It’s finally Fall 2024 and I decided to start trying to write individual episode reviews again. We’ll begin with Tower of God Season 2 episode 13, which is titled, “Archimedes.” That’s the name of a huge airship that the characters see toward the end of the episode. Anyway, let me recap what happened and offer my thoughts on this episode as a whole.
At the start of the episode, Khun declares that he will join Wangnan’s team and lead them to victory in the workshop battle. If they win, they will be able to get Viole back on their team. Wangnan’s companions aren’t altogether sure about this, and Wangnan himself is initially opposed to the idea. He understands that teaming up with Khun will give him the best chance of winning, but he doesn’t want to “just roll over” and admit weakness. After snapping at his teammates, Wangnan goes off to sulk alone.
Khun finds Wangnan near the vending machine and has a talk with him. It becomes clear that Khun is confident he will win. Even with a weaker team like this one, he will surely lead them to victory. Seeing this, Wangnan is able to shake off his shame and frustration at his perceived weakness. He shakes Khun’s hand and agrees to team up.
For the next month, Khun puts the team through hellish training to build their strength. At times, he grows frustrated with them, since they are less skilled than people he’s used to working with. Dan helps Khun stay patient with the trainees. Speaking of Dan, he’s recovering quickly, which is great to see. It was also cute to watch Miseng and Prince work on their training together. Everyone is trying their hardest to improve, including Yihwa. She still can’t control her flames very well, but I hope she has a breakthrough soon.
Elsewhere, Viole is training for the workshop battle using intense reddish-black energy. It’s apparently called the power of thorn, and it was given to him by FUG. Speaking of FUG, they sent a strange person named Reflejo to “serve” Viole. Reflejo resembles a tall man with dark dreadlocks and a creepy metallic mask. It’s unclear if he’s genuinely a loyal servant to Viole or if he’s more of an observer to monitor Viole and keep him under control.
If nothing else, we know that Reflejo will obey direct orders from Viole, even when he thinks it might be a bad idea. Ran and Novick were being kept with shackles around their ankles that made movement difficult. Viole demanded their release, and Reflejo reluctantly obeyed. However, he did also use some kind of ability to psychologically terrify Novick, warning him that trouble won’t be tolerated.
There is a short scene where Kang wakes up, surprised to be alive. Cassano enters the room, and instead of explaining why he impaled his own brother, he simply says “Sophia is waiting for us.” I suspect that FUG knows the location of Sophia and is forcing Cassano to work for them in order to get that information. But that’s speculation. Either way, I’m glad this plot with the brothers is continuing. It’s one of my favorite aspects of season 2 so far.
Sometime around the middle of the episode, there’s a scene with that long-haired dude with glasses we’ve seen once before. We saw him in the episode about Emily, when he was chatting with her. In this scene, he’s sitting and smoking while conversing with someone over a radio. I still don’t know who this person is, who he’s talking to, or what they were talking about. However, given the remark about machines becoming too human, I suspect it might have something to do with Emily and/or Workshop’s experiments.
On the day of the Workshop battle, Khun’s team approaches the Archimedes airship. Shibisu’s team and Rak Wraithraiser are also heading to the Workshop battle. The last scene in the episode shows Viole at a high vantage point overlooking a cityscape at night. I assume it’s the night before the Workshop battle. He sees someone being chased through the streets. I’m not sure if the person being chased is one of his new teammates or someone random. The episode ends with this pseudo-cliffhanger.
This episode, like most installments in this season so far, was pretty good in terms of audio and visuals. The music and general soundscape are both nice. There were no exciting action sequences, but I never get tired of these colorful character designs. Besides audio-visual quality, however, this episode wasn’t very enjoyable. It suffers from the same problems as most installments: 1) boring and slow plot; 2) too many characters to remember; and 3) lack of creative dialogue or character interactions.
Despite my complaints, I have the free time to keep watching, so I will continue. I’m not sure if I will write a full review of every episode after this. We’ll see what I have motivation for in the upcoming Fall months. This episode gets a score of 6/10.
~Thanks for reading~
Note: If you would like to see my reviews for episodes 1-12, see the links below.
Summer 2024 Episode Reviews Week 1
Summer 2024 Episode Reviews Week 2
Summer 2024 Episode Reviews Week 3
Summer 2024 Episode Reviews Week 4
Summer 2024 Episode Reviews Week 5
Summer 2024 Episode Reviews Week 6
Summer 2024 Episode Reviews Week 7
Summer 2024 Episode Reviews Week 8
Summer 2024 Episode Reviews Week 9
Summer 2024 Episode Reviews Week 10
Anime Rants 
Yeah, I definitely think the first season was stronger than the second one. You’re right, there’s way too many characters making each character harder to really care about. Also the long time skips is making it harder for me to really connect with the characters. The series starts out with everyone on Viole’s team meeting and then Poof! two years pass and they are headed to the workshop competition. They are all friends now, and all their issues have been ironed out, but we didn’t get to see any of that.
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