So, this week we get the conclusion of the Crown game and… not all that much else. Tower of God is kind of progressing in webcomic time, where each individual episode is decently paced internally, but it’s going to be a long, long road to get much of anywhere.
We learn the nature of Khun’s magic
bag, being that it duplicates objects as well as holding arbitrary
hammerspace. This explains how they keep feeding Rak chocolate,
though we didn’t really need an answer since it came across as a
comedy routine. The fourth round of the game features some
unexpected allies: namely, a team of three that Khun rescued from the
elimination round by hiding them in his bag, repaying the favor by
taking out the other challengers. Then it’s onto the final round
where the psychopath, demon, and Rachel emerge, along with some other
teams. Rachel’s team, though, seems to be anything but malicious,
and though she hides herself from Bam still, her hooded compatriots
protect him from the average challengers… and a strange
bodysuit-and-mask wearing woman who’s a lot more dangerous than most
of the others, or so it would seem.
In the last seconds of the match, the
masked stranger manages to vault to the throne and strike Rachel,
sending her to the ground. Bam runs from the throne to keep her from
finishing Rachel off and gets hit in the head for his trouble. As he
writhes, he awakens to some new and terrible power, unleashing a form
of Shisu that looks more like magic fire than magic water, blasting
half of the attacker’s face off, disintegrating the crown, and so on.
He takes up Black March to finish off the offender, but Black March
herself emerges, stops time, and sends Bam unconscious for the
ending.
The game ends with no winner. Anak
claims Black March. The hopeful teams are given time to recover, but
Bam isn’t waking up. Some of the administrators seem to have him in
their sights as a “threat to the tower” but they also seem to be
maneuvering among themselves . That’s when Rachel arrives at Bam’s
room with a message to give and the episode ends.
It’s actually a quite interesting
experience, watching through Tower of God, because of how different
the pace is compared to a typical twelve-episode anime. Scenes keep
moving, but the story as a whole goes forward only slowly. I’m
excited to hear what Rachel has to say, especially if it involves
learning what the stories of the rest of her team are like, but I’m
also kind of wondering if Tower of God will be able to muster a
satisfying conclusion in its current run or if it will instead rely
on the possibility of continuation or the existence of the source
material to more just stop.
As you could probably guess, this kind
of slow burn is a double-edged sword. It means there’s a lot of
material, and the time to do everything, but at the same time it has
to take that time and with only 13 episodes announced, I’m a little
concerned that Tower of God will be left in dire need of more to have
gone anywhere.