English Dub Season Review: The God of High School Season One

 

Overview:

The God of High School Tournament is a famous martial arts competition that’s designed to find the strongest fighter in South Korea, and then the whole world, and grant them any wish that they desire upon victory. This tournament assembles an eager group of fighters, all of who are driven by something different. Jin Mori, a 17 year-old, joins the tournament to be reunited with his grandfather, but he quickly forms a friendship with Han Daewi and Yoo Mira. The trio comprise a formidable team, but they soon realize that there are much stronger fighters that they’re about to face.

As the God of High School Tournament begins, a more secretive mission to locate the identity of a special “Key” is also underway. These mysterious power players and their understanding of humanity’s connection to a Godly ability known as “charyeok” also plays a vital role in the tournament and who will ultimately take home the prize.

Our Take:

One of the most important things in a tournament anime series is to make sure that there are consistently entertaining fights and a wide array of characters to fill them out. The God of High School technically succeeds in those respects, but it also so often works counter-intuitively to the standards of tournament or shonen anime. It’s a series that wants to show off how cool it is, but then simultaneously act aloof. It’s a mix of contradictions that often leads to some amazing action sequences and sprawling visuals, but can also feel like a tedious test of one’s patience.

The God of High School has a very simple structure, which is what makes its schizophrenic tendencies all the more of a surprise. The plot is very straightforward, yet the anime juxtaposes its tournament fights with cryptic attempts at world-building and odd character lessons. There’s so much that happens in every episode that even when a character faces punishment there’s usually a reversal for it by the end of the episode. The God of High School is always thinking about the next big conflict, which guarantees that the action keeps coming, but this exhausting pace also diminishes the impact of events when so much gets to happen.

Characterization is another tricky area for the series. There’s a lot of time devoted to not just Mori, Daewi, and Mira, but also the opposing teams that the face, the administrators behind the God of High School Tournament, and even the villains. It becomes part of the show’s structure to feature indulgent flashbacks that shine a light on everyone’s painful pasts. It’s obviously appreciated that The God of High School wants to flesh out its characters, but it’s just disappointing that so many of them still feel like ciphers by the end of the season.

It’s satisfying when these characters win and work together as a team, but there’s not a ton of development from the point that they’re introduced. Strangely, some of the season’s best character work involves one-off opponents from other teams or the work that’s done on Park Ilpyo, who’s ostensibly positioned as Mori’s rival. It’s not impossible for these characters to gain depth, but it’s just puzzling to see who The God of High School makes its priority.

The God of High School exhibits growing pains with its narrative and characters, but one of the constant highlights through the entire season is the anime’s animation and the look that’s brought to the fights. Combat is fundamental in The God of High School and so it’s important that there’s a studio that can properly bring these thrilling showdowns to life in a way that’s not just visually interesting, but also diverse. MAPPA usually turns out strong work and they don’t sacrifice any quality in The God of High School.  

The battles have an explosive quality that feels unique to this show. Characters engage in brutal attacks and the camera surrounds them in a way that heightens the excitement. There’s really wonderful fight choreography on display that showcases an abundance of martial arts styles as well as staggering special powers. The increasing use of charyeok abilities gets a little intense towards the end of the season, but it always results in drastic visual spectacles where behemoths split the sky in half or thousands of monsters spill out and invade reality. The level of chaos sometimes feels too big for The God of High School’s story, but it’s easy to get swept up in he artistry of the visuals.

On that note, the mysterious force known as charyeok becomes a very important principle in The God of High School. The series’ handling of this energy force is a little sloppy at times and it’s absolutely an aspect of the anime that could be strengthened in a season two. Charyeok leads to most of the best and biggest sequences from the season, but the rules and consequences need to be better defined. The God of High School introduces some genuinely compelling principles behind the dangers of charyeok use and how it’s risky to borrow a God’s power, but it doesn’t pull the trigger on any of this.

The same can be said for Mori’s extravagant God transformation in the season finale. It seems to deal with an alternative source of power wherein people can become Gods and not just access their strength, but The God of High School just deals with the flashy action of it all and not the ramifications. This attitude is prevalent through most of the season where The God of High School acts like it’s enough to just stimulate the audience and not go deeper. It’s still very early in the show’s run, which makes it even more dangerous that it could be at a point where it just coasts on powerful transformations with no substance beneath it.

One of the most interesting aspects of The God of High School’s first season is that by the time that it ends it hints at a completely different kind of adventure for its second season. The anime’s titular God of High School Tournament is over and done with and what’s instead teased is a story that sounds very similar in nature to InuYasha. Mori and company have to travel across the corners of the world to recover the scattered Key shards. This new approach could honestly go either way for The God of High School. There’s definitely a lot more freedom to this angle and it often even felt like the tournament was the thing that the anime was the least interested in at times.

Mori, Daewi, and Mira can still face tons of powerful charyeok users as they look for Key shards and the new communities that they encounter have much more potential than just a fresh face in a tournament. Then again, with the way that The God of High School operates it’s entirely possible that season two begins with Mori recovering the final Key shard and the series already moving onto something different. The anime’s tournament may be concluded, but there are still plenty of hanging threads from the first season, such as like Mori’s Monkey King powers, the growing bond between Mori and Park Ilpyo, and the inevitable rescue of Jin Taejin. The God of High School is lucky enough to begin their second season in a very confident place and hopefully they won’t squander this opportunity.

The God of High School has been a difficult anime series to properly peg down and even though its storytelling and characters can often feel flat and reductive, there’s still just enough to enjoy in the series that makes it worth recommending. This isn’t an action anime that redefines the genre or does anything new with stock tropes, but it still looks amazing and manages to entertain. It’s not the breakout anime of the season that it could have been, but it’s a fun way to pass the time and something that I’m still glad Crunchyroll took a risk on. Much like the characters within the series, The God of High School contains great potential and its second season could be something really special.