This is an odd and useless little fact about me but creating that header pic, you know, the one you can’t even see on this post and is only visible on my home page, that useless one, well that’s one of may favourite things to do. I like creating these little header cards in general but the Tower of God one in particular is my favourite.
spend a lot of time picking and laying out th images so that they create what I believe is both a good colour story and a sort of thematic flow with the events of the episode. Have you ever noticed that I tend to ramble on about unrelated stuff in my preambles when I don’t have that much to say about an episode?
You may also have noticed that I changed ever so slightly the dimensions of my screencaps s that I can create more interesting image mosaics. I hope you like them.
O.k., o.k., let’s actually talk about Tower of God episode 9. With only 3 episodes to go, we can confirm what we’ve all pretty much known for weeks, this season is only an opening arc. And a good one in my opinion. Certainly worth investing in more.
And you know what I particularly enjoy about Tower of God? It’s how it avoids melodrama or over explaining things to the audience… I’m saying I didn’t care for this episode.
It’s all about perspective though. You have to keep in mind that when I say I didn’t like episode 9 of Tower of God, I’m comparing it to episodes 1 through 8 which I liked a lot. And I understand the narrative use of this episode I’m just not sure it was the best way to go aout it and it’s not the greatest execution we’ve seen either. Oh yeah, there will be spoilers. I figure that goes without saying.
For one thing, I’m not that into the princess backstories. I get that we’re fleshing them out as characters and that’s fine but the characters have really well established personalities and a lot of character. We pretty much know that everyone trying to climb the tower is getting away from some sort of horrible past and I don’t think going into detail about everyone’s sob story really brings anything to te table. In fact, I find it sort of takes away from the characters. Like it made Endrosi, a great character that I like a lot, just a bit more generic. I prefered Anak’s but even that one was not that impressive.
To me, these back stories or so much less interesting and imaginative than everything else that is happening. I also like the ideas that these are “people without a past”. They shed their identities when they entered the Tower and whoever they were before doesn’t really matter. Unless it’s going to be important in the narrative (like Bam’s for instance) I would leave the backstories out altogether.
Mystery works well n this story and there’s something visceral about dealing with obvious desperate people but not knowing why.
This episode counted one casualty and two serious injuries. The only one I cared about was Hatsu and even then it’s not like I’m worried or anything.
The stakes are a bit off for me. Technically dozens, if not hundreds of people have died so far in the show but they were all faceless masses. Hoh’s fate should have been a dramatic moment. I cry at everything, I should have been sobbing, but it’s been so heavily telegraphed for over a month now that all I could really think of was :finally. I can stop stressing out about this guy now. It’s done. And that’s it. I was desensitized to it. Maybe that’s on me. But for my tastes, when you know for a long time that they’re going to get rid of a character, it needs to be done in either a flamboyant or unexpected way to still have the same effect. And this was just sort of a fizzle.
As for Rachel-Michelle getting stabbed. I haven’t formed any sort of attachment to the character at all so it’s not like I’m emotionally invested in her physical pain, as for worrying about her, for some reason I have zero fear of her dying now. I’m more or less convinced tat she needs to stick around at least long enough to betray Bam and seeing them get closer again this episode only reinforced my conviction.
If next episode opens on the announcement of her death I will honestly be impressed and might retroactively boost my appreciation for the present episode as it would have been a very good set up.
There was a lot of pointed exposition about what it means to climb the Tower. The sacrifices you have to make and the sort of person you have to become. That was probably just some time filler. I didn’t get this far in the web comic but I bet it isn’t in there. Everyone knows this by know, it’s really silly to interrupt the flow of action to rehash the one point that’s been made over and over again.
The panties joke was o.k. I sort of like that Endrosi wears boy shorts. It suits her.
There is one thing that I am curious about. Why is Khun acting so down? Is her actually depressed at having betrayed his team? It was a bloodless coup. He’s done similar stuff without batting an eye in the past. Ot did he write that note? It’s quite possible that I missed something.
TL:DR – Episode 9 was m least favorite episode of Tower of God but still a decent episode of anime.Cant wait to see what happens next week.
