What I've Climbed The Tower For

Today is the premier of Crunchyroll's Original Tower of God anime. Tonight I reveal my thoughts from the World Premier I attended verses today's premier as well as a comic comparison.

I have been wishing for this day for YEARS. No, literally I have, see:

That is a screen shot of me commenting on ToG episode 334 on December 15, 2017. And trust me, I had said it before than too but this one had a time stamp. I was wanting this since I first read ToG and now I am reading it again, starting the journey over as ToG starts its first chapter as an anime. I have been holding in my thoughts of the anime after attending the World Premier that Crunchyroll hosted at C2E2 and today I am here to share them with you fresh after watching it again and reading the corresponding chapters from the comic. Are you ready?

I should start by saying they did make a few changes between the version that was shown at the World Premier verses what they ended up airing today. And I am so happy they did. I am also happy I did what I did or we might not know it. When I watched it at C2E2, I sat on the edge of my seat, eyes wide, taking in everything I could. The moment it ended I whipped out my phone and typed every thought I had down knowing I would want to share those thoughts with you today. Waking up and seeing all the banners and notifications from Webtoon and Crunchyroll for the premier today made me over the moon happy. So, I started my morning by rereading the first six episodes of the comic which are what make up the first episode of the anime. Then I watched the premier with Chase and James. And finally, before sitting down here with you, I reviewed my notes.

The very first thing I noted you will not see in the anime if you watched it today. In the WP version they translated the word "irregulars" to "nonregulars". For those of you that are not familiar with the comic, regulars and irregulars are terms for two of the different types of people in the tower. It is actually a crucial part of the story. This comic was originally written in Korean but Crunchyroll made the anime in Japanese. Somewhere along the lines they translated "irregulars", the key phrase for our main character, to "nonregulars". This put a bad taste in my mouth but thankfully they fixed it before letting the series hit the web in its final form. Other than that the translation seems to be following very closely to the original English dialogue. Since I do not speak Korean, I cannot say how close either of those are to the original, original script but over all I am feeling blessed since I have been on the bad side of a translation a time or two before.

The next think I noted was the animation. That's a pretty big thing to note since it is right in your face at all times. The animation can make or break an anime no matter how good a story. With that being said, I don't know what I wanted and I don't know what else they could have done with such a fast paced time line and such dedicated fans. But the animation stayed true to the original art. This both surprised me and also made a lot of sense. It is important to note that the art grows with time, so if they continue to animate using SIU's art it will only continue to improve. Though they did clean up a couple scene's, probably referencing SIU's later art work. The most notable clean up being the appearance of Black March when Bam summon's her, the picture above is from the comic. The new rendition of her was much more suited to the animation. Overall, the animation was familiar to fan's since fan's are used to SIU's work on the comic but new fan's might find it uncomfortable at first. This is clearly still comic art and not animation art after all, but I have a feeling they will find their groove soon so if you are new to the scene, hang in there, there is more to come that I think you will find worth it.

Back peddling a little bit to the translation, I found it very interesting that Crunchyroll moved forward with ToG in Japanese instead of it's original language of Korean. Unfortunately, I think the biggest reasoning for this was the audience that Crunchyroll serves. And by that I mean, Weebs. Not the cute kind either. American's obsessed with Japanese culture that can become a little overbearing. I say this because when ToG was announced to be coming as an anime fan's responded with: "Japanese dub or nothing". Needing the Original's to be a success more than ever, they may have decided it wasn't worth the fight. That or they just already had the Japanese voice actors lined up since most of their series are already in Japanese.

Speaking of which, all of the voice actors are beautifully on point. There is nothing worse than a voice actor that you don't think fits a beloved character. So far, there are none of those worries here. They have all been on point and I am loving it. Great job on Crunchyroll's part for casting.

Since we are already on an audio point, let's roll right into the opening and ending sequence. This was brand new for me today because it was not shown during the World Premier. I liked the opening sequence, the sound track was great but the visual was a little choppy. What you could see I was strongly digging but it was always over in a flash. The ending sequence was just credits, I would not even count it as an ending sequence. Overall, it could be better but I was not displeased with what we got. As I stated before, I think they will hit a groove eventually when it comes to this Original business.

The last and most important point of this review is the story line and how it compares to the comic. Just like all adaptations, we all know that somethings will get cut. The first anime episode, as I said earlier, equals the first six episodes of the comic. And surprisingly, very little was cut. The biggest things were how we are introduced to Princess Yuri and the first interaction between Kuhn, Bam, and Rak. That first one kept us from more detailed information but I think that was done on purpose to help build some suspense. The latter however just made me sad. Not getting the crocodile/turtle dialogue left me disappointed and yearning but I am sure will come in the next episode. I am just a sucker for big moments and to me, this meeting was one of them.

Overall, Tower of God episode one made my eyes sparkle. To some it might feel a little underwhelming but I know it is building to bigger and better things. Genuinely, this ground work is the set up for an amazing series to build from. I am truly excited to see Crunchyroll bring SIU's world to life on our screens and I hope you will come along for the journey.

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Thank you so much for joining me for this lengthy review on one of my favorite comic's turned anime. This has been such a fun process to walk through and I loved being a part of all the stages for it. I hope your week is going well during quarantine and everyone is remaining safe. Remember if you need any comic or anime suggestions please feel free to message me on social media. Have an incredible rest of your week and I will see you back on Sunday for The Mess. In the mean time, stay nerdy, watch ToG, and stay messy my friends.