 Tower of God centers around a boy called the 25th Bum, who has spent most of his life trapped beneath a vast and mysterious tower, with only his close friend Rachel to keep him company. When Rachel enters the tower, Bum manages to open the door into it as well, and faces challenges at each floor of this tower as he tries to find his closest companion. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of A Week in Geekdom, and we're back for another anime first impressions video. This time we're talking Tower of God. I have to be completely honest with everybody. I had no idea what the heck this show was about. I had no idea that it was a webtoon or manhwa, that it came from Korea, from South Korea. It's a webtoon written and drawn by Lee Young-hui. Also, I'm reading off the wiki page, so you'll have to excuse me there. He's also known by the pen name CU. And this thing came out in 2010, and it's been translated into multiple languages, and it has a rabid fan base. That was surprising, and I was definitely intrigued. The concept is pretty wacky. These characters are thrown into this setting where there's this huge tower, and of course it has biblical motifs and almost like mythological levels and stuff, and they get thrown into this tower, and as you climb it, and as you climb it, more power will be awarded. Yeah, it's a very interesting premise. I like the idea that you know, we're jumping into this story where the main focus is this elevated tower, and the promise of riches and powers at the top will obviously intrigue a lot of people going in, and it sort of turns into this mishmash of things that I've seen before, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It sort of reminded me of Battle Royale and hell, even the hunter exams of Hunter Hunter. You know, it has that hype going into it where you don't know what the story's going, or the route the story's going to take, and I really appreciated that. I love when a show can surprise you from the get-go. You don't really know what you're getting yourself into, but as the pieces start aligning, you get a feel for it and you get excited, and I make the comparison of Hunter Hunter not that it's in the same tone, but just the unpredictable nature of that series and what it did for the exam trope in manga and anime. But the thing that I wanted to discuss aside from the plot is that this is one of Crunchyroll's originals series. They produce this, and the folks over at Telecom Animation Film are handling the animation, which was surprising because I thought, you know, it being a manhwa, a Korean manga, I thought it was going to be a Korean production, but no, it's a full-fledged Japanese anime based on a Korean manhwa. I'm saying it wrong, it's manhwa, or however you say it. But Telecom Animation Film, they did a good job on the series that they've done. I really enjoyed their work on Loop on the Third, for example, and the animation on Tower of God looks really interesting. At first glance, when you look at the poster, you think, huh, there's something off about that art style. It looks sketchy and somewhat incomplete, but trust me, it looks fantastic in motion. It has a certain fluidity to everything that really captivates you and wants you to keep watching, and it's fully-fledged out. I don't know, I guess it's the static image that, to me at least, I thought it's missing sort of like a shadowing or a little more darker shades or something to give it that depth that it's missing. But no, the animation is really cool, really fluid, and really fantastic to look at. The characters are pretty interesting. The character of Bam, which is another point I wanted to talk about. I find it really interesting that the main character, his name is Bam, but if you are listening to the Japanese audio, they're calling him Yoru, but you're reading it in English and they're writing Bam into subtitles. The explanation I read is that Bam means night in Korean, and Yoru means night in Japanese, so it's literally the same thing just in different languages, so that's why. But I thought that was pretty clever. That was pretty fun that you can have that interaction between language and subtitles. I was a little bit surprised that technically the only Korean thing in the anime was the opening and ending, right? The songs were pretty badass, easily on the list for a contender for best opening and ending song of 2020, I think. But yeah, the anime is pretty solid, wonderful animation, a really intriguing concept. The story basically, I summarized it at the beginning of the video. You have this character, Bam. He's going after Rachel, his friend, and she wants to climb the tower to see the fabled night sky and the stars and stuff, so she gets trapped in and he quickly follows and finds himself in the mysterious first floor where he has to pass his trial and stuff, and eventually you start to learn that this tower is actually pretty deadly, and you know, to go all the way to the top, you're gonna suffer. So yeah, it's a pretty cool concept, and I can see why a lot of people are so into the story. I was checking out earlier before recording this video the community for Tower of God, and people are so hyped about the original material and this new anime that it's infectious, and it makes you want to keep going with the story. I don't, I gotta be honest with you, I was a little bit lost with a few things, but that's sort of the point of episode one, right? To intrigue you enough to keep going and see what head-on, I think I said that right, probably not, the floor's guardian and caretaker. I want to see more of him, I want to learn about his backstory, but yeah, it turns into Battle Royale pretty quickly when you realize that, oh crap, these guys are out to kill each other. What is going to happen? You're gonna have to find out by watching Tower of God. I could do a deeper analysis, but that would kill the fun for me because I got too much stuff going on, to be honest with you guys, so I'm probably just gonna stick with the animated series and see what happens from there, but I wanted to keep reading up on the series, but I'm trying to avoid spoilers. I'm hoping that all the questions are answered, and we get explanations for all the crazy hijinks in this tower and how the structure works, and I do know that later on, as the story progresses, it does get fleshed out and explained, the concept of the tower, because from what I understood at the beginning, this mysterious structure is enclosed and each level has unique settings, like one will be like a prairie, another will be like a dungeon, stuff like that. Obviously, there are a lot of elements like the great families, which I assume they control sections of the tower, so yeah, it looks like you're gonna get some epic worldbuilding in this title with interesting animation, a really cool idea, concept, execution, I'm really excited about this. Hopefully, they start making more adaptations of Korean Manhwa, really interested in that, so I enjoyed the first episode and I'm wholeheartedly looking forward to the rest. I think it's gonna be a 13 episode first series. Will that cover everything? Probably not, but hopefully it gets renewed. We'll see. If you guys have read the original, let me know down below what you thought of the series without spoilers, please. I don't like when people spoil things in the comment section. If not, recommend me your best mishmash of violence and intriguing concepts in anime and manga. I know, that's a strange question to ask, but I'm looking forward to some answers down below. Thank you everybody for tuning into another exciting episode here at A Week in Geekdom. As always, like, comment, subscribe, hit the bell icon so you know when new videos pop up, follow me on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all that fun stuff. I've got to go. I will catch all of you on our next review.