Tower of God: An Honest Review

Before Solo Leveling, before the current webtoon boom, there was Tower of God (신의 탑). It's one of the titles that built the whole medium's international fanbase — a sprawling, ambitious fantasy that's been running since 2010 and racked up billions of reads. If you want to understand why people fall so hard for Korean webtoons, this is a foundational text. Here's my honest, friend's take.

I'll tell you exactly where I stand, because Tower of God is the webtoon I have the most complicated relationship with. I bounced off it. Twice. The first time I made it a handful of episodes, decided the art looked scrappy and the rules made no sense, and quietly closed the tab. The second time a friend who I trust on these things told me, almost annoyed, "you have to give it the first proper arc — just trust it." So I did. And somewhere in that first big test inside the Tower, it clicked so hard that I went from skeptic to evangelist in a single afternoon. I now think of those early stumbles as a kind of initiation. This is a story that asks something of you up front and then pays it back many times over — but only if you let it.

So this isn't a breezy "everyone will love it" review. It's me being straight with you about a genuine giant of the medium: what makes it extraordinary, why so many people quit before it gets going, and how to tell which camp you're in. No big spoilers beyond the setup, promise.

What it's actually about

A mysterious, enormous Tower stands at the centre of everything. Those who climb it and reach the top are promised whatever they desire most — wealth, power, glory, anything. But each floor is a brutal test, with deadly trials and stronger rivals the higher you go.

The story follows a boy called Twenty-Fifth Bam (Baam), who has spent his whole life alone in the dark beneath the Tower, knowing only one person: a girl named Rachel. When she enters the Tower to chase her own dream, Bam follows her in — and discovers he's a rare "Irregular," someone who entered the Tower by their own will, capable of shaking its entire order. What begins as a boy chasing the only person he loves becomes an epic about ambition, betrayal, found family and the price of getting what you want.

That last sentence is doing a lot of work, so let me underline it. On the surface, Tower of God looks like a "battle tournament" comic — climb a floor, pass a test, fight a rival, repeat. And it is that. But what hooked me is how the climbing is really a vehicle for one painfully simple question: what are you willing to do, and who are you willing to lose, to reach the thing you want most? Bam starts as the purest soul in the building, a boy who just wants to find his friend, and the Tower spends years quietly asking whether he can stay that person while becoming strong enough to survive it. The trials aren't just spectacle. They're moral pressure tests, and the answers get genuinely uncomfortable.

Why it's a webtoon landmark

• Staggering world-building. SIU has built one of the deepest, most intricate fictional worlds in webtoons — floors, factions, powers and politics that reward attention and reread. Few stories go this deep.
• A huge, beloved cast. Tower of God lives and dies on its enormous ensemble; the side characters are so loved that whole fandoms form around them.
• It grows with its art. Early chapters look rough — SIU was learning — but the art and storytelling level up dramatically as it goes, which is part of its charm.
• Genuine stakes. Characters you love are not safe. The emotional gut-punches are real, and they stick with you.

The characters are the real magic

If you ask longtime fans why they stayed, almost none of them will say "the power system." They'll name a character. Tower of God's secret weapon is its cast — a genuinely enormous one, built up over many years, where even people who show up for a single arc can lodge themselves permanently in your heart. Bam is a lovely, quietly devastating protagonist whose kindness is both his greatest strength and the thing the Tower keeps trying to break. But the friends and rivals he collects on the way up are where I got truly attached. Some of them are funny, some are tragic, some you'll spend chapters hating and then find yourself defending. SIU is unusually good at making you care fast and then putting those people in real danger.

I'll be honest that this is also a double-edged sword. The cast gets so big that some favourites vanish for long stretches, and you may find yourself missing characters the story has temporarily set aside. But that breadth is the price of the depth, and for me it's worth it — the world feels genuinely populated rather than built around a single hero.

About that art

Let me set your expectations honestly, because the art is the single most common reason people quit early. The opening chapters, drawn back in 2010, look rough — simple faces, sketchy backgrounds, the work of a creator still finding his style. If you're coming straight from the polished, full-colour spectacle of newer webtoons, the contrast is jarring, and I won't pretend otherwise. But here's the lovely part: you get to watch SIU level up in real time. Scroll far enough and the art transforms — the action becomes dynamic and confident, the colour work blooms, the big set-piece moments turn genuinely beautiful. Reading Tower of God is partly the experience of watching an artist grow over more than a decade, and there's something moving about that you don't get from a series that arrived fully formed.

The honest catch

I'll be straight with you: Tower of God is not an easy first webtoon. The early-2010s art takes adjusting to, the world throws a lot of names and systems at you fast, and because it's been running for over a decade and is still ongoing, the scope is genuinely intimidating. Some readers bounce off the first floors before it clicks.

And there's a deeper catch I'd be doing you a disservice to skip: the lore can become genuinely hard to follow. The Tower runs on an intricate system of "Shinsu" and ranks and positions, and as the series goes on it layers in more factions, more history and more mysteries than any one read-through comfortably holds. Plenty of devoted fans keep wikis open. If you're the kind of reader who needs every rule to click cleanly, the back half can feel like wading. I've made peace with riding the emotional current and not understanding every mechanic — but you should know that's part of the deal. It's also ongoing, with no ending in sight, so you're committing to a story that won't wrap up neatly any time soon.

My advice: give it more than a few episodes. The moment the world opens up and the cast fills in, it goes from "confusing" to "I can't stop." But if you want something short, neat and finished, this isn't that — start with Solo Leveling instead, then come back when you're ready to commit.

The anime

Tower of God also got an anime adaptation (its first season aired in 2020, with a second season following), which is a great, lower-commitment way to sample the story and meet Bam before diving into the webtoon's full depth. If the anime hooked you, the webtoon is where the real, unabridged saga lives.

So — should you read it?

Read it if you love deep, long-haul fantasy world-building, a giant cast to get attached to, and the satisfaction of watching both a hero and his creator grow over a decade. Wait if you want something quick, polished from page one, or already finished.

For me, Tower of God is a rite of passage — the webtoon that proves how far the medium can go when a creator is willing to dream this big. Climb when you're ready.

Where to read it

Tower of God is one of the flagship original series on the platform that essentially defined the modern webtoon — it was there near the beginning and remains a cornerstone title, fully and officially translated into English. Because it's a flagship original, the early chapters are typically free to read, with the most recent ones on a small wait or coin system, which is a friendly way to sink into something this long without committing money up front. I'd point you to the official source over any scanlation: it's where the proper colour and lettering live, and where SIU is actually supported. Our guide to where to read webtoons has the details if you're new to the apps.

Frequently asked questions

Should I watch the anime first or read the webtoon? Either works, but they're different experiences. The anime is a faster, lower-commitment way to meet Bam and decide if the world appeals to you — but it covers only the very beginning and makes some changes. The webtoon is the full, unabridged saga and goes vastly further. If the anime hooks you at all, the webtoon is where the real story lives.

How far behind is the anime compared to the webtoon? A long way. The webtoon has been running since 2010 and is enormous; the anime has adapted only its earliest arcs. Think of the anime as a trailer for the first chapter of a very, very long book — there's a huge amount of story waiting beyond where it stops.

I gave up on the early chapters. Is it worth pushing through? In my experience, yes — that's the single most common Tower of God story, mine included. The art and the world both improve dramatically once you're past the opening floors. If you stalled in the first few episodes, the kindest thing I can tell you is that you quit before it became the thing people love. Give the first proper arc a real chance before you decide.

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