of tests. Yuri now needs to get her weapon back.
I won’t talk too much about what happens in the early stages of the test floor, since you can read this webtoon for free online, or buy the physical edition (I recommend the digital version, unless you’re already a huge fan like I am), but I’ll go through it quickly. Bam meets Khun Aguero Agnes, named after an Argentinian soccer player, who notices something is interesting about Bam and teams up with him, also recruiting everyone’s favorite crocodile; Rak Wraithraiser, to their trio. They learn about Shinsu, which is this world’s magic and there’s some exposition about how the tower works. We meet a ranker, who is someone that reached the top of the tower once, and we’re introduced to some of the characters that we’ll see a lot of throughout.
Now, with this synopsis out of the way let’s look at the quality of this volume. It’s pretty large for a manga, it sticks out above every other manga volume I own. That makes sense, because you’d want to have a good amount of content on each page. It read alright so far. It feels like a normal manga but in color. Having said that, I’m completely up to date on the webtoon, which is currently on hiatus, and I worry that later on the big fights won’t look all that good in that format.
Having said that, the print looks good and the only downside to the art is, well, the art. For those unfamiliar with SIU’s art, it starts out pretty rough. Some of the faces are so bad it’s funny. This improves very quickly though and nowadays I’d say some of his chapters look above average in quality. But keep that in mind when you read Tower of God.
Last but not least, I’d like to quickly talk about Tower of God as a whole. The story follows Bam through several stages of climbing the tower and now that there are hundreds of chapters out this is something that needs to be understood. The first part is kind of like a prologue to the rest of the story. This is a bit of a spoiler I suppose, but this also is a clarification. It’s good on its own, but I think it really shines with the later parts added to it. Only later on in the story do some of the secrets of the tower start to become more clear and even writing about it now makes me want to go back into the Webtoon and read it all over again. This is a big endorsement for what is already a highly popular series. Please, please do yourself a favor and read it. Dip your toes into the anime if you want a sneak peek but keep in mind that the source material is a lot better. The anime is a great start, but it covers so little that it feels kind of unfinished. If you have read Tower of God, or this post convinced you to start it, please let me know in the comments down below. Tell me who your favorite character is as well. Mine is probably Endorsi. Either way, thanks for reading.
Opal Kaharis 