There’s fallout beyond that too – Lero-ro walks out on his job as a ranker, and Quant is jettisoned along with him. They think this is what Bam would have wanted, and they’re going to honor his wishes. There’s plenty of resentment from Khun and grief from all ( most demonstrably Rak), but no obvious indication that any of them suspects what really happened. And you can add “shameless” to the list, as she now accepts the help of Bam’s friends to climb the tower. Jealous, a coward, ruthless – Rachel is a bad apple to be sure. But when you hear the word “savior” tossed around, it’s obviously something they consider pretty important. Of course we can’t talk about why Yu and Hwaryun did what they did – why they needed Bam’s friends and the Jahad princesses to think he was dead.

Not only that, but she hopes someone else will come along and kill Bam before she has to do it herself. She lacks the ability to do what she wants to do (this is obvious in her humiliating conversation with Headon), and she’s willing so sell out a much more deserving and honorable person to make up the difference. This, to me, is the hard truth about Rachel. She had a choice – it’s not as though her life was threatened, only her ambition. Is she manipulated by Yu and Hwaryun to suit their purposes? Sure – but she was a perfectly willing tool in their hands. But while it’s hard to be objective I still think she comes off looking pretty awful. I would say, on balance, Rachel comes off looking better – well, less worse – here than she does in the manhwa. The anime spent more time this week showing us these events from her perspective than the source material did (though it skimmed over a few interesting passages that cast her in a slightly different light).

Still, there was a part of me that was quixotically hopeful we’d see an announcement at the close of this episode.įirst, Rachel. Is that an implication that there’s no second season of the anime to follow? I’ve always been skeptical that Tower of God would run more than one cour – it’s popular by web manhwa standards but that’s not a medium that offers a lot of moneymaking potential for a production committee. I think it did a pretty good job of placing the events of the season in context – in fact, offering more information than the manhwa did at this point in the story to help it do so. This was certainly a finale that had some ‘splaining to do – and it did that in spades. I always err on the side of caution when it comes to spoilers (and I implore commenters to do the same), but there are conclusions that can safely be drawn here, so I’ll concentrate on those.

There are things I really should talk about in interpreting this finale, but really can’t without coloring one’s view of the chapters to come. This is sort of a tough piece to write, because I do so under the assumption that at least some of you are going to read the manhwa after the anime left things where it did.

Kami no tou