Tower of God season 2

 Tower of God season 2 is the 26 episode continuation of the dark fantasy manhwa of the same name by S.I.U.  The anime aired during the Summer and Fall of 2024.

    The story picks up 6 years after Rachel betrayed Bam on the 2nd floor.  We find him on the 20th floor, facing a new challenge to continue climbing the tower.  The past years have been hard on him and he has been forced to travel without his friends.  After being 'rescued' from death on the 2nd floor he found himself in the grips of a powerful underworld organization known as FUG.  Their sole goal is to destroy those that rule the tower, Jahad and the 10 families.  Much of there effort is down in the shadows but they recruit powerful regulars to propel up the tower as 'slayer candidates', with the intention of having them try to kill Jahad.  Bam finds himself being made their newest slayer candidate.  To hide who he is he has taken on the name of Jyu Viole Grace.  On the 20th floor he reluctantly becomes teamed up with a group of desperate regulars because they remind him of his old friends.

    Khun, not realizing that Rachel betrayed Bam, has been carrying her up the Tower with the help of everyone else.  Along the way some of the core members have split off to tackle other tasks that they have encountered and newer members have been recruited into the fold.  He suspects that Rachel is hiding something and is biding his time before making his move against her.  What he's unaware of is that FUG is keeping an eye on them, using them as a bargaining chip to keep Bam in line.  Rachel herself has her own plans in motion as well, knowing she can't continue to keep Khun under her control for ever.   Ultimate everyone is drawn to a competition being held by the Workshop, the group responsible for technology and weapon development in the Tower.  FUG has its hands in the event as well and have been directing Bam towards it for a very important purpose for their greater goals.

    After the original anime season ended I immediately started up a Webtoons account and read everything that was available for Tower of God in about a week.  I was well aware of the drastic shift in story that took place between the first part and this part and suspected that it would conclude with the resolution of the Workshop battle.  Because it is such a drastic shift in narrative from the first anime a lot of viewers were disappointed in the story.  This portion does a significant amount of world building and pushes the challenges on the floors to the background.  At times it even glosses over those challenges and the groups that are shown find themselves in higher levels after weeks of time have transpired.  It makes sense that someone who really enjoyed the games aspect of the original series becoming disappointment in a more character driven story in this portion.  Getting frustrated with the change and abandoning the story is a waste though as the story gets progressively more interesting as it goes.

    When reading the comic originally I also suffered a bit of disappointment at this point when the story changed.  I enjoyed the comradery between Bam, Khun and Rak and missed that aspect in what was going on.  But I appreciated the world building that started to kick in as the thing that drew me most into this story was the Tower its self and the mysteries around it.  This part of the story isn't the strongest but does a lot of ground work for whats to come, between the second half which they elude to at the end of this series, the Hell Train.  The story gets even better after the Hell Train arc, which we hopefully will see animated, but that's a long ways of!  Tower of God over all is a fantastic story and I hope we keep getting anime adaptations of it.  I really need to get back into the manhwa as I'm way to far behind.  Its a type of story I normally don't have any interest in, but this one spoke to me in a way I couldn't ignore.

The anime was simulcast on Crunchyroll.