Tower of God

Tower of God is one of the first webtoon I've read, and it has really grown on me ever since-To start off, there are a lot of aspects about ToG that have declined over time, but I will be mostly focusing on the artwork, for that seemed to be the biggest issue for me.

The art for Season 1 wasn't the best, but it was alright, and you could see it improving over time. By the end of Season 1, it was starting to look really nice, and the unique art style of ToG was beginning to form. Season 2 was peak: artwork, story, characters, everything was the best the webtoon had seen (and would ever see). Those days of reading ToG is unforgettable, and I really miss them.

Now, Season 3, it starts off alright, but you can see the decline in the quality of the illustrations due to SIU's health decline. The story is still alright though, and it was enough to keep me engaged. But it really starts going downhill after a bit, and the dialogue, artwork seems to be noticeably much worse. To devoted fans of ToG like myself, who have reread the entire series more than 5 times, we love the story and the feelings of reminiscence we get when we reread our favorite parts, and would mostly follow through to the end, but things get much worse.

I remember back when the most recent update was Season 3 Chapter 81, I had completely caught up for the 5th time, and I went on a break to allow some more chapters to release so I could read them at once. The ratings then were bad too, but it was readable, and I was fine with that amount of quality, I was willing to follow through and see to the end. However, I just returned to resume my reading, and it is just absolutely horrendous.

Okay, so... what happened to SIU and all of the illustrators working on ToG??? I started my 6th reread from the start to read to the current newly updated chapter (Season 3 Chapter 227), and as before, all the way through the start of Season 3 was great. But, as I got to like Season 3 Chapter 70 ish~ I could really notice the change in quality, and was like, "Yikes, I got a long way till Chapter 227, and it's already this bad?" I could see that the ratings for the most recent chapters were all super low, and out of curiosity, went to check one out...

Holy moly, the art does not resemble ToG at. It literally looks like SIU has gone missing, all of the assistants have been replaced, and the new assistants have never read the previous chapters before. The art is something you'd see in a 3rd-rate webtoon, and everyone looks frickin weird, proportions out of place and all. Like, I was fine with some art deterioration, and lower quality dialogue & story, but wtf it isn't even ToG anymore. I mean, for such a big webtoon, one of the most famous worldwide, is it that hard to find someone to draw like Season 2? I understand that the story can become worse, and dialogue may not always be upstanding, but how is the artwork completely different!!? Who knows who's truly at fault here, but there are so many talented illustrators in this world, I honestly don't understand how the current illustrators for ToG were employed and what SIU is even doing anymore. Being the author of a hit-series is definitely hard work, and we the readers understand that there are many health implications that occur during the process, but if it's going to be this bad, to the point where it isn't even recognizable, just drop a nuke and end the story. When Miura passed away, Berserk seemed to be lost forever onward, but it's still going on today, almost as good as it was before. And even though everyone criticized Noblesse and God of Highschool for their crappy endings, at least Noblesse and God of Highschool still somewhat resembled their original quality towards the end, ToG hasn't even ended and it is just over. Unless SIU scratches Season 3 and starts over, or if things turn back to what it used to be at least now, ToG is the biggest loss of potential in the history of webtoon.

The rating I put for Tower of God is solely based on the series from start to the end of Season 2. Unless I see any changes from now forth, I shall part from this series for the time being. I would continue from Season 3 Episode81, but after seeing that it gets unreadable at 227, I see no point.

This webtoon is one of the most overrated series that I have ever read. Since people kept praising it decades ago I decided to give it a go, and turned out to be a big disappointment.

Premise seemed good at the beginning, you are just nobody whose background was shrouded in mystery and get plunged into the world of darkness without anything, you met someone who taught you about life, then said person had gone to climb a tower, and you proceed to follow that person.

When I was reading it the first time, I thought this series is one of those survival horror series where you were taken to this random place and you have to survive, else you will die and the plot will revolve around investigating the mystery of the place, and deep dive into the system you were forced to partake in. However, none of that happened at all. What I actually get, is a generic subpar shounen series that was initially masked as a more darker survival genre. The author used the mystery of the tower initially as a box of mystery/carrot dangling around in front of you as a reader to keep reading, however since the ascendancy of "rachel" character, the carrot turned from mystery of the tower, to confronting her instead. There's a lot of stuff we don't know, and about 200+ chapters in, the author doesn't even explain anything about the tower and kept putting new stuff and billion new characters I don't give a damn about, to add more confusions.

The lore doesn't seem believable to me as a reader, what is this place? a country? mega structure? is this the whole planet that shaped like tower? or just big building out of nowhere? how can it take YEARS to go from different floors? don't they have an elevator? why do they devise random games like rugby games for example? if the premise is to sus out the irregular, or strong players whose existence will bring about chaos to the status quo of the tower, wouldn't it make sense to have a plain fighting tournament instead of complicated nonsensical games like hide and seek for example. It really breaks the immersion once you as a reader, have to concentrate about how the rules being set up and how these characters have to follow/break the rules, instead of just focusing on the actual storyline.

Every tournament/games seemed to follow the same pattern: you have your set characters, and the author throwing in bunch of new characters out of nowhere, and there's always a "set up" to where your character trying to follow the rules, then finding out they are already being set up by the administrator / whoever set up the game in the first place. It is amusing to me, that almost every characters are still alive, despite the fact that literally the people in power want you and your party member dead and it reeks of plot armor to me. The same thing like the fact that this Rachel character that has been kept dangling around in front of me, still alive after all that ordeal. When you think the tournament is over, there's always a new "set up" / trap waiting to be unfold and it is really comical at this point. You can't have a simple tournament/game without any of that crap, it feels like the author is putting new trap in every games to the point that it devoid mystery anymore. There's a lot of conversation that have nothing to do with plot progression and rather talking about the rule of the games to the point that I got bored reading it and just want the plot to move on.

The main character is also unbelievably naive, and lack of character development even after all that backstabbing he went through. His attitude of trying to save everyone while putting everyone else in jeopardy is just repulsive to me. On top of that, he did manage to save everyone (so far as I read) because of plot armor. Too much side characters. Instead of focusing on his initial groups, the author kept adding a lot of characters even more than one piece for example Luffy has like 8-10 crews tops. In here you have more than that and they don't have any substantial background and just more body to be put in the story to overly complicate the plot without adding more subtance.

In summary, the first arc was decent, it follows the survival mystery genre, then it devolved into generic shounen trash. Not that I hate shounen, I do like shounen, but this series doesn't know how to make a good shounen series. It tries to be survival genre and shounen at the same time and it falls flat. I am dropping this series and so should you.

Recently re-read the entire series after years of not catching up, and honestly, it really wasn't as good as I remembered it the first time around.

The main character Baam's obsession with antagonist Rachel is not romantic but cringe-worthy.
Every character harps on how special Baam is but ... I am not seeing it this time around. He just appears muted, quiet, non-hostile, and somewhat naive.
The weird subtle harem forming around Baam is a bad attempt at comic relief.
Too many mysteries hundreds of chapters later continue to affect the plot without further attempts at an explanation, which just morphs from being a source of excitement/curiosity to annoyance.

** Season 1 ** had fairly mediocre art, but I enjoyed the scheming. Honestly, despite the bad art, Season 1 was the strongest and tightest story-wise. I loved Kuhn's plotting schemes. I also enjoyed the drama of betrayals. The mysteries still felt fresh and relevant.

** Season 2 ** started off really interesting. We had another cast of compelling characters. But I noticed the plot losing steam a few arcs into the season. I was bored enough to just skip multiple chapters during the last game of the workshop battle arc. I think the story suffered from a rushed, busy reunion arc with no pause to celebrate characters coming back together as a team. There was no emotional fulfillment. It was instead just action after action after action. By the time we got to Hell train arc the story was meandering along and bogged down by uninteresting side characters. Rachel's scheming was the centerpiece of the last major arc of this season, and it just wasn't very compelling. ** She is a boring antagonist, and her continued survival in a so-called cut throat environment makes no sense. This woman should be dead already. **

** Season 3 ** just seems like a lot less plotting and a lot more flashy explosions. Which was not what originally drew me in. Too many new characters and none dealt with well.

Now years after I initially started the series, I'm finally fully dropping this series. Will not ever be re-reading or checking this series again. The pacing is irredeemable, storytelling has been tossed out the window, compelling characters are forgotten and squandered.

1st season: 10/10
2nd season: 6/10
3rd season: 3/10
I'm not going to bother reading after the hell train arc lol... but apparently from some readers, it goes lower and LOWER.

Oh sweet prince, how low have you fell.

Matchup qualities went from "I can read your moves in this 4D Chess game and do some BIG BRAIN PLAY" to "BAM BAM BAM I CAN SPAM HYPER BEAM WITHOUT COOLDOWN I CAN DYNAMAX 100 TIMES WOOO HOOOOOOO xDDDD"

I feel this manhwa can only be appreciated by kids who won't be bothered by its shallow nature.
I'm writing this comment after actually revisiting this series and rereading it for the second time after being tired of it the first time and discontinuing it after 300+ chapters. I thought that the rating can't be for nothing so I thought that if I read it while now knowing the premise from my first run through, I wouldn't have any expectations and would be able to appreciate it for what it is. I was wrong. I have given up on hoping to find any redeeming qualities about this series and decided to stop torturing myself by reading after pushing up to 450+ chapters. I'm sick of this manhwa. There is so much to hate about this series.
Starting with the art. If you take away the bright, shiny and flashy colours and glossy look of the people that have been drawn, the drawings are of very low quality. The "artist" has a love for drawing disproportionately wide eyes so almost every character comes off having a dead stare with the MC having the most wide-eyed look in all situations regardless of his emotions. And these dead looks in the eyes look even more disturbing when the characters are drawn with smiles because the rest of the face doesn't match the smile. And then I frequently have to wonder about if a character is male or female because it's not clear from how they have been drawn. What a joke! This rubbish art with a bright and glossy finish brings to mind the phrase, "You can't polish a turd."
Another thing I can't stand is the repetitiveness of this series. Every single mini arc has to be punctuated with a game of some sort. Fine, there has to be a test passed for every floor, I accept that. But then every time there is a confrontation with an enemy, someone is always proposing a bet of some sort where the two sides compete in a game with a prize at the end. I couldn't believe that the author even managed to find a way to squeeze this go-to technique of his into a full scale war around 480 chapters in. That was my breaking point in reading this the second time but I still respected the author's determination to persist in using that already overused gimmick. I think this author must be in the wrong job and his talents would be better suited to coming up with board games or something similar because is clearly what he loves doing rather than storytelling.
Another nasty thing is the dialogue here. Why does every confrontation have to be stuffed with random characters shallow backstories that every one of these adversaries feel they need to share with a stranger they just met and that they are fighting as an enemy? There is so much unnecessary dialogue here. Either it is expounding on something that had already been explained earlier or saying the same thing that had been said earlier in a different way, this series has a enough of that to make you sick.
And then there is the rubbish world building and rubbish character development. It starts off with a naive MC who looks to be around 10-12 years old. And then he goes through varied experiences for years-the space of almost a decade-but in essence, the MC has not changed at all in terms of emotional growth. He still is almost as naive as he was in the beginning despite the story showing that he has gone through various experiences that would have to change the person in any normal scenario. This is a confused story with characters who have supposedly lived for centuries interacting with other characters who have lived for around two decades and it's hard to tell the difference between the two groups. You even have the around 20 year old MC leading these centuries old characters and them deferring to the kid on decisions. It makes zero sense.
I wonder what criteria has been used to give this book such a high rating, but I have read many average series' before that are far better than this rubbish. Don't let the rating fool you, this belongs in the trash.

N/A

Been following this for over a decade now. Looking back now, I admit some arcs weren't that good. But the quality does improve over time, and as a whole TOG stands at the peak of it's genre. The worldbuilding and character development are unmatched, aside from One Piece.

Truly a piece of art, one of the best storyline, art, characters, character development, pacing, power system and truly exceptional world building, tower of god is the platinum standard for ongoing shounen manwhas out there, however it is not without flaws, complicated games, prolonged storylines, but overall, well thought of, and superbly executed