Tower of God Ep.4 – A Bag of Infinite Chocolate

Last season I started this little unofficial project of getting my episode reviews down to a more reasonable size. I read some of my fellow bloggers who are able to capture entire episodes and say everything that needs to be said in just a handful of words and I find that so  elegant. I’m pretty jealous. I bet it takes a lot of planing, editing and just talent to achieve. It’s a goal that may be forever out of my reach.

I really liked episode 4 of Tower of God. I really liked all the episodes so far. But I’m not sure I have that much to say about it so let’s see how I do with conciseness. I haven’t even started talking about the episode…Off to a great start!

It’s not like anything particularly surprising happened in this week’s Tower of God. As expected the crown game continued and after the lizard girl got herself disqualifies, Bam, Khun and Rak entered to challenge. That’s all… I guess we found out that lizard girl is a princess of Jihad and that she has a sword like Bam’s. we kinda knew that already. Oh and the swords are named after months (like me!). I thought Black March was like marching. I figured it was akin to a funeral procession. But nope, just a random colour and month. The other sword is called Green April which seems entirely too cute.

So there, I managed to resume the entire episode plus highlight some of the specific info we were given in that little paragraph. So what was I so smitten?

For one, this episode was very action heavy and Tower of God certainly knows how to handle visuals. I think most people agree that it is the strong point of the series and although I would argue that I am thoroughly enjoying the story so far, I can’t deny the the production is fantastic. Just look at these screencaps!

Second has to be pacing. For a few weeks in a row now I am genuinely surprised when the episode finished. I often think that we are about at the halfway point when the end credits start. I watch a lot of anime. I watched 5 episodes of a different show right before this. I have an internal clock set at that roughly 23 minute mark without OP and ED. I actually don’t get surprised but episodes going by quickly that often. But this show has Hunter x Hunter level pacing.

I just said something that feels enormous to me and I think most of my readers will have no clue what I’m on about. I really like Hunter x Hunter. It’s one of my favourites. And one of the aspects I like most about it is the pacing. Hooray for context!

We also already knew that there’s something up with Khun’s bag. It was clear that it can hold more than you would figure… But it seems that it can also withstand a lot of damage and perhaps duplicate anything in it. Maybe there’s just one original chocolate bar and he’s just pulling out copies whenever he needs them. Either way – infinite chocolate is not a gift to be taken lightly.

Finally we have the puzzle of Rachel which is a hook that keeps me dangling. I love how they say Rachel by the way. Japanese has a lot of “ch” sounds and yet they pronounce it “Rah-Hell” and it think it sounds beautiful.

We still didn’t really get to see Rachel much. All we got was a few seconds at the end of the episode. But in those very few seconds, she quietly gave her approval for her teammates to kill Bam. I really want Rachel to be evil. At least a little evil. We so rarely get evil treacherous damsels in distress. Probably because it seems almost impossible to write but it could be sooo interesting. This said, the sadly non imaginary Rachel we saw did seem rather distressed and we know her teammates are extremely aggressive and efficient killers so she may not feel like she has any option. I hope they don’t take the easy way out. I’ve been imagining all sort of random things for this character and I would be disappointed if she turned out to be just another nice girl…

Once again, I can’t wait until next week. How about you guys? Are you still watching Tower of God? Are you enjoying it?  Do you want Rachel to be a little evil?