This week on Tower of God, we get round one of “Tag”, and… that’s about it, but it’s cool.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s some good
stuff here. First of all, it’s another well-executed Khun scheme,
with several internal twists and turns, and this time it does
actually say something about his character.
Most critical is the core misdirect.
Khun misleads the Ranker coming for Anak’s “it” badge several
times over the course of the exchange, as befits his nature, while
the Test Administrators (occasionally with Rak as a peanut gallery)
comment on the goings-on as an audience surrogate. The great
misdirect, though, is what side Khun is actually on.
As the administrators point out, he’s
playing not for the team to which he’s been assigned, but to his
“real” team – Bam, Anak, Endorsi, and his other friends. In
order to get them all through the test, he needed his Tag team to
lose, while also providing enough information to the second team
(containing Bam) to give them a fighting chance, hence engaging the
Ranker fairly successfully several times before ultimately betraying
his Tag team and giving their opponent a shortcut directly to
victory.
At this point, Khun really is the most
interesting and developed character we have. Even though he’s not a
traditional protagonist type, seeing as he’s duplicitous in the
extreme, he is the closest thing we have to a main character who’s
more than just a window onto their world. He has a definite goal (to
climb the Tower while spiting the Tower), a solid theme, and an
interesting persona. I dare say I care a good deal more about Khun
than I do about Bam right now.
Though, Bam also gets a moment this
episode, talking with Endorsi about Rachel. Sadly, it’s only half a
moment. Bam asks if Rachel will be able to continue climbing the
tower doing what she does, and Endorsi replies by asking which he’d
prefer. Sadly, we don’t get to hear Bam answer or debate the topic,
but it is at least raising an interesting point.
We got even better development for the
angry lady who had been Track Suit Guy’s comedic foil, as she talks
with Hoh at the start of the second round, questioning whether or not
she has the will to keep climbing the tower and giving us some of the
backstory of how she was called in: a petty thief, hiding from
certain death in the midst of a heist gone wrong, and then Headon
teleported her in. Does that make her an irregular? But then,
Irregulars are supposed to be amazingly special so I doubt it. Hoh,
meanwhile, brushes off the idea of killing as something that must be
done, which combined with some previous framings makes me really
think he’s up to no good and will probably be a monkey wrench in the
second game of Tag.
All in all, we had a good episode this
week, even if it only did so much for us. I’m coming around to the
pace of Tower of God, though at this pace I certainly want to see it
continue past twelve episodes, and the way the tests are handled is
solidly engaging, even if we’re not getting the sort of “free
climb” that’s been implied in the setup. All in all, looking
forward to next week’s offering of, I predict, decent action and
sudden yet inevitable betrayals. See you there!