Tower of God Season 2

Episode 4

This week's Tower of God has it all: exciting twists and turns; brutal murders and life-or-death battles; deepening mysteries and surprising revelations. Yes, it truly has it all… except for the needed amount of emotional depth to make it work.

While every character has a moment or two of focus in this episode (sometimes literally just that much), Wangnan is at the core of everything. We're supposed to feel what he feels and be moved by his actions. Basically, his empathy is what's on display here. When Nia betrays him, he doesn't curse the boy or belittle him for his betrayal, he simply says he understands and comforts the young boy for trying to help someone less fortunate than himself. Then, when Lurker brutally murders Nia, we are supposed to share in Wangnan's rage at the injustice of it all and empathize with his need to get revenge by not only beating Lurker in the game but by killing him with his own two hands (or a bomb in the mouth as the case may be).

Up until this point, it works well enough. I mean, it's not hard to portray a child being killed for no reason as something terrible. It's the end of this little arc where things don't work. After Wangnan turns the tables on Lurker, he then begins to torture the man as he lays the groundwork for killing him. Yet, all it takes is Lurker telling Wangnan his sob story for Wangnan to give up on revenge and spare the murderer.

This non-killing hero/forgiveness trope requires far more character development and emotional connection than the series has given us so far to pull off. It's one thing for Wangnan to realize that the tower is a meat grinder and makes monsters of those who dare to climb it. It's quite another to forgive a man who literally beat a child to death with his own hands for shits and giggles not 10 minutes before. Instead of this big, defining moment for Wangnan—showing the beauty of his soul and character—it feels like a bafflingly stupid choice.

Despite being four episodes in, we still don't know much about Wangnan—we just know that he's a fast talker and a bit of a coward. We know he was left behind on the 20th floor to struggle alone. We also know that he has the capacity for great heroism. However, none of this has been explored enough to make his forgiveness of Lurker more palatable.

Of course, this lack of meaningful character depth isn't just a problem with Wangnan—all the characters suffer from this. Even more than the previous episode, this one feels like a drastic abridgment of the story. This is compounded by the constant budget-saving measures, like minimizing character movements whenever possible and having entire big fights happen off-screen.

I started hopeful with the first two episodes of this show, but after the last two, that hope is almost gone. Maybe this was the best the creators of this anime could do with what they had. Or maybe they just wanted to rush through this arc to get to better things. But either way, the result is the same: this is a pretty crappy episode.

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Tower of God Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.