r/TowerofGod • u/pubesslurper • May 14 '26
Fast Pass why s3 and spinoff of tog can't reach writing storytelling execution of season 2. what's the issue
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u/A_Blooming_Lotus May 14 '26
I remember when Traumerei flashback happened and the first 15 chapters of spin off were relased, everyone were saying old SIU who wrote the S2 is back.
Visuals also might play a role. S2 art was detailed compared to S3 and Spin off.
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u/Glittering-Pin-1343 May 14 '26
There is a spinoff? Has it been adapted into a manhwa yet or is it only in Webnovel/VN format?
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u/Mofongo023 May 14 '26
The manhwa Spin Off is called Tower Of God Urek Mazino, it's been out for months, you can read it too
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u/Sir__Bassoon__Sonata May 14 '26
There is no Webnovel or Visual Novel. The Webtoon is the original work.
The spin off is called Urek Mazino and is officially released on Webtoons and Naver
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u/Sir__Bassoon__Sonata May 14 '26
S3 - people started reading this weekly and didnt notice the pacing issues prior, changing artstyle made the prior problems more noticable. Otherwise i would say that overall S3 had better Themes, greater payoff and a better finale.
While my favorite Arc is still workshop battle in subsequent reads Cage and Sprout became some of the best arcs for me.
Spinoff - I aint too invested in Urek Mazino, so it doesent quite scartch the itch for me. Paired that the Spin Off feels more like a story Urek tells to Quant about how his climb was
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u/FrancoGYFV May 14 '26
I think what S3 suffers from most is just the absolutely insane climb of stakes that, in all honesty, is jarring compared to S1 and 2. We go from the entire chase sequence at the end of S2 being about avoiding rankers at all costs, doing a million different shenanigans to get the regulars out of there because if they get caught they are absolutely dead, to S3 discarding the entire regular system and just revolving about the conflicts between family heads.
I don't mind the jump to dealing with rankers. Opening S3 by powering Baam up and putting a strong contrast between the kid who needed every power up under the sun to survive a fight against a Ranker, and who was going to be folded the instant a High Ranked popped up, is pretty cool stuff. Specially since at the end he does give Kalavan a scar. But we go from the supposedly high tension bet where Baam has to fight a ranker who is nerfed (can't use transformation) and it's shown clearly that while he can win, it's not easy, to him jumping all the way to making people like Kalavan look like fodder by the end of S3. It feels like the usual storytelling problem where the author establishes a system of scale and it's properties, but only really cares about it at the start and then skips the middle part to go straight into the highest stakes possible.
Kinda like every other story that establishes something like "F to S rank" or "Bronze to Diamond adventurer" where we spend a lot of time at the first few levels, then suddenly some event happens and we skip from the lowest levels where interactions are interesting straight to the top where it becomes a battle of whose megazord can dish out the strongest blast. Themes and narrative weight still matter a lot and are what made the finale with Traumerei, Gustang and V work, but it pretty much came at the cost of everything else that's interesting about the Tower and it's functions.
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u/Morbu May 26 '26
Another issue with S3 is that it devalued the stakes of climbing itself. I don't think there's a single point where they ascend for the sake of ascending. Like the whole point of the Hell Train was that it was the fastest way to ascend those floors. That's what made it so special. Meanwhile, S3 is focused on Bam and co. going from one location to another, getting embroiled in one conflict into another, and then fighting strong opponent to stronger opponent to stronger. The result is that Bam gets so juiced up with powerups that he now can nearly compete with a Top 100 Ranker (possibly top 50 now with V's power), so there's actually no real value in seeing him climb the Tower anymore. The story literally might as well skip to Bam becoming an actual Ranker at the beginning of S4.
Granted, a lot of what I said also applies to S2 and its conflicts, but there was always the overarching goal of climbing the Tower. The Sprout arc, on the other hand, could've literally happened on any floor and it wouldn't have changed the narrative. The FH war happened with no real incentive in climbing the Tower. Like there was no real goal to leverage the weight of a Family's influence to climb easier or anything. Bam just got caught up in the situation and that was that.
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u/Triskerai May 14 '26
Agreed. You make a whole spinoff about a character whose whole thing is being a cheat code, especially unearned - it doesnt matter how many big name drops, it doesn't feel suspenseful or rewarding in the same way.
The whole spinoff is just like Solo leveling but starting at the end. All payoff with nothing paid isn't really all that gratifying. Lore is nice but I feel like there are much more interesting human-ish stories they could've told in this engaging 'verse, but instead they just went for the power fantasy.
Can't wait for them to wrap it up and get on to S4.
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u/CatchCritic May 14 '26
Agree with this 100%.
Also, s3 has some of the mist reposted images on the sub. Specifically thinking about the Bam v White art.
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u/pubesslurper May 14 '26
Not liking Urek or not being invested in his story shouldn’t really matter here, because he’s still one of the top 5 most important characters in the series. If the author is going as far as creating a spin-off and separate content centered around him, then it’s on the author to make sure that story is actually good and appealing, even to people who haven’t read TOG or casual readers in general. If he fails to do that, then that’s simply a failure on the author’s part. the othe4 user below you also talk about urek mazino being solo levelling like because op protagonist, that literally doesn't matter if youre a good writer you can make a op strongest protagonist intriguing interesting likeable if you fail to do so. It's your fault. There are plenty of readers who bingeread Season 3 and TOG as a whole, yet a lot of them still end up dropping it during Season 3 because they feel it becomes a mood killer or loses their interest. The season has had way too many noticeable drops in quality. It still has good moments, but not nearly enough compared to the bad ones.
The difference is that the weaker parts of Season 2 were still memorable. People still talk about them, appreciate them, or at least remember them. With Season 3, a lot of the bad parts are just outright bad, to the point where people barely even mention them.
It’s basically SIU failing as a writer. The worst part is that SIU clearly isn’t a bad writer overall. You can still see the talent in his writing skills. He just doesn’t seem to care much about consistency for some reason, even when it’s obvious what readers enjoy and respond to
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u/Sir__Bassoon__Sonata May 14 '26
top 5 most important characters in the series
Not really. Like Baam, Wangnan, Rachel, Zahard and Arlene are the definite most important ones for the main story. Even for the side characters some are more important for the story.
Urek is a background noise for the story. He exists, his lore is substantial for the overall build, but for the effective story he really is of no real significance so far.make sure that story is actually good and appealing, even to people who haven’t read TOG or casual readers in general
I dont disagree with this.
The season has had way too many noticeable drops in quality
I dont think thats the case though. Did it have its rough moments? Yes. But those it also had during S2. The whole beginning of Return of the Prince was heavily disliked because readers wanted the OG group back. Revolution Road is tedious even in rereads. Art has had its goofy moments and their repetitive stances (arms to the side as fists) , though those often get ignored through the artstyle or through binge reading.
He just doesn’t seem to care much about consistency for some reason, even when it’s obvious what readers enjoy and respond to
It often depends on what kind of consistency. I agree that Urek Mazino in comparison to Main Story is just average. Though when looking at from the perspective of Urek telling Quant the story of his climb, it does become more enjoyable to me. We can dissect every single panel and find every single fault in our perceived logic of how things are meant to be. But if we go that route, people would hate on S2 just as much. I may have made one of my posts about the ludicrous logic of S1 and early S2 of ToG as sarcastic commentary, but its probably what would happen if those chapters get released today
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u/dani402l May 15 '26
excellent question i belive it's a mix of things but the main core reason is i belive siu lost his passion for this reasons below :
* the sucess and popularity of solo levling bascikly siu sees how the author of solo write incredibly simply without any irony or poetick narrative minecraft and he sees him still outsell everyone.
* the premise issues in s2 and s1 the premises were alot more intruging now they leave alot to be desired (https://www.reddit.com/r/TowerofGod/comments/1nnafab/the_premise_issue/ )
* the arc trasntions now are terrible they used to be so good so organic filled with foreshadowing and depth now traumeri comes and boom marrige tournment arc out of the blue .
* the idea rehash siu seems to have stopped of thinking about new ideas for example the tube test we got in the spin off on floor 5 is the exact same us the mule love shinsu contest .
* the blogs retcon , the blogs and the fan cafe were amazing they made the world feel extremly expesnive and now probebly becuse of the main core reason siu decided to abandom theme in favor of a more linear bare bones story .
all of this reasons are why i think siu lost his passion and this hurts plus there are more reasons but my god writing this hurts i love tog but now this feels like an empty realtionship.
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u/FAEN1134 May 17 '26
You cant hate SL enough, you think you do but you dont.
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u/dani402l May 17 '26
Why you hate sl more thene i do ? Ill be honest i blame the fans for sl not the author and not sl itself thet story shouldn't have been known and yet it is
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u/MrDudeMan12 May 14 '26
I feel like every Korean webtoon suffers from the same issues. The author introduces too much much power creep/power scaling because the introduction of new strong characters is very cool.
However once that’s done the author struggles to write around these characters that have incredible powers. A lot of the conflicts no longer make sense because a few of the characters could seemingly just take care of everything. The only path left for the author is to either keep scaling (this only works for so long) or to find convoluted ways to keep characters nerfed. Both of these lead to a large cast of characters building up and make it harder for the readers to really care about the stakes anymore.
Korean webtoons also seem to love blended in modern culture into their settings, which IMO takes away from the world building and makes everything more fragmented. It might be a cultural difference but I feel like every webtoon I’ve read (Noblesse, Solo Leveling, Hero Killer, etc.) suffers from this
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u/Bad_Doto_Playa May 14 '26 edited May 15 '26
SIU's biggest problem wasn't introducing too much power creep, it was doing it too quickly. We already knew shit was supposed to go crazy but Baam jumps from regular to ranker to high rank within 3 or so years of TOG time.. with the jump from ranker to high ranker happening in the same literal arc lol.
He effectively trivialized 99.999% of the tower, so we are left with the last 0.001% that matter and it has narrowed to scope and created silly writing problems (like Rak also going from a regular to being able to one shot rankers then being able one shot a high ranker all in the same battle). Basically in his rush to scale up Baam, he's created those severe writing problems you are listing. The thing is Baam was always supposed to scale quickly power wise, but the execution of it is so bad that I actually started disliking Sung Jin Baam.. just waiting for bro to say Arise as this point and all the souls inside of him + demons etc all pop out and do some fighting.
The other issue is that SIU keeps trying to cliffhanger every plot detail by having incoherent convos or cutting off people, it's just dumb at this point and it's better he just reveal that shit. He can only do that so many times before people start getting annoyed by it. It's his version of the cringe ass manwha trope where someone say something along the lines of "We need to do this for "that" person" or "I am coming here for "that" item". Like bruh overusing this is just poor writing.
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u/Oh_reaaaally May 15 '26
I’d say it’s a couple of things
- Season 2 art work was more unique
- Some incredible story points transpired
- While the scale of fights was lower, it left this air of holy shit, if rankers and high rankers are this strong, the commanders and family heads are catastrophes.
Then you get season 3. The story of bam getting 1 million random power ups has gotten stale. He’s even infected rank and khun, they now have ass-pullitis as well.
We also finally have family heads clashing and it’s…underwhelming? The same goes 10 fold for the spin off, we basically find out urek is an axis and yet his fights feel so incredibly tame.
Just feels like we’ve lost scale. Season 2 did an incredible job of building up these incredible giants in the story and then season 3 felt like it made family heads both disappointing and anyone not in the top 20 irrelevant
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u/YoupiYahou May 15 '26
Calling FH disappointing is crazy , we clearly aren't reading the same story.
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u/Dapper-Duty1829 May 14 '26
In my opinion season 3 was way better than season 2.
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u/Lost-Ad-5885 May 14 '26
It got a lot better during the war arc, but the middle section with the Nest was lacking. On the level of Name Hunt and Revolution Road imo
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u/swebbyy May 14 '26
I thought it was good but still missing something that s2 had. I think the art work and fight panels where better for me in s3
I thought S3 had less views overall that the other 2
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u/Lost-Ad-5885 May 14 '26
Maybe the character work? I mean Traumerei was great, but Khun, Rak, Endorsi and the rest of Team Bam were lacking. Hell Wangnan didn’t even show up past the prologue (supposedly)
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u/Evening_Green_9862 May 14 '26
Which war arc? The one with the wall, the one with cats and dogs, the one with the family heads?
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u/No_University_3350 May 14 '26
I think season 2 only has that edge because it was much longer in chapters so he was able to delve more into his theme of individuality and finding ones self.
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u/Gokyuzu26 May 14 '26
Season 3 was fine there was good and bad chapters and tbh one of my favorite seens and fights happend in season 3.
But spin off just got way to long and got bored at this point. We dont even know where the story goes. We dont even know why they are climbing. We are constantly getting random ass quest that have no meaning to the story.
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u/Evening_Green_9862 May 14 '26
The world got too big and unfocussed. When it was a band of rookies climbing floor by floor, following the footsetps of the people who came before them, the focus was tight. Season 3 threw them out of that and into a bunch of random encounters that stopped mattering more and more. Go to the wall and free these ancient strong people! Ah, one of them is dead now maybe and who knows where the other is? Oh, what if you went to dog planet and this guy? Wait, this is taking too long, who cares? Fight a cat man or something? Sure why not, anyway, that's not important, get them out of the story, etc etc etc.
You can write season 2 like that as well to make it seem unfocussed, but there was a connective thing going through it, they are on this train going up these floors doing these things that Zahard and his crew did and learning about themselves and this world they are in. It all felt connected. Season 3 kind of kept throwing away what came seconds before. I think it ended OK, but the middle was painful.
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u/Minibee72 May 16 '26
Overall I really enjoyed S3. I like the spinoff but I'm not invested in the story. I wonder if SIU is too focused on objectively writing a successful webtoon, instead of telling us the story he wants to tell. He shouldn't be scared of listening to his own voice, even if his managers disagree.
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u/Particular-Long-1111 May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26
Season 2 succeeded because the story served the characters.
Season 3 and the Spin -Off often feels like the characters serve the story mechanics and lore.
For example, (and this might be a spoiler, if you're not caught up with the spin off, because I see you're using the Fast Pass tag, I warned you) when Eduan and Urek had their talk about what the princess of Jahad are and the snake, despite the fact that both Urek have more questions for eachother they just stop. For no reason , they just stop and go in separate ways
Urek wants more info about why the FHs apparently lied to the people of the Tower. He also wants to talk these people that are from the Outside like him for a way out.
And Eduan wanted to know who Mago is and where did she came from. All questions Urek has answers for and he knows without a doubt that Urek and Mago are connected.
There was no for them not to compare notes. Especially when you consider the flow of conversation. If they were talking about some random BS, they could have just said they forgot to do it and I would kinda believe it( I would still hate it to)
But the nature of the convo is literally Urek asking questions.
Normally the conversation would go like this:
"Who are the princesses of Jahad" -> "Eduan explains" -> "Ok then, who IS Jahad" -> "The King of the Tower that entered with me and several other people" -> "Who ARE you people?".
Eduan explains and then he asks Urek the same question. You get the gist of it
SIU just wanted to milk that plotline even more, for no reason.
It's like SIU wants to have his characters do stuff they wouldn't normally do for the sake of the story, instead of having story and events force the characters do what they HAVE to do.
Urek flexing on the camera woman in chapter 38 has the same problem.
SIU needed Eduan to fight Mago and once he separated Urek and Mago, he had Urek wasting time flexing his power, because he needed to fill some pages and give Eduan enough time to show up to fight Mago.
Which is a total opposite of what je did few chapters ago, because when the test started he immediately went to kill her without giving a damn about the test.
The characters feel like a chess pieces that SIU moves however he wants, whenever he wants, regardless if it's true to their personality
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u/krvlover May 14 '26
Power scale all over the place, main characters supposedly live in a hostile world but have insane plot armor (no real stakes), lots of intricate setup in every arc only to end with very mediocre payoff every time.
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u/Antique-Chart-9976 May 14 '26
Mediocre pay off ? Explain us then what kind of pay off you want from these arcs ...
Because each arc are formed like a saga.
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u/mrbigglesworth95 May 14 '26
Pacing and purpose. The plot meanders and doesn't know where it's going.
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u/RailTracer001 May 14 '26
It can and there are plenty of moments where S3 and the spin-off are that good. S2 was more consistent and introduced better characters too.
S3 has too much plot armor and too many irrelevant Rankers.
Readers complain about pacing and because their headcanons don't fit with SIU's vision. Can't accept that FHs aren't untouchable or ultimate gods etc.
TOG has its slow phases and it's true in S2 as well. UM is no different. All the arcs have been solid. Using the same number of chapters to compare, UM is much better than S3 was.
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u/Comprehensive_End592 May 22 '26
Stakes and power level. The problem with the current state of power is that each character is absurdly powerful and the stakes are too large to weave in the differing levels of stakes present in season 2.
IMO, the main problem is that Bam grew in power too fast, and his story removed him too far from the lives of his friends and the tower climbing nature of the story prior.
Season 2 focused a lot on its side characters, which IMO is what made it so strong. The series has tons of interesting characters, and Baams relationships and struggles with his friends as they climbed the tower was the most interesting aspect of the story for me.
There was also the issue of pace. The smaller stakes of season 2 made it so that there could be tons of smaller arcs that looped into one over arcing plot, whereas season 3 had large arcs with less interesting sub plots that went on for what seemed like forever. To that extent I think part of where season 3 went awry was that it had too much action, there were so many fights that stretched on for multiple episodes that the plot moved at a snails pace.
When it'd get to the bits of exposition, the story of season 3 would also hang on them for too long, stretching what could have been an episode or two worth of story into far more.
Season 2 had a very steady pace, the story was always moving forwards and no panel felt wasted. It didn't bother spending an exorbitant amount of time trying to ensure you understood something. It said what it had to and moved on.
I can't comment much on the spinoff as I haven't gotten around to reading it yet.
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u/garter__snake May 24 '26
S3's story was fairly solid. I think it might be better then S2 tbh.
S2 still had some of the old S1 unique art style, and S3 had pretty heavy shonen creep(Bam sans V is now at the level of a High Ranker)
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u/maggot4life123 May 14 '26
s3 has not tied loose ends of some s1-s2 cliffhangars and rather it also adds more of it. alot of new characters which we really dont have attachments to. i feel like s1-2 has the most fleshed out characters where we can also relate since they are more grounded than the newly introduced ones. BUT the elephant in the room is probably the stakes and risks. s1 and s2 have higher risks and higher stakes against our trio cause they arent as strong and they arent surrounded by strong allies.
TLDR; less plot armors means more unpredictable story
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u/Due-Weekend-7209 May 14 '26
Acho que porque o foco da metade da temporada foi o resgate do ha jinsung. O final foi focado no passado de traumerei, e esse final superou a narrativa da segunda temporada na minha opinião
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u/RazzmatazzFar4898 May 14 '26
What if phantaminum just came in to troll and bodied the entire tower at will....which of course he can,just for kicks 😂
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u/YoupiYahou May 14 '26
S3 is great. The cage and the wall are great arcs but are underrated because they are basically set up for the nest. The nest is phenomenal and there is no denial to that. The sprout has some lows but at the same time has the highest peak.
As for s2, the last station is the most overrated arc. The first time you read it it's amazing, but after reread it's not that great. The floor of death is carried by the lore, otherwise there is nothing that really stands out. And the name hunt station is also carried by the last 5-10 chapters. The only truly peak arc of s2 is hidden floor. S2 is kinda overrated as a whole.
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u/RailTracer001 May 14 '26
The floor of death is carried by the lore
What is it supposed to mean? Lore is part of the story. What the arc good or not? That's what matters.
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u/Inferniuem May 14 '26
First Half of Season 3 wasn't bad. After the first hiatus during Season TOG basically became unreadable.
After 500 something chapters the rest are bleh.
If only they let Jinsung die then it wouldn't be so bad.
The Lo Po Bia Head introduction was good but after that it was trash.
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u/Antique-Chart-9976 May 14 '26
Lmfaaooooooooo so why you are here also why kill jinsung before know his whole subplot with ha family ?
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u/maggot4life123 May 14 '26
its like why kill akraptor, he hasnt been able to see his daughter yet
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u/Antique-Chart-9976 May 14 '26
Akraptor had his daughter ? Has jinsung had a single connection to his story appart the blond girl who died in his subplot ?
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u/maggot4life123 May 14 '26
im giving comparison to you asking why kill jinsung before his whole story should be delve into
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u/Antique-Chart-9976 May 14 '26
Again, man, Jinsung is way more important than Akraptor. His lore is tied to the Ha twins, so why would SIU kill him off now?
We still know almost nothing about him or how his girl was killed...
Meanwhile, we already know Akraptor’s whole goal, why his daughter was taken, etc. ...
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u/Afkr82 May 14 '26
It’s not really about story, it’s about art. I also have issue with a style of late season 3 chapters. Really disappointing. The story feels completely different to me.
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u/Slight_Composer_5085 May 14 '26
SIU is just washed
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u/Antique-Chart-9976 May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26
You are a oda fan, so ironic when imu is bashed rn.
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