Kami no Tou: Tower of God – 10

If you’re getting a notion that Tower of God is coming nowhere close to telling a complete story in 13 episodes, you’re certainly right.  I have no inside information on what the production committee’s plans are – my working assumption is that we’re one and done, because I don’t see this series as being all that profitable.  But in truth your guess is as good as mine, and it’s certainly not impossible that more anime is in Kami no Tou’s future.  I’d love to see it as it, would be a shame for things to end basically at the beginning, and while the manhwa loses its way pretty badly there’a a lot of really good material to go through before that happens.

As with last week there’s a lot to unpack here (the anime can’t be accused of frittering away what time it has), starting with the Khun-Hoh situation. It’s not totally made clear in the anime (and it’s been a long time since I read this portion of the manhwa), but apparently Khun’s plan was to manipulate Quant (this intellectual matchup is obviously not a fair fight) into protecting Rachel so as to thwart Khun’s plan to use Hoh to eliminate her as his competition. That’s some serious five-dimensional chess from Khun right there.

After a too-brief check-in with the best Jahad princess, taking the long way up while the examinees get the fast route, Chibi-Rak finally makes his appearance (the result of pissing Yu Han Sung off).  Rak is a riot at any size, but there’s a definite aura change when he takes on this new form.  Bam informs his friends that Rachel has been paralyzed from the waist down as a result of her injury – while Rak is prepared to talk him out of abandoning his quest to climb the tower, it’s not necessary – Bam says he’s going to go it anyway as Rachel’s legs.

Bam, ever loyal, arranges for Hoh to get a funeral, which both Rachel and Khun manage to get through with a straight face.  This is also an excuse for most of the examinees to get hammered, while Bam and Rachel have a little private talk.  Rachel is all over the map, but Bam is nothing if not consistent – his devotion to her is complete.  Meanwhile Yu walks in on Lo Po Bia the onigiri having a chat with his real bosses, but having been found out, things with Yu don’t go quite as he expects.

As for the results, there are no major surprises – apart, perhaps, from Rachel passing.  But Yu declares that her injuries preclude her from continuing.  Khun tries to intervene by volunteering to take the much harder administrator’s test (which Lero-ro has told him about) in exchange for Rachel passing, but despite his cockiness Yu informs him that it’s impossible.  Only an irregular can request to take that test, and noble scion Khun is hardly that.  But he gets a major surprise when Bam announces that he is – and he’s willing to make the same deal.

It’s always hard to know with a skilled bullshitter like Khun, but he seems genuinely shocked that Bam is an irregular.  Nevertheless, he stays the course – putting on a charade for the others to try and convince everyone to help Bam pass the test.  There’s an incentive here  besides loyalty – if you can survive it, this offers a faster path up the tower – and everybody pleads their own reasons for tagging along.  But they’re all in – leaving it up to Bam to secure the opportunity by grace of the administrator (who he’s meeting for the second time).

 

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6 comments

  1. M

    Sounds like author needed a stronger editor or one at all. Sounds like author wandered into spin off materials. One disadvantage of modern way of publishing stuff no one to lean on you and keep you on track. A problem famous authors seam to always have had as they get too powerful and the editor can’t modify their behavior. Disadvantage of editor system of course is editor and company crushing your idea or modifying it too much.

    Hard to tell if Rak did more than slightly annoy Yu Han Sung who used it as opportunity to flex powers big time by not seaming to do anything at all remaining calm the whole time. But with the calm exterior type you can never know if some higher level of passion is hidden.

  2. G

    I think you got something wrong (don’t remember correctly from the manhwa?). Khun never set up Hoh. I suppose the frantic pace of the plot is proving to be hard to follow even for readers of the manhwa. I can only imagine what a new viewer will be able to understand from all this.

    Anyway, what Khun did was realize that something was up with Hoh, so he searched his room, found the set up note (that was hinted to be given to Hoh by Yu), copied it with his magic bag and left the original in its place. He read the note and formed a plan so that Rachel would be safe. This is an important detail that wasn’t properly conveyed: he let Quant believe that he had convinced Hoh to kill Rachel, Khun’s rival as a Light Bearer – that’s why he supposedly didn’t care about losing in the Hide and Seek Game. The point was that after that, Quant would definitely never let Khun have his way, and would protect Rachel with all his might.
    So Khun was an absolute bro to Bam, he didn’t betray him one bit. And the elimination of Hoh was not the objective of his plan, it was protecting Rachel.

  3. Ah, is that the case? Interesting. It’s been so long since I read the manhwa that I have no recollection of the specifics of that incident.

  4. K

    Wow, this is a pretty big deal. I *definitely* got the impression from the anime that Khun was the architect Hoh’s actions and was therefore responsible for his death and Rachel’s maiming, was definitely thinking “Wow, what a brilliant piece of shit.” as he stood with everyone during the funeral and celebration going through the motions.

    I guess it’s a function of how quickly this episode moved because the pace was frankly insane. I feel like this was anywhere between two and half to three episodes of material crammed into one. It’s amazing it still managed to be as effective as it was.

  5. Still not absolutely 100% convinced myself, ROFL. Gonna have to re-read the manhwa…

  6. d

    Might as well stop, doesn’t look like it will get any better.

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