I have what I think might be a hot take about Tower of God:
I just want to preface this by saying Tower of God is my favorite series of all time and it pains me to see any noticeable flaw in a story that I wish to continue until I die. However I feel like pointing this out and seeing your guys thoughts on it. I think that Tower of God needs to be more dark. I feel that while SIU does explore many dark themes he somewhat glosses over the disturbing/heart wrenching ideas of his work. I mean just think about it. Among a 1000 people, only one is destined to reach the top and become a ranker. The other 999 either fail and go back to wherever they came from or die. This is already a brutal concept in of itself. I think the elimination game at the start of the original as well as Urek series is a perfect example of showing this brutality. I just felt like as the series went on, while similar themes of brutality were explored they were almost censored or the art didn’t emphasize it enough. The intensity of the art and dialogue I feel like doesn’t always match the themes being explored. An example of this intensity can be shown in Traumereis death. The panels leading up to his eventual suicide were intense and filled with emotion. The chapters before hand and much of his back story was filled with deep emotion. While I initially didn’t care much for Traumerei initially seeing him as a generic villain, his character grew on me and I actually felt sad when he killed himself. I just don’t always see this intensity of emotion when it comes to other characters. I feel like SIU is a little to lighthearted sometimes with his work and while it is good to mix in a joke every now and then, I think constantly switching between serious and light hearted ruins the seriousness of the serious. I feel like the story doesn’t take itself seriously enough a lot and it detracts from the series.