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Posted in: Anime, Crunchyroll, Review, TV | Tagged: anime, Crunchyroll, korean comics, manhwa, SIU, tower of god, Webtoon
Tower of God Season 2 Premiere Doubles Down on Class War: Review
Doubling down on the class warfare theme, Tower of God Season 2 takes place years later with a new cast and the hero a disillusioned assassin.
Tower of God is one of the more interesting Korean manhwa to get an anime adaptation. Its long run as a Webtoon continues while the anime is still in the early parts of the story. And with season two, the social metaphor is even clearer than ever – it's about the unfair social system of South Korean society. You don't need to know that to enjoy the series, but knowing that context adds an extra dimension to how you might view the series.
Tower of God is a fantasy series that plays out Game Theory in action. Bam, the young hero, is a blank slate. He has not real memories of life of his own, but wants to help Rachel, the only person who ever helped or cared about him. They live in a dog-eat-dog world where those on the lower rungs of society are told they can get better lives if they compete to climb a tower from the bottom to the twentieth floor where the elites live. They have to find allies, fight enemies, and uncover secrets, but as they progress, Bam becomes more powerful while gathering a newfound family with Rachel. Season one ends with the gut punch of Rachel betraying Bam just as they reach the twentieth floor of the tower, pushing him off the top while she goes on to the prize: power. But Bam lost everything – his friends, his purpose, his innocence, but he didn't die, and he is determined to climb the tower again to find out why. Season two is almost a whole new show.
Tower of God Partially Reboots the Story
Instead of Bam, the premiere begins years later with a new character, Ja Wangnan, a hapless new aspirant in the race to climb the tower. Low-powered, full of braggadocio to cover up his deep insecurity but with a heart of gold, Ja Wangnan is deeply in debt with the loan shark he owes money to, all set to take his organs if he can't come up with the payment, and his only shot at saving his skin is to get win the race and get to the twentieth floor of the tower. So Ja Wangnan enters the qualification test again and meets his fellow aspirants. It's still as dog-eat-dog as ever when fights break out between the contests, trying to take each other out of the running before their audition even begins.
But one contestant stands out above all the others – a mysterious stranger who's more powerful than everyone and effortlessly outclasses everyone there. Ja Wangnan and the other contestants know they need him on their team for any chance of reaching the twentieth floor. This stranger is almost certainly Bam, now going under the name of Jue Viol Grace, no longer the wide-eyed boy of last season but a disillusioned assassin who publicly announces he's claiming the tower in the name of the kingdom's biggest crime syndicate and his mission is to assassinate the elite Jahad family that rules the tower and maintains the tower game that rules over the everyone's lives and keeps them down. He plans to climb the tower by himself but reluctantly takes Ja Wangnan and several contestants for his team, who are all desperate to beat the game, even though he knows what awaits them at the finish line is not the reward they're hoping for, but it's a system he's planning to smash.
In this season of Tower of God, the struggle to get out of debt and trying to get a foothold on the social ladder for a better life are all redolent of life in South Korea now. Bullying, betrayal, infighting, and war against a corrupt ruling elite, in other words, class warfare, are also more to upfront in the first hour of the season two premiere than ever. The series wears its influences on its sleeve. Bam's personality feels lifted from the Man with No Name or even The Outlaw Josey Wales, a deadly loner on a mission of revenge who reluctantly takes on a found family, and his new look makes him look like a refugee from Naruto. It's an action and strategy anime that feels like a video game as the heroes have to fight their way up each level of their mission. It's all about class warfare and, on a deeper level, an elevated allegory about life in South Korea, with superpowers, fights, shifting friendships, and betrayals.
Tower of God is streaming on Crunchyroll.
Tower of God
8/10
The second season opener of Tower of God is practically a reboot with a new cast of characters as the hero is no longer the wide-eyed innocent of the last season but now a disillusioned loner determined to fight his way to the top of the contest again and reluctantly attacts a new group of friends and allies who need him, but the season opener makes it even more explicit that the story is an allegory for class warfar in the dog-eat-dog nature of life in South Korea.
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