Nitrousoxide posted:As an anime only watcher. I've gotta say I got a bad feeling about this Rachael girl after this last episode. Guess I was wrong. Seems Rachel is cool.
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# ? May 18, 2024 18:39 |
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I appreciate the anime making Androssi's horn much more prominent and obvious.
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ATP_Power posted:Found this while looking for something new to watch on CR, watched a few episodes there then binged the entire webtoon in about a week. What an incredible series. Canonically the 13th months can possess and influence their wielders as shown when Yuri goes dual wielding. Knocking out Bam isn't outside the wheelhouse. Now for the other bits. I think the changes were made to show more explicitly that Bam isn't normal and has hidden poo poo. I personally don't feel it ruins anything
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Anime only thoughts: That line from Black March about "rejoice at our reunion" as she looked at Rahel was super ominous. The only two ways I could see that going are either a) Through Time Wimey Fucky Stuff Rahel is somehow also Black March or b) Rahel knew Black March previously. Either one has pretty far ranging implications. The crown test was set up primarily to see if Rahel's team was a threat to the tower, but Rahel's team also seemed to have no interest in winning the game so the test seems to have mostly served in revealing Bam's power level to Lero Ro and the others. Rahel was definitely the objective of skinsuit rod lady, which lends credence to the idea that she's already known by people from the tower. Maybe the weird undeground place she met Bam in was a place she ran away to/was exiled? No idea what Rahel's team objective was. Their leader seemed to think Bam's team wasn't gonna win but there was seemingly no reason to think that until Bam felt the need to protect Rahel, since they didn't intend to steal the crown anyway. So did she just know that situation would go down or was it just a red herring to make us think Rahel's team was gonna stomp Bam's? (An effective red herring to be honest, with the ominous vibes from last week I half expected Rahel's team to just stomp the poo poo out of Bam and her to make some heel turn while taking the crown to get ahead) Rahel ignoring Bam is definitely weird since she does seem to care about his wellbeing. One possibility is that she knew the "acquaintances can't take part in the same test" rule and was just trying to slide by unnoticed, though it seems pretty likely Bam was going to ruin that either way. The other is that she's less so concerned about Bam and more concerned about anyone around Bam - if she knew his power level and left for the Tower because of it, it may be that she really doesn't want to hang out with the Shinsu monster for fear of him getting snippy and blowing a hole in the tower or something.
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AtomikKrab posted:Canonically the 13th months can possess and influence their wielders as shown when Yuri goes dual wielding. Knocking out Bam isn't outside the wheelhouse. Now for the other bits. I think the changes were made to show more explicitly that Bam isn't normal and has hidden poo poo. I personally don't feel it ruins anything Yeah, it doesn't really ruin anything, I just thought they were odd changes to make to that scene. With regards to the Black March; (Webtoon spoilers) I read Yuri's possession as being a function of her being a princess and their special connection to the 13 Months less than it being a generalized power of the Months (or even ignition weapons), and even then it wasn't the individual weapons exerting control over her it was specifically the Ghost of the 13 Months that's summoned by igniting two of the 13 Months that took her over. It's possible that Bam may also have some special familial connection to Black March that makes it special for him, but that's something we haven't even gotten specifically spelled out in the webtoon. I think it's doubly odd to build up Bam's connection to the Black March at this point in the anime given that from this episode until we get to the Last Station part of the Hell Train arc, the Black March isn't going to be involved in Bam's story at all.
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I can understand the giant shinsoo fountain because in the original version it was actually pretty confusing what had happened to leotard woman until the test administrators explain it later.
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I'm just really confused as to why Rachel would say in the previous episode that it's cool to go ahead and kill Bam et al and then they'd go and wagon circle up on him to keep him safe as soon as the round starts.. Also is the black March even going to work for lizard girl? Didn't it say it didn't like females to Yuri?
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Rachel's name is apparently very specifically Rachel for the person calling her rahel. She was called lahel all through early translations before they corrected it and the webtoon uses that too
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Nitrousoxide posted:I'm just really confused as to why Rachel would say in the previous episode that it's cool to go ahead and kill Bam et al and then they'd go and wagon circle up on him to keep him safe as soon as the round starts.. The question was if it was okay to kill all of them, phrased in a way that implied it was Baam, but from this episode it might be taken to mean all of the other teams.
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Jose posted:Rachel's name is apparently very specifically Rachel for the person calling her rahel. She was called lahel all through early translations before they corrected it and the webtoon uses that too Being a recent arrival who read the webtoons official translation, reading through this thread and the wiki is pretty confusing with all the references to "Lahel", "Androssi", "Zahad", "Lee Soo" and so on when I know them as Rachel, Endorsi, Jahad and Shibisu. Are these all artifacts of old fan scans that have stuck around from inertia, kinda like the early One Piece fan scans and their butchering of romanization?
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Nitrousoxide posted:I'm just really confused as to why Rachel would say in the previous episode that it's cool to go ahead and kill Bam et al and then they'd go and wagon circle up on him to keep him safe as soon as the round starts.. This was a bit underhanded but they were talking about killing everyone else but team Baam, apparently. Endorsi seemingly wanted to help team Baam win so the "impostor," in Endorsi's words, wouldn't get the Black March as well. And Rachel was on board with helping out Baam for obvious reasons. Who knows about big guy. That fourth episode cliffhanger was meant to be a fake out, I think.
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ATP_Power posted:Being a recent arrival who read the webtoons official translation, reading through this thread and the wiki is pretty confusing with all the references to "Lahel", "Androssi", "Zahad", "Lee Soo" and so on when I know them as Rachel, Endorsi, Jahad and Shibisu. In short, yes.
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I want to say there was a fair amount of gnashing of teeth at the webtoon's translations but which of the two is actually more accurate at this point is lost to time for me, and for better or mostly worse the names just kind of run together in my head.
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Normally I kinda detest watching ongoing series, for two reasons. 1. I don't want to wait a week for 20 more minutes of content. 2. I keep forgetting what I saw last week. This time I think I'll give it a try though, given the fact that I already know from the Webtoon what happens 'n' all. I heard there were two versions of the audio (Korean and Japanese)? Which one should I go for?
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Dante80 posted:Normally I kinda detest watching ongoing series, for two reasons. I like the VA for Japanese.
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I've just been watching it in Japanese cus it's the default, do whatever.
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Nate RFB posted:I want to say there was a fair amount of gnashing of teeth at the webtoon's translations but which of the two is actually more accurate at this point is lost to time for me, and for better or mostly worse the names just kind of run together in my head. The author calls the world/franchise/whatever "Talse uzer story," which is apparently their choice of how to spell "Tales user story". I wouldn't stress about any of the official vs. unofficial name transliterations; just roll with it.
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A thread for the ToG anime is up!
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Guess I'll spoil it since we've got anime-only posters in here currently, I'm curious about What Rachel chose for her 'wishes' from Gustang pre-timeskip. Given how the Hidden Floor ended for her, I feel like the next time we see her she could look pretty different. It doesn't seem like it would be beyond Gustang's capabilities to modify Rachel's body like she was trying to do in the Hidden Floor. Rachel with a Jahad Princess-level body, an Opera lighthouse and the stingray could be a combat threat without totally relying on others to do all the fighting for her. That faceless companion of Apple and Micheal in the Cage arc remains an open mystery too.
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ATP_Power posted:Guess I'll spoil it since we've got anime-only posters in here currently, I'm curious about What Rachel chose for her 'wishes' from Gustang pre-timeskip. Given how the Hidden Floor ended for her, I feel like the next time we see her she could look pretty different. It doesn't seem like it would be beyond Gustang's capabilities to modify Rachel's body like she was trying to do in the Hidden Floor. Rachel with a Jahad Princess-level body, an Opera lighthouse and the stingray could be a combat threat without totally relying on others to do all the fighting for her. That faceless companion of Apple and Micheal in the Cage arc remains an open mystery too. I would be surprised if she didn't ask for a new body. I imagine she'll also ask for one of the remaining thorn fragments. She really wanted to fulfill the conditions of the prophecy. I've rereading the webtoon recently thanks to the anime, and while I had forgotten a ton of what happened, one thing in particular popped out at me. On the floor of the dead, we learn that Yuri is able to kill the immortals because when two spells come into contact, the stronger spell will cancel the weaker one. The spell animating Yuri's 13 months was stronger than the immortality spell. I assuming Bam's ability to destroy spells is the same concept. Arlene was the main spell-user in their group; whatever magic she cast that led to Bam's existence, it's gotta be one of the most powerful spells out there. At the very least, we know she cast a spell preserving her child's body.
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hey girl you up posted:I would be surprised if she didn't ask for a new body. I imagine she'll also ask for one of the remaining thorn fragments. She really wanted to fulfill the conditions of the prophecy. Does Gustang have a thorn fragment to give her though? I honestly can't remember. Good catch on the spells thing, I kinda remember the comic implying that it was the thorn fragment that was what let Bam kill the immortals, but maybe that's just a red herring.
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ATP_Power posted:Does Gustang have a thorn fragment to give her though? I honestly can't remember. Good catch on the spells thing, I kinda remember the comic implying that it was the thorn fragment that was what let Bam kill the immortals, but maybe that's just a red herring. I mean Baam has so many things going on it could conceivably be any one of them or a combination of several
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ATP_Power posted:Does Gustang have a thorn fragment to give her though? I honestly can't remember. Good catch on the spells thing, I kinda remember the comic implying that it was the thorn fragment that was what let Bam kill the immortals, but maybe that's just a red herring. We know of 3 of the 4 Thorn Fragments so far. We know of the 1 they had prepared during the Workshop Battle, the one Gustang gave to Bam on the stipulation that he go to the Hidden Floor that he hid in the center of his Floor of Death immortality soul jar spell thing, and the one Madorako claimed he has that he wanted to trade for the soul stirring ladle, but that deal's kind of gone off the rails so far. It's presumed he still has it but it might be at the behest of Gustang in the first place, since we saw Madorako cowtowing to Gustang way back during the Workshop battle. We've heard nothing of the fourth fragment, but it seems likely that Gustang is the one really in charge of what's going on with FUG and the Thorn so far considering the entirety of the Floor of Death, where they found the Thorns, is orchestrated and set up by Gustang's own Xanatos level machinations. There was the one time implication that the final Thorn Fragment hasn't been found, because Hell Joe was still looking for it under the auspices of getting his freedom via FUG if he found it for them. But he never could find it. My assumption is it was found a long time ago by Gustang.
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ATP_Power posted:Does Gustang have a thorn fragment to give her though? I honestly can't remember. Good catch on the spells thing, I kinda remember the comic implying that it was the thorn fragment that was what let Bam kill the immortals, but maybe that's just a red herring. I though any Irregular could kill immortals in the Tower, because they were only immortal due to pacts with administrators that Regulars couldn’t do anything about. I might be misremembering things though.
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Ethiser posted:I though any Irregular could kill immortals in the Tower, because they were only immortal due to pacts with administrators that Regulars couldn’t do anything about. I might be misremembering things though. Ostensibly yes, though the Family Heads might not be able to kill each other because they're all under the same immortality contract. Which is possibly why Arlene couldn't commit suicide after losing her husband and child. Irregulars are not bound by contracts like Regulars and thus shouldn't be bound by the immortality contract. The Thorn is just prophesized to be what "cuts the King's throat" so Rachel would want it for that reason.
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Two Tone Shoes posted:Ostensibly yes, though the Family Heads might not be able to kill each other because they're all under the same immortality contract. Which is possibly why Arlene couldn't commit suicide after losing her husband and child. Irregulars are not bound by contracts like Regulars and thus shouldn't be bound by the immortality contract. The Thorn is just prophesized to be what "cuts the King's throat" so Rachel would want it for that reason. I feel like the Thorn is the secret sauce here cause all the 10 family heads are irregulars and given that Arlene, an irregular, couldn't kill herself implies that you need something more than just being from outside the Tower to kill one of the immortals in the Tower. My understanding is that Irregulars are valuable to FUG's plan cause they won't get deleted from existence by the Administrators cause of Jahad's contract protecting him being attacked by anyone else from the Tower, but that wouldn't negate the immortality. The Thorn's got some special properties - possibly because Enryu used it to kill an Administrator and now it's got some special qualities that let it mess with them and their rules, and maybe Enryu's whole messenger from God shtick? I wonder if spells are seen as so taboo because they're functionally a way around the normal rules imposed on the Tower by the administrators, and Bam's spell resistance and spell breaking abilities are from the Thorn, though he's got so many insane powers/beings (including at least one pseudo baby Administrator) that it's hard to sort out until it's explicitly explained.
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As I understand it once they signed the immortality contract they ceased being irregulars. And due to its rules they could not kill each other, or Jahad.
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AtomikKrab posted:As I understand it once they signed the immortality contract they ceased being irregulars. And due to its rules they could not kill each other, or Jahad. Nothing's ever been said about that. They were never technically considered Irregulars because Regulars didn't exist when they climbed the Tower. Irregulars is a classification that matters after the advent of Zahard's kingdom. They're all technically irregulars in functionality like Urek. Gustang even said that only the Family Heads and Urek really matter amongst each other due to their Irregular status...and then said Bam might just join that party.
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Another fun reminder watching the anime is remembering that Rachel and Androssi started their climb as part of the same team lol.
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I finally caught up with the comic. I had previously dropped it around the end of Bam vs. Hoaquin, and picked it up again when the anime came out. I generally liked the Name Hunt arc; the fights were better than usual for Tower of God. I'm more mixed on the Floor of Death; the setting was interestingly weird, but it felt hard to take the antagonists very seriously with Bam, Yuri, and Urek around, and the fights were a return to energy blast vs. energy blast. The Hidden Floor was better; it seems like SIU finally realized the characters other than Bam hadn't been getting powerups lately, and found a way to make Khun's and Rak's fighting styles more interesting as well as making them stronger. The rather surreal take on the trapped-in-an-MMO cliche was entertaining, as was Rachel complaining that people treat her betrayals and murders as worse than those of everyone else because she isn't as pretty (and trying to get a new body without freckles to solve this "problem"). But then Rachel did another betrayal for an extremely petty reason, and I realized that actually, the reason people hate her is because she keeps doing it, and she keeps whining about how it's not really her fault despite never giving an adequate explanation of her own big-picture motivations, and at some point it starts to get tedious. And then we get Bam vs. Young Zahard, which is an extended big dumb energy blast fight, albeit with somewhat cooler-looking energy blasts than usual. Part 3 has been alright, mostly. I do kind of wish the stakes of the FUG vs. Zahard conflict were a bit clearer. It seems like the worst aspect of the Tower (the constant ruthless competition, of which the 2nd floor deathmatch is probably the most extreme example, although it doesn't get mentioned again and feels a bit out-of-place in retrospect) is mostly the result of Guardians (who the test administrators are at least theoretically acting on behalf of), although Zahard and the Ten Families certainly perpetuate it and extend it into the own familial relationships. And the only large-scale atrocities against Outer Tower residents we've seen were perpetrated by White and by Workshop scientists, not by people acting on behalf of Zahard. If Zahard and the Ten Family heads were all killed, what would even change? Most of the FUG Elders and Slayers apparently don't even want systemic change anyway, just revenge, mostly for things that happened literal millennia ago. Even Bam is really just fighting to rescue Ha Jinsung. Which makes FUG hard to root for, but it makes the pro-Zahard people hard to sympathize with as well. They talk about how if there's an all-out war lots of people will die...but the fighting seems to mainly be between Rankers, of whom there are only around 100,000 in the entire Tower, out of a total Tower population in the trillions. So in theory, even relatively small changes in the governance of the Tower could make the conflict worth it in a big-picture sense...but as I said, there's no sense of what those changes would even be.
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Silver2195 posted:Which makes FUG hard to root for, but it makes the pro-Zahard people hard to sympathize with as well. They talk about how if there's an all-out war lots of people will die...but the fighting seems to mainly be between Rankers, of whom there are only around 100,000 in the entire Tower, out of a total Tower population in the trillions. So in theory, even relatively small changes in the governance of the Tower could make the conflict worth it in a big-picture sense...but as I said, there's no sense of what those changes would even be. The problem is Rankers are incredibly powerful and even the weakest is vastly stronger than a Regular just coming into the 2nd Floor, who are themselves much better than the rest of their populations. Remember that White alone, just one High Ranker, was god-king of a population of billions. Karaka and Yuri's fight in the Name Hunt station turned the landscape below and around them into a scorching inferno. A fight between Rankers with ordinary people on the sidelines will have tremendous casualties.
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I guess the big thematic change to overthrowing Zahard is that people would presumably be allowed to start pushing up the unexplored floors of the Tower again.
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Sindai posted:I guess the big thematic change to overthrowing Zahard is that people would presumably be allowed to start pushing up the unexplored floors of the Tower again. A change that only affects Rankers, though.
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Gologle posted:The problem is Rankers are incredibly powerful and even the weakest is vastly stronger than a Regular just coming into the 2nd Floor, who are themselves much better than the rest of their populations. Remember that White alone, just one High Ranker, was god-king of a population of billions. Karaka and Yuri's fight in the Name Hunt station turned the landscape below and around them into a scorching inferno. A fight between Rankers with ordinary people on the sidelines will have tremendous casualties. If they fight in urban areas in the Outer Tower instead of in floating fortresses like the Cage and the Nest, sure. But why do that?
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Silver2195 posted:A change that only affects Rankers, though.
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Silver2195 posted:If they fight in urban areas in the Outer Tower instead of in floating fortresses like the Cage and the Nest, sure. But why do that? There's some big picture structural stuff that's been touched on but not really explained - like, one of the things that's been mentioned about the current battle is that Zahard's forces brought a bunch of chaff just so people watching the battle would see FUG slaughtering soldiers en masse, regardless of how the actual meaningful high ranker action turns out. So for some reason propaganda and hence the opinion of ordinary people still matters. This might just be because Zahard likes having complete control, they might be important food producers, it might be about just having as many billions producing more billions to yield the occasional one with potential to be a ranker, or something else entirely. Point there being that if they matter somehow, any time a war gets serious and one side starts feeling threatened they can start actively loving with or hiding among civilians and it's a meaningful threat. Maybe.
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It's interesting that it's still unclear what the Administrator's position in this coming war is even going to be. On the one hand, they are the ones that functionally have made Jahad's empire possible with the contracts they've set up with him, on the other hand, Headron has boosted both Bam and Rachel's climb up the tower (including turning Akryung loose), and the 2nd floor Administrator certainly seems to be supporting Bam as well. I wonder if the contracts Jahad and the Great Warriors made with the Administrators were less gifts granted to them and more concessions coerced by force. Maybe the Administrator's function in the Tower before Jahad's entry were quite different than they are now, and they're trying to find an indirect way to subvert their contracts with Jahad and the 10 great families so they can also be freed. I feel like the many allusions to fate and Jahad's apparent ability to control it in some way are probably key to understanding what the core of this conflict is actually about.
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FUG and Jahad are essentially the same dilemmas and power dynamics of the pirates and marines in One Piece. There are heinous pirates but the marines are also oppressive fascists, and our protagonists navigating those waters is part of what makes the story interesting. Regarding caring about people who are not Regulars/Rankers, it's gotten kind of lost in the noise at this point but people who either haven't been chosen or failed to ascend already effectively have their stories written; they are stuck in whatever plot of land they find themselves in the Inner/Middle/Outer towers and there's not really much to say or do about them at this juncture. As currently presented, it's obvious that we are biased towards Regulars/Rankers because they still have a hypothetical adventure laid before them.
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Nate RFB posted:FUG and Jahad are essentially the same dilemmas and power dynamics of the pirates and marines in One Piece. There are heinous pirates but the marines are also oppressive fascists, and our protagonists navigating those waters is part of what makes the story interesting. I feel like in One Piece the good and bad things done by the various factions were a bit more concrete, though. Like, we get to see how Big Mom's and Kaidou's territories are run, how the territories of several different WG member states are run, how the World Nobles act in Marie Geoise and Saobaody, and so forth. Tower of God never really gives us much of a sense of how life for Outer Tower residents on, say, Khun Eduan's floor differs from life for Outer Tower residents on Evankell's floor or Baek Ryun's floor. Though we do get to see how the Floor of Death and the Hidden Floor are run, and I guess we can infer from Young Zahard's behavior on the Hidden Floor that the present-day Zahard is similarly oppressive...except we're also specifically told that Zahard hasn't taken an active role in ruling the Tower for thousands of years, and that day-to-day decisions affecting the Tower as a whole are currently made by Molic One P. GR, about whom we know almost nothing, and what little we're told about him sounds vaguely positive. To be fair, we're probably not as far into the overall plot of Tower of God as we are into the plot of One Piece. But it's a bit weird that when people's reasons for fighting are discussed, things like support for or opposition to Molic's policies never seem to come up.
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# ? May 18, 2024 18:39 |
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Up. https://www.webtoons.com/en/fantasy/tower-of-god/season-3-ep-60/viewer?title_no=95&episode_no=478 poo poo got real. Dante80 fucked around with this message at 02:37 on May 4, 2020 |
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