Massive World-building?
Well, detailed power system?
Interesting lore?
High and impactful stakes?
Engaging politics?
These are the elements that make a worthwhile fantasy anime. Vinland Saga, The Heroic Legend of Arslan and Hunter x Hunter are great example of fantasy series that follow the requirements of an epic fantasy setting.
Sadly now and then we get a handful of bad fantasy anime that fails to have elements however very rarely do we get a downright horrendous fantasy series that not only is incapable of doing at meeting the basic requirements of a fantasy anime but also frequently treats the viewer like idiots with its inept writing and directing.
That's Tower Of God a broken, unpolished and cringy pile of waste that fails to achieve anything.
Let's address the ugly elephant in the room the visuals.
This may very well be the most unpolished modern I've seen. This show came out in 2020 yet looks like it came out in the early 2000s with its messy camerawork, uninspired background scenery, ugly as sin Microsoft Paint character designs are not appealing in the slightest and the animation is messy that is filled with mediocre to bad fight choreography.
Combined with the poor lighting and jarring use of CGI and you got yourself a visual nightmare.
"Hey, viewer do you remember Hunter's Exams arc in Hunter X Hunter and how good it was. Well, let's make the whole anime about it expect to strip everything good about it, and we are going to heavily advertise it on social media like as the second coming of Hunter x Hunter"
Random Crunchyroll employee.
That's the Tower Of God story in a nutshell.
It's hollow, poor written and devoid of substance.
Worldbuilding is frankly non-existent in this series. It's labelled an Epic Fantasy series yet the show doesn't bother to establish its world. It just shamelessly dumped us the world without explaining shit.
What's the power system in the universe?
What's the lore of the world
What are the main characteristics of passing each test?
What's the mystery of the world and the tower itself?
The show never tackles any of these things of theses as it rather spends showcasing its poorly directed fights and abuses the luck factor where the Bem would pass the exam with ease due to dumb luck. No skill, strength, no strategy, nothing. This is only made more jarring by the atrocious writing in the series.
Right from episode 1, the show wastes no time showcasing how atrocious the writing in the series is. Cardboard Beta kun I mean Bam loses his potato love interest, Rachel, because of reasons. Due to this Bam decided to enter the tower so he can save Rachel. Then for whatever bizarre reason he receives the most overpowered weapon in the series by this plot device woman starting that the reason why gets the sword because I was not making this up, he looks cute... After watching episode 1 I knew I was watching to be plot armoured written shitshow featuring a one-dimensional beta protagonist that will pass at everything due to his disguising plot armour. Right after episode 1 the writing quickly deteriorates to a point where it started to on par with really bad fan-fictions from the mid-2000s.
The best example of this show's compete disregard of writing happens in episode 7. Anak and Endorsi are fighting and at the same talking about their issues. Typical fight shounen stuff I have no complaints. What happens next is so unbelievably dumb it makes me wonder that this show was written by human beings. Endorsi high heels break, and she falls but she was able to grab arm then if this horrendous written and directed piece of tripe wasn't bad already the show decided to do an over the top tone shift thank frankly killed off the mood and tension that the fight had for no reason. It has truly been a long time since I watch a series this incompetent. That fact, that putrid writing was allowed to be pitched infuriates me to end. I know we get just in the new decade of anime and all but Tower Of God has the worst writing I've seen from this decade.
What's pushes Tower of God into beyond awful territory are the characters.
Bam is overpowered beta cringelord.
Now I usually like my beta protagonist as they can be interesting and compelling characters e.g. Nagisa Shiota, (Assassination Classroom) Saika Totsuka (Snafu), and Elliot Craig (Trails of Cold Steel) but Bam is anything but that. He spends the majority of the anime being an overpowered beta for sake of it. He's boring, has no character development and he's just annoying site from beginning to end.
Rachel may very well be the worst female characters I've encounter in recent memory. She's bland, a plot device has she has a personality of potato and she's a hypocrite. I will never forgive what she did in episode 12 as she efficiently made the contrived journey worthless.
Aguero Agnes Khun is lame. He may not be as insufferable as Bam and especially the plot device thing that is Rachel but he still a subpar character overall. To his credit, he is the most entertaining character as he kept me awake while watching this amateur hour but his still, not a good character in the slightest.
He's a Killua/Nagisa/Karma knockoff that lacks depth, development and substance.
The rest of the characters just exist because why not. Forget character development just, have the rest of the characters either be plot devices or background noise. Frankly, the characters in Tower of God are just interesting as potatoes.
The only decent to come out in this scrapheap is the soundtrack done by which is alright but, it wasn't enough to redeem the anime from being a garbage fire. You can go on youtube and listen to the soundtrack and OPs/ENs from there. You don't need to commit to 13 episodes of unpolished poorly written gibberish to listen.
Tower of God is just pathetic.
It's a series that fails to do even the basics required for a fantasy series. It's a series that has ugly as sin production values, It's a series that features empty characters who are a void of personality and creativity. It's a series that can't even entertain the viewer due to its bad fan-fiction tier writing.
It is a series that gets nothing right yet Crunchyroll think this is the second coming of Hunter by hamfistedly promoting the series on social media.
Crunchyroll listen I understand you want to make money by promoting a popular series please do not shove a series right down our thoughts in social media especially when some people such as myself don't like this series.
You did the same crap with Twin Star Exorcist back in 2016 as you promoted as this epic, complex shounen show yet, in reality, is a half-baked anime adaptation that doesn't adapt the source material correctly. If you didn't hamfistedly advertise the series then I would have been less harsh about it heck, I would have dropped it after episode 4 and left it alone.
The damage has been done and for that, I hate this series and everything that its stands for! One of the worst shows I've ever watched in recent memory and I recommend you to avoid this amateurish series that has no passion and creativity like the plague.
