- Aug 1, 2012
- 478
- 188
My boy deku
The Official Anime & Manga Thread Vol: 三
Thierry Henry
formerly louislagerfeld
- Jun 29, 2012
- 14,414
- 14,134
Just finished catching up to Gundam IBO...that boy Mikazuki really bout that life 
movie was trash
- Jul 18, 2013
- 32,888
- 81,715
Mineta
- Dec 4, 2005
- 10,933
- 4,861
MY HERO ACADEMIA
WHEN IS THE ANIME RETURNING?
WHEN IS THE ANIME RETURNING?
- Jan 11, 2013
- 18,115
- 11,770
yea i didnt see how they were going to do that tho cuz what could pere really beat julian at?
is it safe to julian is about half of what noya is now?
cuz julian usually goes up to about heavenly demon aura 7 or 8
and noya busts out 15 like its nothing
i think janet and the prince gonna eventually come to the desert too
i think pere just gonna have to join red storm too and bring the regular desert warriors too
- Oct 15, 2013
- 1,678
- 821
Just got caught up on drifters and I'm now a believer in the hype same with 91 days
- Mar 28, 2009
- 18,488
- 6,333
Naruto inspired cover art for some U.K. Rapper name Dave
It's lit
- Sep 24, 2013
- 8,726
- 3,487
Just finished catching up to Gundam IBO...that boy Mikazuki really bout that life
movie was trash
Guess i'm in for a bad time next week then
- Oct 13, 2001
- 160,979
- 142,904
Grave of the Fireflies (198
- IMDb http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095327/
A young boy and his little sister struggle to survive in Japan during World War II.
- IMDb http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095327/A young boy and his little sister struggle to survive in Japan during World War II.
- Mar 3, 2012
- 23,082
- 8,730
I still havent been bold enough to watch
- Mar 28, 2009
- 18,488
- 6,333
Yeah looks horrifying TBH
- Jul 18, 2013
- 32,888
- 81,715
I told yall GOTF aint no joke
- Sep 25, 2013
- 1,503
- 515
Tower of God
Also, for those interested here's a really good character analysis on Baam- the MC of Tower of God, I found on reddit. Might make some of you who haven't started reading it yet, want to pick it up or if you do read it, you'll probably find it interesting.
That was a great chapter.
Yuri vs Karaka looks dope. Is this the first high ranker fight we'll see? I wouldn't be surprised of Ha Jinsung shows up and stops it. Although, it would be very interesting if Yuri gets significantly injured or something during this fight.
The Yuri/Manshenny bet seems interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if it involved Baam and Maria. I also wouldn't be surprised if Repellista is involved. I wonder if Evan's ability as a guide is affected by being around Baam and it's led Yuri to a flow she can't influence like she normally does.
I thought it was interesting that for a second Baam actually wanted to be a God. The name-hunt station was somewhat an introduction to Baam acting as God, with pure intent, however it wasn't super far off from how Haoquin acted as a God when he was a slayer, except Hoaquin had negative intent. I have no doubt Koon knows exactly what Baam is thinking, as he understands people better than anyone else really.
I also noticed that every time Baam wants to ask Koon what's on his mind he gets interrupted. I feel like it may come back to bite him. Probably when Maria reenters the story, which means hard choices and development for Koon.
I find Androssi to be kind of annoying as a character. But it could be interesting to see her go to the floor of death and maybe realize that Baam has surpassed her. However, how will Lee's team handle things if she leaves?
It'll be interesting which way things go. Still hoping SIU makes the end of Season 2 have some big twists like the end of season 1 did, and continues raising the stakes.
Yuri vs Karaka looks dope. Is this the first high ranker fight we'll see? I wouldn't be surprised of Ha Jinsung shows up and stops it. Although, it would be very interesting if Yuri gets significantly injured or something during this fight.
The Yuri/Manshenny bet seems interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if it involved Baam and Maria. I also wouldn't be surprised if Repellista is involved. I wonder if Evan's ability as a guide is affected by being around Baam and it's led Yuri to a flow she can't influence like she normally does.
I thought it was interesting that for a second Baam actually wanted to be a God. The name-hunt station was somewhat an introduction to Baam acting as God, with pure intent, however it wasn't super far off from how Haoquin acted as a God when he was a slayer, except Hoaquin had negative intent. I have no doubt Koon knows exactly what Baam is thinking, as he understands people better than anyone else really.
I also noticed that every time Baam wants to ask Koon what's on his mind he gets interrupted. I feel like it may come back to bite him. Probably when Maria reenters the story, which means hard choices and development for Koon.
I find Androssi to be kind of annoying as a character. But it could be interesting to see her go to the floor of death and maybe realize that Baam has surpassed her. However, how will Lee's team handle things if she leaves?
It'll be interesting which way things go. Still hoping SIU makes the end of Season 2 have some big twists like the end of season 1 did, and continues raising the stakes.
Baam
It is without a doubt the case that Baam is the most interesting character in all of ToG, when considering just how well-written and unique he is.
Many could argue Khun and Rachel as another two extremely interesting characters, however, they have fairly “normal” character narratives. The lost man looking to find light again and a girl filled with jealousy. These are good narratives, but they pale in comparison to Baam’s main narrative: the case study of “your environment shapes what you become”.
In a sense, Baam is such an amazing character, because the entire story of Tower of God was clearly created to study his case. A case that is fairly rarely studied in literature and requires EXTREMELY specific parameters to make possible. SIU has already shown in many instances that ToG is essentially a tool for him to tell specific character stories. He has never put much emphasis on the small details(environment wise) and has created a universe where extremely specific cases can be explored while still making sense in said universe. Abstraction is the key word here. Something that light novels tend to lack EXTREMELY. (The absolute must-mention exceptions being Monogatari and HakoMari, which anyone interested in character-driven stories MUST READ). So what exactly is this case?
What happens when you separate a newborn from all of society, all it’s laws, all it’s paradigms and then, once the newborn has developed enough to make his own decisions, release him back into this society. The concept being studied here is that there is no such thing as “natural talent” or "preferences", but everything depends on the environment of the individual while growing up. As an example, a son of a CEO is likely to get the highest quality education possible and as such, develop at a much more rapid and correct way than someone who has not had access to such education. The talent portion of this narrative is explored in ToG extensively. Another, more interesting way to look at it is that if you were to take a person and not expose him to any of the world’s evil, he would inherently never develop evil. This goes very very far back and I don’t have the education to discuss at further length the entire concept of inherent evil so that’s as far as I will go in that.
What makes Baam’s case unique in this study is that he is isolated from ALL paradigms of society. Not just concepts of good or evil, but also base concepts like skills, education and so forth. He is basically not given any “input” and as such, cannot “configure” himself into some sort of state (programming terms, ask in the comments if you want me to clarify on this part).
And on top of all that, once this “white-canvas” person is brought back into society to watch the interaction, he also is given an ADVANTAGE over all of society. This is possibly the most interesting part, the fact that he, in a sense, is THE natural talent. SIU plays with the concept of “you get shaped by your environment” to create his personality, but at the same time, introduces the concept of talent, which, by the theory, should not be possible.
The key here is that Baam likely doesn’t have any specific talent, but, rather, is simply “given” the advantage by the environment(tower). Here you can branch out into any number of theories as to what the origin of Baam’s power is. Maybe the Tower, as an entity, decided to “give” him access to power or maybe he was created to have it from the start. Or maybe his lack of exposure to the environment simply made him have an “unbroken” bond with Shinsoo and that spiraled into everything else. Which is it, is not the point though. The point is that he starts out with a huge advantage over society, while being fundamentally different from it. What does he do?
So at this point, we would be leaving the “cave” and entering the Tower. Almost every reader should now be screaming – BUT WHAT ABOUT RACHEL? And this is where it gets REALLY interesting.
Essentially, Rachel, as a character, has multiple purposes and one of these, that often gets overlooked, is that she gave Baam some form of teaching into how humans behave. If there was no Rachel and Baam was brought into the tower, he would essentially be a monkey. Zero education. It is just the case that we cannot have an ENTIRELY clean-slate character. It simply wouldn’t be able to interact with society then. We need to give said character a sort of “interface” or “connection” with society. Rachel acts as this interface. If ToG had a different setting, a computer could have done the same, however, here is the key detail : by having another human teach our character, we introduce a SLIGHT bit of corruption in him. We give him a SLIGHT configuration. Make him be a white canvas, but with one small brush of paint on a corner. A sort of “pre-configuration”.
Something to push him in a direction. Those who study artificial intelligence might now start thinking about machine learning. The idea behind machine learning is that you can give it an input, but you also need to give it some sort of “push” in a direction so it would know what exactly to learn. Some sort of “score” or “goal”.
Rachel is exactly that sort of push. She is a slight corruption in Baam that makes him move in a certain direction that those who created him, would want him to move in.
Think back to every single moment when Baam as a character felt negative. Here’s a hint – every single one involved Rachel in some form. That’s the beauty of it. We do not have a perfect case study of the perfect AI, because it would lead to nothing. It is because he has this negative aspect that he is able to move forward. That he moves out of the cave.
In one way, Baam is really the human analogy of artificial intelligence based on machine learning. Grand, is it not?
This concludes Part 1 of my analysis on Baam. This is a great stopping point, since I essentially only spoke about Chapter 0 of the webtoon taken in the context of the entire story so far. If I were to write more, I would need to start rereading every chapter for sources. It would be the start of analyzing his interactions with other characters.
It is without a doubt the case that Baam is the most interesting character in all of ToG, when considering just how well-written and unique he is.
Many could argue Khun and Rachel as another two extremely interesting characters, however, they have fairly “normal” character narratives. The lost man looking to find light again and a girl filled with jealousy. These are good narratives, but they pale in comparison to Baam’s main narrative: the case study of “your environment shapes what you become”.
In a sense, Baam is such an amazing character, because the entire story of Tower of God was clearly created to study his case. A case that is fairly rarely studied in literature and requires EXTREMELY specific parameters to make possible. SIU has already shown in many instances that ToG is essentially a tool for him to tell specific character stories. He has never put much emphasis on the small details(environment wise) and has created a universe where extremely specific cases can be explored while still making sense in said universe. Abstraction is the key word here. Something that light novels tend to lack EXTREMELY. (The absolute must-mention exceptions being Monogatari and HakoMari, which anyone interested in character-driven stories MUST READ). So what exactly is this case?
What happens when you separate a newborn from all of society, all it’s laws, all it’s paradigms and then, once the newborn has developed enough to make his own decisions, release him back into this society. The concept being studied here is that there is no such thing as “natural talent” or "preferences", but everything depends on the environment of the individual while growing up. As an example, a son of a CEO is likely to get the highest quality education possible and as such, develop at a much more rapid and correct way than someone who has not had access to such education. The talent portion of this narrative is explored in ToG extensively. Another, more interesting way to look at it is that if you were to take a person and not expose him to any of the world’s evil, he would inherently never develop evil. This goes very very far back and I don’t have the education to discuss at further length the entire concept of inherent evil so that’s as far as I will go in that.
What makes Baam’s case unique in this study is that he is isolated from ALL paradigms of society. Not just concepts of good or evil, but also base concepts like skills, education and so forth. He is basically not given any “input” and as such, cannot “configure” himself into some sort of state (programming terms, ask in the comments if you want me to clarify on this part).
And on top of all that, once this “white-canvas” person is brought back into society to watch the interaction, he also is given an ADVANTAGE over all of society. This is possibly the most interesting part, the fact that he, in a sense, is THE natural talent. SIU plays with the concept of “you get shaped by your environment” to create his personality, but at the same time, introduces the concept of talent, which, by the theory, should not be possible.
The key here is that Baam likely doesn’t have any specific talent, but, rather, is simply “given” the advantage by the environment(tower). Here you can branch out into any number of theories as to what the origin of Baam’s power is. Maybe the Tower, as an entity, decided to “give” him access to power or maybe he was created to have it from the start. Or maybe his lack of exposure to the environment simply made him have an “unbroken” bond with Shinsoo and that spiraled into everything else. Which is it, is not the point though. The point is that he starts out with a huge advantage over society, while being fundamentally different from it. What does he do?
So at this point, we would be leaving the “cave” and entering the Tower. Almost every reader should now be screaming – BUT WHAT ABOUT RACHEL? And this is where it gets REALLY interesting.
Essentially, Rachel, as a character, has multiple purposes and one of these, that often gets overlooked, is that she gave Baam some form of teaching into how humans behave. If there was no Rachel and Baam was brought into the tower, he would essentially be a monkey. Zero education. It is just the case that we cannot have an ENTIRELY clean-slate character. It simply wouldn’t be able to interact with society then. We need to give said character a sort of “interface” or “connection” with society. Rachel acts as this interface. If ToG had a different setting, a computer could have done the same, however, here is the key detail : by having another human teach our character, we introduce a SLIGHT bit of corruption in him. We give him a SLIGHT configuration. Make him be a white canvas, but with one small brush of paint on a corner. A sort of “pre-configuration”.
Something to push him in a direction. Those who study artificial intelligence might now start thinking about machine learning. The idea behind machine learning is that you can give it an input, but you also need to give it some sort of “push” in a direction so it would know what exactly to learn. Some sort of “score” or “goal”.
Rachel is exactly that sort of push. She is a slight corruption in Baam that makes him move in a certain direction that those who created him, would want him to move in.
Think back to every single moment when Baam as a character felt negative. Here’s a hint – every single one involved Rachel in some form. That’s the beauty of it. We do not have a perfect case study of the perfect AI, because it would lead to nothing. It is because he has this negative aspect that he is able to move forward. That he moves out of the cave.
In one way, Baam is really the human analogy of artificial intelligence based on machine learning. Grand, is it not?
This concludes Part 1 of my analysis on Baam. This is a great stopping point, since I essentially only spoke about Chapter 0 of the webtoon taken in the context of the entire story so far. If I were to write more, I would need to start rereading every chapter for sources. It would be the start of analyzing his interactions with other characters.
- Jul 18, 2013
- 32,888
- 81,715
Bruh Hiro Mashima is just trolling now. An AoE magic that only affects non virgins?
- Jan 17, 2009
- 35,088
- 47,218
Next arc of Kingdom bouta be nuts
Yall sleeping if you ain reading
Yall sleeping if you ain reading
- Jul 20, 2004
- 4,266
- 400
Tower of God really picked up from where I stopped reading. Glad I picked it back up.
- Sep 25, 2013
- 1,503
- 515
Where did you stop previously?
- Jul 18, 2013
- 32,888
- 81,715
It's tough to say where julian is on the noya scale simply cuz we've yet to see noya really get tested. He treats everything like a jokeyea i didnt see how they were going to do that tho cuz what could pere really beat julian at?
is it safe to julian is about half of what noya is now?
cuz julian usually goes up to about heavenly demon aura 7 or 8
and noya busts out 15 like its nothing
i think janet and the prince gonna eventually come to the desert too
i think pere just gonna have to join red storm too and bring the regular desert warriors too
Dude out here gambling away rare relics and **** on a coin toss and then gets too excited and destroys the coin
- Jul 20, 2004
- 4,266
- 400
I stopped in the middle of Bam vs Yura Ha in that game.
- Sep 25, 2013
- 1,503
- 515
Yeah, I think a lot of people stopped around that time. I think that was a low point in the serious. SIU took a long break to rest his wrist, and didn't start getting back into a groove until once the hell train got going and Hoaquin showed up it seemed.
He kept things really tight with the name hunt station arc though, so with season 2 probably reaching the climax, I'm hoping for big things.
- Jul 18, 2013
- 32,888
- 81,715
Hey leb
Can Yuri even go all out? As a high level ranker she's not supposed in these kinds of places. If she goes too hard and gets found out won't it be bad for her? Although I guess she has no choice.
- Sep 25, 2013
- 1,503
- 515
Good question. I'd assume that if she's limited, Karaka would be as well due to the same rules,as long as the limits come from the floor guardian and not Zahard.
Usually rankers are limited in regular districts and are punished for interfering there, and don't due to some type of consequence. Assuming that the consequences come from Zahard and not the Guardians, then I think they'd let it slide due to her fighting,
1) the situation being with another high ranker and not regulars
2) Eliminating a FUG slayer
3) Her being a rising star princess
Also, there's not a test going on, so there's probably more leeway. She was able to use her power on floor 2 during the test because the guardian allowed it to an extent. Then on the Hell Train she used a decent amount to kill Pedro and was in an area she definitely wasn't supposed to be. Also we saw RED try to interfere in a regular area due to a threat to Zahard, which this qualifies as. I think they both can probably go all out as long as they're willing to disregard the rules and deal with the consequences later.
We'll probably have to see how SIU plays it.
Usually rankers are limited in regular districts and are punished for interfering there, and don't due to some type of consequence. Assuming that the consequences come from Zahard and not the Guardians, then I think they'd let it slide due to her fighting,
1) the situation being with another high ranker and not regulars
2) Eliminating a FUG slayer
3) Her being a rising star princess
Also, there's not a test going on, so there's probably more leeway. She was able to use her power on floor 2 during the test because the guardian allowed it to an extent. Then on the Hell Train she used a decent amount to kill Pedro and was in an area she definitely wasn't supposed to be. Also we saw RED try to interfere in a regular area due to a threat to Zahard, which this qualifies as. I think they both can probably go all out as long as they're willing to disregard the rules and deal with the consequences later.
We'll probably have to see how SIU plays it.
- Oct 13, 2001
- 160,979
- 142,904
Watched this in a Japanese Cinema class, there wasn't one dry eye in that lecture hall. No bull
- Jul 18, 2013
- 32,888
- 81,715
Anybody that didn't cry deserved to be side eyed. Cant trust someone that doesnt get emotional while watching it.
