Climbing the Tower: Episode 3
What do you desire? Money and wealth? Honor and pride? Authority and power? Revenge? Or something that transcends them all? Whatever you desire—it can be yours if you climb the tower.
Originally published in “The Webcomics Weekly #104: Begin Year 3 (9/15/2020 Edition)” at Multiversity Comics.
Tower of God
Tower of God: Season 1 Eps. 11-16
Episode 3 - “The Correct Door”
Updates: Mondays
By SIU
What do you desire? Money and wealth? Honor and pride? Authority and power? Revenge? Or something that transcends them all? Whatever you desire—it can be yours if you climb the tower.
I said I wouldn’t talk much about narrative, characters, etc. when not in the context of adaptation between comic and show but the progression of the narrative stands out enough that I have to ask: why the heck are they only on floor two?
The comic does a better job of conveying that this is all happening on one floor, save for the “first test,” but it feels silly for a comic/show called “Tower of God" to spend most of, if not the entirety, of its first season on one to two floors rather than climbing. Ah well, maybe I’ll be wrong and by episode six we’re scaling the Tower like old pros.
The biggest difference between the webtoon’s chapters and “The Correct Door” once again comes down to SIU’s heavy emphasis on exposition to get things moving versus the show’s drip-feed of questions and atmospheric building. Hansung Yu, the test administrator for the door challenge, clearly has some scheming going on and the anime does a much better job of conveying this via furtive glances, slow sips of instant coffee, and a general demeanor of “I know more than I’m letting on.” His calmness is in direct contrast to the more blustery, worried Hansung Yu of the webtoon.
You can see this most noticeably in the scene with Quant, the hot-headed test administrator who has the most punchable face next to Leesoo (who is, apparently, called Shibisu. I clearly did not do a good enough job two weeks ago double checking what he’s called in the dub/translation versus the wiki.) In the comic, the scene lays out Quant’s incompetence and downplays his complete lack of fucks given for procedures while Hansung is far more worried about the possible ramifications of Quant’s choices & the fact that both a Princess of Jahad AND an irregular are in the new group. In the anime, the latter fact is foreshadowed but Quant denies that there are either in the group, clearly not bothering to check while Hansung is perturbed but remains calm rather than visibly, comically perturbed. It’s a stronger character choice and, presumably, more informed but later developments.
This continues to be where the anime shines - in its construction of character and laying hints to the larger forces and plans in play while the comic is focused on the immediately important information. There, Khun’s status as an exiled member of a formerly important family is delivered only after going into the room testing area as that’s when it’s important, and only the information that feeds his insecurities is made clear. The anime, on the other hand, takes the time to sow the seeds for why he sticks with Bam, what his relationship to the Tower’s politics are, and his issues with his mother, feeding us bits and pieces but never the whole story before, during, and after that test.
His mother is an interesting point of departure. “Tower of God” has her being an apologetic figure for the vague disgrace that falls upon him, while reinforcing that the Princesses are a position rather than a familial title of royalty - a point for the comic. I would often forget while watching the show, due to the aforementioned lower volume-of-exposition. Tower of God, meanwhile, has her much more imposing and cruel, as if Khun sees her as nothing more than a controlling figure whose one point of wisdom was to never trust another, a fact reinforced by this Maria character’s betrayal.
There are some other moments of departure – like the action being better and more focused in the anime, which comes as no shock and cannot be something held against the comic, or the clock being stylized to add clarity to the clock clue – but the final place I thought worth mentioning is the anime’s decision to cut out the details of the other testers’ results. It’s extraneous and the short glimpses we get are a great example of trimming the fat to fit a runtime without losing the purpose of the scenes. Some also serve a dual purpose. The religious zealot’s reduction is, as in “3/400 (Three four-Hundreths,)” a result of Tower of God cutting excess comedy that kinda works in print (this does not) and letting tension build.
These kinds of cuts may be more common coming up. This is the first real reduction in scenes we’ve gotten rather than the usual rearranging to better fit character or narrative flow. It’s also a moment which makes me wonder if Tower of God will sacrifice the more comprehensive explanations “Tower of God” gives going forward. A large part of Shibisu’s conversation with Hansung is the “detective solves the mystery” part of any good detective novel. While it is certainly overly long and, again, doesn’t trust the audience, Hangsung’s reply is well written and losing it in the show hurts that section of the scene. Hansung remains mysterious but somehow less wise than he otherwise appears.
In two weeks, “The Green April.” Hmm, I’m sensing a naming pattern here.
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Elias Rosner
