SIU's way of writing the story

[Sakashi]

I noticed that a lot of people have complaints and usually post them in wrong threads so here. Bring it on, throw everything out here to your heart's content.

 

[DDragneel]

SIU should speed up as bam grows stronger , lol.

 

[Sakashi]

SIU should speed up as bam grows stronger , lol.

I see your point, but still do you think that you will enjoy the series that way? Look at One piece and how slow the story is going and it's one of the best mangas out there. Also, if you take a look at the story that SIU decided to come up with, it's about a tower. A huge tower with 134 floors and every floor is as big as a planet and there are over billion people living in that tower. There are regulars, rankers, high rankers, empires, kingdoms, different kind of monsters, guardians etc. Do you really think that rushing a story like this would be the best way? No way. This would ruin the story and everything he built up. People love Tower of god becuase it is a unique series. Not because of the powerups and fights.

 

[DDragneel]

I see your point, but still do you think that you will enjoy the series that way? Look at One piece and how slow the story is going and it's one of the best mangas out there. Also, if you take a look at the story that SIU decided to come up with, it's about a tower. A huge tower with 134 floors and every floor is as big as a planet and there are over billion people living in that tower. There are regulars, rankers, high rankers, empires, kingdoms, different kind of monsters, guardians etc. Do you really think that rushing a story like this would be the best way? No way. This would ruin the story and everything he built up. People love Tower of god becuase it is a unique series. Not because of the powerups and fights.

Wait no. Well, I am really fine with the story being long but things like dende's story are what should not have been a part of it . It has not even been 3 weeks since I have read the entire manga so I can't help but notice the change in pace of season 3 after the cage arc. The last station arc was soo good and was paced in the right manner but the recent chapters are just slow paced . Probably because he is busy or he wants to think about the story or maybe he just wants to prolong it to earn more money , or maybe it is like the start of season 2 so things are slow after all I can see the war starting soon.

 

[Sakashi]

Wait no. Well, I am really fine with the story being long but things like dende's story are what should not have been a part of it . It has not even been 3 weeks since I have read the entire manga so I can't help but notice the change in pace of season 3 after the cage arc. The last station arc was soo good and was paced in the right manner but the recent chapters are just slow paced . Probably because he is busy or he wants to think about the story or maybe he just wants to prolong it to earn more money , or maybe it is like the start of season 2 so things are slow after all I can see the war starting soon.

With all due respect my friend, you just came to the latest chapter. You can't always expect every arc to be as fast as the previous ones. The story is getting more complex and we are getting more revelations as we progress.

 

[DDragneel]

With all due respect my friend, you just came to the latest chapter. You can't always expect every arc to be as fast as the previous ones. The story is getting more complex and we are getting more revelations as we progress.

Maybe , but dende was not important. Now let me return to dark and wait for next chapter

 

[xGen]

With all due respect my friend, you just came to the latest chapter. You can't always expect every arc to be as fast as the previous ones. The story is getting more complex and we are getting more revelations as we progress.

Complex definetlyy!!
Cant wait to see all slayers, family heads, Enne, Adori, and Luslec in story, oh we can add Enryu there too, but he wont show up he s overpowered

--- Double Post Merged, Dec 1, 2019, Original Post Date: Dec 1, 2019 ---

The award, for so far coolest characther in Tog goes to:

Evankhell

 

[TheLastMartian]

I enjoyed season 1 a lot, the story had a lot of intrigue in it and different characters with different motives. Season two (well the first half) was cool too cause it had different characters with different motives but at one point the story started just being all about Bam which kinda saddens me. I wish we could have some Rachel only chapters soon that show us whats up with her in the time skip and what she is up to, I mean she is still an irregular and important character in the story.

 

[Jammin]

I wouldn't say I have complaints so much as I do questions. There are a few things going on in the story I don't quite get from an armchair critic point of view.

Like, sure I have criticisms about the Cage arc, I don't think it was his best work. It lacked a thematic angle. It was poorly put together plotwise. The character work was kinda iffy; like Leesoo and Koon in particular didn't act like themselves. But poor story arcs happen to most writers once in a while with ongoing stories like this. Sometimes things just don't come together. So I don't really see much point in complaining about that. I'm sure SIU wishes it was better than it turned out to be.

Now this Wall arc I think has been much better put together than the Cage arc was. There are some more interesting elements to it. Characters generally seem more consistent too. And we've actually got themes this time! But it still retains that aura of being something "tacked on" I guess I'd say. And that's what I have questions about.

I guess, I wonder why he's pushed so hard into FUG politicking and setting up a Jinsung rescue. For me at least, it's starting to feel a bit like those two elements are weighing the story down. Like that's all something we need to get "out of the way" before we can get on with the story. Which is odd. Because this is a narrative road he chose to walk down.

So I guess I wonder what it is he's trying to do here? Is he killing time? Like what about these arcs should I be thinking is important? Because that's not obvious to me right now.

 

[Sakashi]

I wouldn't say I have complaints so much as I do questions. There are a few things going on in the story I don't quite get from an armchair critic point of view.

Like, sure I have criticisms about the Cage arc, I don't think it was his best work. It lacked a thematic angle. It was poorly put together plotwise. The character work was kinda iffy; like Leesoo and Koon in particular didn't act like themselves. But poor story arcs happen to most writers once in a while with ongoing stories like this. Sometimes things just don't come together. So I don't really see much point in complaining about that. I'm sure SIU wishes it was better than it turned out to be.

Now this Wall arc I think has been much better put together than the Cage arc was. There are some more interesting elements to it. Characters generally seem more consistent too. And we've actually got themes this time! But it still retains that aura of being something "tacked on" I guess I'd say. And that's what I have questions about.

I guess, I wonder why he's pushed so hard into FUG politicking and setting up a Jinsung rescue. For me at least, it's starting to feel a bit like those two elements are weighing the story down. Like that's all something we need to get "out of the way" before we can get on with the story. Which is odd. Because this is a narrative road he chose to walk down.

So I guess I wonder what it is he's trying to do here? Is he killing time? Like what about these arcs should I be thinking is important? Because that's not obvious to me right now.

Personally, I think that SIU is trying to make Baam grow as a person. Baam has always been the one that wants to save everyone and wants no one to die but this time around SIU is making Baam go through something that will change him and his personality. We saw a glimpse of it when he couldn't save DengDeng and I think more is to come. Jinsung's rescue is going to be a bloody one with a lot of war and people dying and once again we will see Baam going through a personality change. I think the whole thing that SIU is stuck on is to change the softness in Baam.

 

[Jammin]

Personally, I think that SIU is trying to make Baam grow as a person. Baam has always been the one that wants to save everyone and wants no one to die but this time around SIU is making Baam go through something that will change him and his personality. We saw a glimpse of it when he couldn't save DengDeng and I think more is to come. Jinsung's rescue is going to be a bloody one with a lot of war and people dying and once again we will see Baam going through a personality change. I think the whole thing that SIU is stuck on is to change the softness in Baam.

Maybe, but I feel like if that was his goal there would be more efficient and meaningful ways to do that. Like why do that with DengDeng, a newly introduced character who nobody really cared about? It would make more sense to use a long time cast member for that right? Someone we all care about. Then emotionally we'd be going on the same journey Baam is on.

And I don't know why he would do that if his goal was just to "harden" Baam because why would you do all of this if your goal was just to do that? If he wants to develop characters that should be the focus right? Instead he's been actively focusing away from Baam and his friends in order to do all this other complicated stuff.

Even beyond that, the way the Cage arc was done it wasn't really about Baam at all, as I experienced it. It was really Yama's story. Baam was just a part of it. Like he arrived to recruit Yama to help Jinsung. Simple in concept. Ended up roped into playing a game for a mcguffin(the fang). Then before the game can even really get started we got Khel Hellam's plans wrecking all that. Shifting focus to internal power struggles of the Cage focusing on Yama. Which was then shifted to focus on internal power struggles within FUG and Khel Hellam. Which then shifted focus to this wall and Khane and her sister.

It's the plot structure equivalent of a shell game.

I see that as SIU either starting plot lines, realizing he doesn't like them, then switching to plan B & C respectively. Or using this complicated plot to obscure the fact that he's moving Baam steadily up the tower and letting time pass without really doing anything.

Why is he doing all this and not just going to try and rescue Jinsung? The snake ranker guy said he knew where he was already. And Kallavan is clearly not guarding him right now. We could have already started and finished a "rescue Jinsung arc" especially if the goal would be to "harden" Baam. So it seems to me that neither of those things are really what SIU is trying to do with this. I just wish I knew what exactly he is trying to do.

 

[kkck]

My complaint would be that... SIU usually has roughly 2 phases in arcs. First you usually have a phase where SIU spends a number of chapters simply setting things up. SIU can take a lot of time to set something up, sometimes even up to half an entire arc... And then you have a phase were he delivers on all that setup. Take the final station arc.... all the setup chapters it took until bam got out of the station and moved against rankers for instance. Anyways, my issue is when SIU builds on stuff but doesn't deliver on it. for example, take the hidden floor arc. Over the first half of the arc there was a ton of setup. For characters and even the world at large... It is fairly clear that originally SIU intended for the hidden floor arc to be far more focused on tests and levels, monsters and non bam characters were meant to have bigger roles. And then SIU decided to simply focus on the main stuff. I would argue SIU made the right call to some extent but building up on stuff that you aren't going to use or actually can't deliver is a pretty major storytelling flaw.

 

[Jammin]

While I agree that he does that. In the context of an ongoing serial, I kind of like SIU's willingness to improvise when things aren't going quite the way he would like.

Like I didn't really want to finish out the Cage game, honestly. I'd had enough of that one by the point he flipped the game. And in an ongoing series that's kind of a good feature in a writer. All the worst books and story arcs I've ever read have the common thread of an author who just couldn't let go of a bad idea.

I do want to say that as SIU has cycled through plot ideas during these last few arcs, he has gotten to a better place, IMO. Like I think the Wall so far is the best part yet of this season. I'm not sure how good yet but I think clearly did make positive changes. The idea behind this whole coarse of events though is something I wish I understood better.

 

[Shasha23]

Well the only problem i have with SIU is that he is bad at storytelling and how to properly construct the plot, the story has now gotten to the point where SIU really needs to discard this whole stage based storytelling thing he has been doing, it is really stupid to move the plot and build up characters only when Bam is on that stage, every character introduced these days feels hollow since their character are all just a bunch of random last-minute thoughts, its like SIU doesnt take the time to plan out an arc beforehand, he just dives right into it and ends up fcking it up everytime, characters are all empty and its really hard to care about them or their story and the plot jumps over the place like it wasnt thought out beforehand, i mean this arc started with:
getting help from Yama, then SIU was like nah i need to do something, then in the last minute he was like ill introduce Doom, a former slayer who is feared by all dogs, then 5 chapters later SIU was like, nah ill just make him an idiot who cant even do shit to Yama, then SIU was like nah its not good enough let me bring in KheHel and the taake it up a notch or 2, then 5 chapters later KheHelm is turned to a none factor, then SIU was like shit, i really need to do something about this dog arc, then he was like i know, let me have the main cast move to another floor then i can just forget that dogs even exist to begin with.

 

[Jammin]

I definitely disagree that he's bad at storytelling or that his stage based structure doesn't work. We've seen plenty of evidence to the contrary of that, I think.

Fundamentally, the story structure of ToG isn't much different than a lot of other series. Only where ToG has floors series like One Piece has islands. Under the hood what he's doing storytelling wise is much the same. In fact it's pretty easy to draw a parallel between this Baam / Jinsung rescue arc and the Luffy / Ace rescue arc.

And over the coarse of the series he's shown the ability to do a lot of great storytelling. Whether it be the great Rachel betrayal or pretty much everything in the hell train. He's done very good things in this same format. But you can't hit the bullseye every time. And, in my opinion, the Cage arc was just one of those things.

Though I do think that sometimes he undervalues just how important it is to have a consistent, reliable, and versatile supporting cast. It's a mistake he's made in the past and I suspect he made it again here. Baam is a great MC but he does need a couple characters around him to bring the things he lacks. Koon, Androssi, Rak, Yuri. They bring things he just doesn't have. Like you don't really need to harden Baam very much if you've got Koon and Androssi because that's who they are. And watching them guide Baam through darker things would be a great method to develop everybody. He's done just that in the past too.

--- Double Post Merged, Dec 2, 2019, Original Post Date: Dec 2, 2019 ---

In fact, overall, I'd probably rate every arc after the start of the hell train about an 8 or 9 out of 10.

But tastes and opinions do vary. I'm sure for a lot of people it didn't work quite as well as all that did for me.

 

[kkck]

While I agree that he does that. In the context of an ongoing serial, I kind of like SIU's willingness to improvise when things aren't going quite the way he would like.

Like I didn't really want to finish out the Cage game, honestly. I'd had enough of that one by the point he flipped the game. And in an ongoing series that's kind of a good feature in a writer. All the worst books and story arcs I've ever read have the common thread of an author who just couldn't let go of a bad idea.

I do want to say that as SIU has cycled through plot ideas during these last few arcs, he has gotten to a better place, IMO. Like I think the Wall so far is the best part yet of this season. I'm not sure how good yet but I think clearly did make positive changes. The idea behind this whole coarse of events though is something I wish I understood better.

Ah, definitely its a good thing that SIU can see he made a mistake or that something isn't quite panning out and change course. Even that takes a fair bit of skill. But... I think it happens way too often. And plot wise the ones who pay for that are the non bam characters. If you consider the hidden floor arc... I would argue androsi, rak and aguero were being set up to have much larger roles in the stages which SIU never got to. And then he switched course and we never quite got to see any of them getting the development they deserved. We ultimately had to settle for a bit of expositional aguero and androsi backstory. Which was nice but ultimately not quite what they deserved. And going forward this will only get more complicated as for obvious reasons its going to get harder and harder to include bam's friends in the story. At this point it is nearly impossible for rak to provide support for bam and aguero only works so far because his abilities transcend power tiers. Though I'd assume that soon enough aguero won't be able to support bam as a light bearer without enna core. Rak only got a tiny bit of relevance because he got the ancient spear. Androsi's role in the story is either as a fighter or as a discount aguero when it comes to scheming but clearly this is a hard to fulfill role if aguero is around or if she isn't strong enough to do a fisherman's job for bam.

The wall is definitely an improvement over the cage section of the arc. I am of the idea that diving into stuff pertaining to the tower's history and context is always a good idea at least. It's not quite lore per say but its nice to see the story not orbiting entirely around bam.

 

[Shasha23]

I definitely disagree that he's bad at storytelling or that his stage based structure doesn't work. We've seen plenty of evidence to the contrary of that, I think.

Fundamentally, the story structure of ToG isn't much different than a lot of other series. Only where ToG has floors series like One Piece has islands. Under the hood what he's doing storytelling wise is much the same. In fact it's pretty easy to draw a parallel between this Baam / Jinsung rescue arc and the Luffy / Ace rescue arc.

And over the coarse of the series he's shown the ability to do a lot of great storytelling. Whether it be the great Rachel betrayal or pretty much everything in the hell train. He's done very good things in this same format. But you can't hit the bullseye every time. And, in my opinion, the Cage arc was just one of those things.

Though I do think that sometimes he undervalues just how important it is to have a consistent, reliable, and versatile supporting cast. It's a mistake he's made in the past and I suspect he made it again here. Baam is a great MC but he does need a couple characters around him to bring the things he lacks. Koon, Androssi, Rak, Yuri. They bring things he just doesn't have. Like you don't really need to harden Baam very much if you've got Koon and Androssi because that's who they are. And watching them guide Baam through darker things would be a great method to develop everybody. He's done just that in the past too.

The stage-based structure doesnt work anymore, the current season is clear proof of that.

Yes One Piece has islands but unlike ToG that only moves forward in stages when the MC is there, the world of One Piece is always moving forward, Luffy doesnt need to be in an island for that plotline to move forward, the characters in OP are always moving forward and developing so when the time Luffy gets there, the readers have already gotten attached to every character in the arc and know what type of people there are, we dont have to get countless of useless chapter dedicated to pointless character buildup of people who will be useless 4 chapters later like in ToG.

Maybe im just fed up or im missing something but im really trying hard to think of any 1 decent arc from ToG, the majority are decent but ever since the floor of death every arc after that has just been truly awful since there is no build-up or any decent character buildup,

Yes the supporting cast gets decent development but what about the antagonist, after the hell train every antagonist has been trash since they are badly written characters, SIU just thinks just because they are rankers/ high rankers makes them interesting but it doesnt, i have pointed it out before but if SIU doesnt start giving us lore and development on Zahard + 10FH their arc will just be as bad as the cage, they will be introduced then given 3-5 pointless chapters of last-ditch development then get taken out in a stupid was 5 chapters later.
A badly written arc can always be salvaged by well-developed characters, ill give an example of Dressrosa(One Piece) the arc was bad, kept dragging on an on for no good reason and the overall plot of that island was trash and the subplots felt a little over the top just to build up drama, but because the antagonist Doflamingo was build up over time, he was able to carry that arc all by himself because he was a well-written character, as for ToG there are no such antagonists, Kallavan should have been this stories Doffy, he is the gate to a bigger picture but because of bad storytelling his character is just "meh" , at this point 99% of readers just want him to be done in already, this is just proof of a badly written character.

 

[Jammin]

The stage-based structure doesnt work anymore, the current season is clear proof of that.

Yes One Piece has islands but unlike ToG that only moves forward in stages when the MC is there, the world of One Piece is always moving forward, Luffy doesnt need to be in an island for that plotline to move forward, the characters in OP are always moving forward and developing so when the time Luffy gets there, the readers have already gotten attached to every character in the arc and know what type of people there are, we dont have to get countless of useless chapter dedicated to pointless character buildup of people who will be useless 4 chapters later like in ToG.

Maybe im just fed up or im missing something but im really trying hard to think of any 1 decent arc from ToG, the majority are decent but ever since the floor of death every arc after that has just been truly awful since there is no build-up or any decent character buildup,

Yes the supporting cast gets decent development but what about the antagonist, after the hell train every antagonist has been trash since they are badly written characters, SIU just thinks just because they are rankers/ high rankers makes them interesting but it doesnt, i have pointed it out before but if SIU doesnt start giving us lore and development on Zahard + 10FH their arc will just be as bad as the cage, they will be introduced then given 3-5 pointless chapters of last-ditch development then get taken out in a stupid was 5 chapters later.
A badly written arc can always be salvaged by well-developed characters, ill give an example of Dressrosa(One Piece) the arc was bad, kept dragging on an on for no good reason and the overall plot of that island was trash and the subplots felt a little over the top just to build up drama, but because the antagonist Doflamingo was build up over time, he was able to carry that arc all by himself because he was a well-written character, as for ToG there are no such antagonists, Kallavan should have been this stories Doffy, he is the gate to a bigger picture but because of bad storytelling his character is just "meh" , at this point 99% of readers just want him to be done in already, this is just proof of a badly written character.

Hmmm. I guess I just enjoyed a lot of things more than you did. Like I have no complaints about pretty much anything right up until the start of this new season.

So the Cage arc very much feels to me like an isolated thing. Like SIU sort of fumbled this season out of the gate. In hindsight I think he could have handled most parts of the Cage arc and the lead up to it much better than he did. But for me he'd been on such a hot streak up until that point that he's still well above par.

As opposed to like One Piece for me. Where it sometimes seems to me like Oda has 1 good arc out of every 3. Which is a series I still enjoy, I've just learned to accept that for every Enis Lobby we're going to get two Thriller Barks. So far in Tower of God I think there are really only two story arcs that I actually think aren't good. The Workshop and now the Cage. The Wall arc I feel like could be good.

 

[Chefman]

Anyways, my issue is when SIU builds on stuff but doesn't deliver on it. for example, take the hidden floor arc. Over the first half of the arc there was a ton of setup. For characters and even the world at large... It is fairly clear that originally SIU intended for the hidden floor arc to be far more focused on tests and levels, monsters and non bam characters were meant to have bigger roles. And then SIU decided to simply focus on the main stuff. I would argue SIU made the right call to some extent but building up on stuff that you aren't going to use or actually can't deliver is a pretty major storytelling flaw.

This is also my gripe with SIU. I'll take it even further by pointing out that he has steered the entire fandom to rely on headcanon on almost everything that has to do with this story. The ranking system in particular is always a topic that will bring about a fuss. I'm not convinced that the majority of the community is aware that the rankings, at least currently, are not soley based on strength. Influence, inactivity, positions, weapons, and feats are all considered as well.

In addition to the rankings, SIU has left a lot up to the readers when it comes to contracts, floor rules, bloodlines, character ages, and now even time eras. This to me is very distracting when trying to focus on the actual storyline. I really miss when he used to post very informative blogs. The lore he created is my favorite part in Tower of God. Hopefully he goes back to that.

 

[kkck]

This is also my gripe with SIU. I'll take it even further by pointing out that he has steered the entire fandom to rely on headcanon on almost everything that has to do with this story. The ranking system in particular is always a topic that will bring about a fuss. I'm not convinced that the majority of the community is aware that the rankings, at least currently, are not soley based on strength. Influence, inactivity, positions, weapons, and feats are all considered as well.

In addition to the rankings, SIU has left a lot up to the readers when it comes to contracts, floor rules, bloodlines, character ages, and now even time eras. This to me is very distracting when trying to focus on the actual storyline. I really miss when he used to post very informative blogs. The lore he created is my favorite part in Tower of God. Hopefully he goes back to that.

My point was more about specific arcs than what you are mentioning here. Lore wise I don't think there is anything that particularly stands out as being missing from the story. I suppose it is fair to point out that imort might have been heavily retconned.

As for the bit you mention about the community... I'd fault the community over SIU.

It is true that a bunch of that stuff has been left very open ended and perhaps this late in the game its even a fault on SIU's end. though I don't particularly think it hurts the story too much. The eras bit I also feel doesn't hurt the story all that much either. I've accepted that it is entirely possible that the empire has been around for millions of in story years for quite some time now... I don't expect a particularly precise timeline any time soon.

I also miss the times from older chapters when blogposts had more than just current context but rather also lore bits. I do have to point out that adding stuff to the lore like that is insanely difficult as it heavily restrains what SIU can do unless he is willing to retcon it. He already changed the canine folk and yama from the lore a fair bit... considering the absence of imort and the absence of blood fusion at this stage in the arc.