After a mediocre start to this series, this episode was a vast improvement. I felt like the pacing was much better this time around and we really started to get to learn some things about the tower and their world, while also being introduced to more characters and getting to know them. I’m more intrigued with this whole tower thing, and while I’m not super hooked just yet, I came out of this more positive than before.
Rak is definitely the best character so far, he’s absolutely hilarious. He’s strong and huge and has a cool design, but he’s also a dork and his reactions are priceless. You got this giant lizard/gator man and he absolutely loses his mind over chocolate, isn’t that amazing? I love him. I’m actually liking this new trio we got going on, because honestly if the show continued to just focus on Bam by himself it wouldn’t nearly be as interesting. Having Khun and Rak with him makes things more entertaining, and they all play against each other pretty well. Bam, the naive baby one, Khun the cool mysterious one, and Rak the loud and brash one. Again, Rak just makes me laugh because he looks so weird standing beside two bishie boys. BIG MAN and two cute boys, it’s hilarious.
While I already love Rak, I’m not sure what to make of Khun. He’s super mysterious and the Test Administrator already put a target on him for us by telling Bam to not get too close to him, so I wonder what his deal is. I mean, he already seemed fishy when he went back to Bam because he simply had the Black March, so he probably wants his power for something. We’ll have to see. It’s obvious that he’ll the brains of the group, with Rak being the brawn. And Bam…I guess the other brawn, but mostly the one being confused and just following along. He’s good as the audience surrogate, because since he doesn’t really know anything, Khun will just explain it all to him (and for us). It’ll be fun to see them interact more within the tests, and I’ll keep my eye on Khun.
I’m getting huge Hunter x Hunter vibes from all this with all these tests, it really reminds me of the Hunter Exam so I’m guessing the webtoon author was really inspired by it. The tests so far have been pretty standard stuff with the battle royale ending pretty soon, but we at least got to see some of the strength of the other competitors and what they can do. The next test after was so simple with finding allies, but the way Khun and Bam made Rak theirs was pretty funny. And the way Bam stood up to him was at least something to note. The test with the Shinsu was straightforward but that moment was mostly used for some exposition between Bam and the Test Administrator, Lero-Ro.
I’m glad we got that exposition since it’s giving me a better idea of what kind of world they live in. There’s three parts of this tower: the Outer Tower, the residential district. So in this normal, everyone is born and raised at the tower, which means that Bam and Rachel may be special since it doesn’t look like they were. Well, Bam for sure since we still don’t know much about Rachel. There’s the Inner Tower where they all are, and there’s an area in the middle. Headon chooses the people that can climb the tower, but there are Irregulars like Bam who can also take part. Lero-Ro didn’t quite finish his explanation on that, but we still got quite a bit of info. It seems that Bam is special in more ways than we thought, and yet there’s still much more we don’t know yet. It seems that climbing this tower is such a big deal, as shown by that one test-goer with the gun saying he left everything behind just for this. We still don’t quite know what’s going on with this tower and why people would stake their lives on it. Yes, the person gets a wish but there has to be more to it? I’m intrigued and interested in learning more about it.
The first episode didn’t set off the best impression but this episode helped a lot. I wouldn’t say this anime lives up to the hype fans were gushing about, but it’s at least caught my attention now. It had a slow start but it’s starting to get interesting and I’m looking forward to it this time. Also I swear, Kenjiro Tsuda is literally in every anime. I feel like he’s showing up in more things I’m watching! My Hero Academia, Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun, Idolish7 Second Beat, this…I wanted to start watching ID: Invaded and…ah.
