Tower of God Manga Quarterly Review

…You must hug a hundred of these.

Note how this isn’t an anime post – I ONLY HAVE TWO MORE FALL SEASON HALF SEASON REVIEWS LEFT (and Shiki/tl;dw but those don’t matter)!

So this guy, Twenty-Fifth Baam, is stalking this girl, Lahel, when she disappears. Being the expert stalker he is, he decides to disappear as well.

When Baam awakes, he finds that he’s in a strange room. Apparently, it’s in a tower; and you can have anything you want, money, fame, power, wisdom, anything, if you reach the top of the tower.

Three of humanity’s greatest treasures – money, mushrooms, and umbrellas with tongues.

Headon, the wabbit-guardian of the first level, reveals that you have to pass tests to get to the Honour Roll next floor.

And so, Baam’s journey begins – to get to the top of the Tower…

…the Tower of God.

Skip to the bottom if you don’t want spoilers. I’d definitely recommend skipping to the bottom. And reading it, of course.

At a second glance, he doesn’t have eyes, but that’s perfectly normal too!

Unfortunately, he’s a perfectly ordinary person, and all he has is a kitchen knife. His first test is to pop a ball while a giant evil serpent is watching him – easily a level twenty test, not something for newcomers.

Apparently, he’s an irregular – one who got inside the tower without being chosen to (as opposed to regulars). Headon chooses the people to enter the Tower, so he hates irregulars, and decided to assign Baam an impossibly hard test.

However, these two people, Lady Yuri (daughter of Zahard, the king of the Tower) and Guide Evan Edrok, give him a Pocket (basically a Babel Fish, if you’ve read THHGTTG) and a sword, the Black March. Using it, he stabs the giant eel in the mouth and pops the ball after speaking to Black March, who is actually blonde, who he had to speak to because he couldn’t pop the ball himself with the sword and his kitchen knife also broke when he tried to stab it into the ball, and somehow speaking to her allows you to pop more balls. Not in that way.

The ball explodes and he gets teleported to the next level – Evankhell’s Hell. Because all floor names ought to rhyme.

The goal of this floor is to get the number of people down from 400 to 200 – basically, kill 200 people.

So America was a hell after all!

Unfortunately, there a bunch of aliens with eight eyes, sharpshooters with bows, demons with four arms, alligators with spears, albinos with briefcases, and a guy with a gun. Why does he have a gun? Why aren’t everyone else using guns? And airplanes? And y’know, modern stuff? And how does that gun guy not kill everyone? Because y’know most of the time guns are better than bows?

OH WELL

Dunno which planet you came from, but o’er here in Canadia candy ain’t shaped like that

Anyways, Baam, Rak Wreckraiser (the alligator with the spear), and Koon Agero Agnis, this blue-white guy with a briefcase are fighting each other, and the three people below are also fighting when suddenly THE TEST ENDS

FINALLY someone with a NORMAL reaction! (he doesn’t fight)

The next part is to make a team of three (Naruto-style) within five minutes – putting Baam, Rak, and Koon together, as well as Ship Leesoo, Hatsu, and Anak (the normal person, crazy guy, and crazy lizard). We don’t care about anyone else ’cause they’re not worth caring about.

Sometimes, ya just have ta lean back and enjoy the artist’s artistic capabilities…

Lero-ro, the Ranker of the test, shows up – he’s climbed to the top of the tower and was given a ‘rank’, just like Yuri and Evan.

He uses ‘Shinsoo’ to blow everyone back. The explanation’s complicated – let’s just pretend it’s reiatsu then, shall we (because all spiritual energy is the same anywho)? :P

He then creates a Shinsoo barrier, and people must walk through it to pass the test.

Well, if you’re NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP

BUT BAAM WASN’T PUSHED so he doesn’t really need to go through the barrier.

Among those passed is this STUPID WOMAN who almost died, this WEIRD GUY who sleeps in a pillow and blanky all day, and this MONK guy, but they’ll prolly all die within the next chapter.

OORYARYRARYARYAAAT

The next test is complicated, so I’ll skip to the chase:

The goal was to open any door within five minutes, or else you would die. But the examiner doesn’t tell you this – she tells you that if you open the wrong door, you die.

Think of it as Naruto’s test, where anyone who stayed to finish the test passed, even though he didn’t write anything down.

I’M SORRY FOR THINKING OF REFERENCES TO LAME MANGA BUT THESE THINGS APPEAR EVERYONE ALRIGHT EVERYWHERE

Really, it was quite interesting at the end – Koon thought too much about the hints, and Rak had to gamble to save them; one team was saved by this guy’s faith in god; one team was saved by someone’s own sloth; and only Ship Leesoo managed to figure out the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Meanwhile, in another testing district, three people have killed all the rest… (that’s 397 people, btw)

I like it.

Tower of God’s a webtoon/comic, a Korean manhwa; in other words, there are only half dozen (or less; there was one chapter with only three) pages, but each page is super long.

The concept is novel, though I’d like to hear more about where Baam came from.

The art’s great too – it has colour!

I still don’t know how Korean name orders go; anyone willing to help me here?

Gonna end my short shpeal here cause I gotta sleep, but this manhwa is really something I’d recommend you look at, now. Has far more potential than SWOT >_>

“COME OUT CHOCOLATEY GOODNESS”

2010/11/16 | Categories: Animanga | Tags: Animanga, Images, Manga Quarterly Review, Manhwa, Mushz, Tower of God | 6 Comments