Tower of God: an exasperative criticism on an otherwise epic story.

(NOTE: This review only covers the first ~200 chapters)

In short:
Tower of God is a great story marred with several flaws that could be a major turn-off to readers. It has the potential to be the best Shounen of all time if the anime adaptation goes well, or the manhwa writing improves, BUT… they’d need to fix the many flaws first.
It has a great plot (although it feels pretty straightforward), amazing settings, and great art(later on).


The Cringe Factor:
By far my biggest complaint, this could have easily been the reason I stopped reading this Manhwa.

-Overdramatization
It feels like the author is overzealous to announce a new character, event, or the beginning of some test EVERY SINGLE F**KING TIME. The exaggeration is ridiculous; every semi-powerful character is overhyped and made to look ridiculously strong or makes a dramatic entrance. It has the webcomic vibe of being some sort of epic, character-driven showdown, but that vibe is plastered on everything, the character’s thoughts, the serious dialogue, and the story itself; fighting to be or kill the most powerful person.
It doesn’t really typically have the sob-story character backgrounds of many other Shounen (thankfully), but it instead has half the cast possess powerful weapons and hail from powerful families from the moment they’re introduced. It also has the bad habit of having a random new character, item, or ability enter a fight before being introduced in a text box off to the side, giving the rank, how the power works, accomplishments, etc.

-The (lack of) content maturity/consistency
When it comes to mature content depicted, it feels like the target audience is somewhere around 10. The depicted violence and blood mirrors Naruto Shippuden at best, but half the time they’ll avoid showing blood or death and keep it in the background or avoid blood altogether. There’s a scene where a character stabs themselves in the chest, but I didn’t realize until I scrolled back up and noticed the knife… their WHITE clothes looked like they’d gotten a little pink dye on them. There’s a few scenes with blood, but they miss plenty of places where it would/should be pooling…
The other major factor is the substitute swearing: it’s hilariously unfunny that bitch is used in several instances early on, and bastard throughout, but the characters regularly say friggin and darn, and in far more extreme situations; I’ve encountered damn a few times so idk why darn and dart (drat??) show up constantly in dialogue. It’s just the shitty English translation, but if the translators wanted to keep it PG-13, I feel it might have been better to avoid expletives altogether, or at least avoid substitutes.

-The Comments Section
This kinda goes for all webtoons, but the comments section is sometimes almost always a cesspool of fangirls drooling over characters, UwUs, and general retardation. Not to mention spoilers.

-The Dialogue
“How dare you trick me…!!”
It feels uninspired and often childish, this could easily be due to the English translation, but the dialogue is lackluster at best, and often very direct. Nearly every character speaks the same way and the verbiage is basic, I’ve never really had this much of the problem in a manga before.


Other Complaints:

-The Tediousness
There are points where the story becomes boring to the point where it’s hard to go on; it’s almost non-stop short battles and they tend to get dull. The character’s run around having to do this and that as part of tests and games that take half a chapter just to explain.
The clever plots and strategies (think Naruto) made by characters to defeat their opponents often rely on new rules or techniques outside the knowledge of the reader, and are always explained after they’re used. This is lame and impossible to guess at. The manhwa has a seemingly endless stream of characters and keeping track of them becomes impossible, new characters aren’t introduced one at a time either, each new arc has a multitude, keeping track of who knows what twist and which team or side they’re on is a never-ending task.


Mostly Non-Complaints:


The Plot/Twists:
IMO the storyline has an almost perfect approach to plot twists, it doesn’t twist often, but when it does it twists hard…
The plot develops in ways that are fairly unexpected, but they’re unpredictable because they aren’t really hinted at and are taken one step at a time. This causes some developments to feel out of the blue or even forced, but occasionally the developments feel perfectly logical. The plot develops in interesting ways, and is cause for the rare quality conversation in the comments about where the hell it's going.

The story has a lot of plot development- and it kinda carries it when it comes to being a great story.

The Art:
For a while it looks like nothing but Deviantart fanart. If it wasn’t in color it would be boring, the character lines are fairly inconsistent in shape, especially in fights. As the story passes the art gets better and better, eventually reaching the level where half the scenes could be wallpaper.

The Story:
I’m a bit of a sucker for character hype, and ToG has a ton of it. Numerous characters are shown to be contenders for the most powerful, and having mysterious entities gives hope for future fights. The plot continues building sides and hyping fights do it does at least seem to be going somewhere epic.


My fingers are sore from typing so I’m done.