The God of High School Episode 1

The God of High School Episode 1

Set Up/Stand Up

Last season, we had Tower of God, an anime based on a manhwa as its source material. Manhwa is just the Korean version of manga. This season, we have another anime based on a manhwa, The God of High School.

I enjoyed Tower of God a decent amount, and since The God of High School is animated by MAPPA and I’ve heard it’s popular, I figured I’d check this one out too. But I have to say, after the first episode, I’m not looking forward to this series as much as I was with Tower of God.

So far, I see two reasons for this series to be popular, and more reasons for why I don’t think it’s that great. However, before all the fans of The God of High School attack me for saying that, just keep in mind that this impression is solely based on the first episode of the anime.

Though to be fair, I’m sure as the series progresses I’ll anger you even more.

Mori Jin from the anime series The God of High School
Mori Jin

As a brief overview, I think the fact that this is an action series focused on hand to hand combat is definitely going to boost its popularity. And because it has good animation on top of that, a lot of people are going to pick it for either anime of the season or anime of the year.

But I don’t think the characters are interesting so far. I don’t think the plot is developed enough to even attempt to comprehend what it is yet. And I think the character designs and art are a bit off-putting.

As for the music, it wasn’t anything special. It wasn’t bad or anything, but I’d say it’s pretty average action series music. If you want a fighting anime with better music, try Megalo Box.

Tournament Arc

From what I understand, the majority of this anime is going to be one, giant tournament arc. The tournament is called The God of High School competition, and as the name implies, its goal is to determine the strongest high school student.

Within the tournament itself, anything goes. It’s a martial arts competition, but the style of fighting doesn’t matter and it’s even stated that weapons of all kind are allowed. So far we’ve only seen a few “non-lethal” weapons, but I’m sure they’ll get deadlier as the series progresses.

I’m also interested to see if anyone will just use a gun later on. But since this is anime, bringing a gun to a fistfight probably wouldn’t end well for the gun user.

Mira punching another challenger from the anime series The God of High School
Mira punching another challenger

Now, when I said there isn’t much plot to understand just yet, this is what I mean. We know there’s a martial arts tournament, but we don’t know why people are entering or even why it’s being held. Is this a normal occurrence in this world? Does our protagonist have any motivation for entering other than simply being the best, like no one ever was?

Also, at the very beginning of the episode, we got a scene of some mob bosses on a private island that was then destroyed by what I can only describe as a half-hurricane-half-kaiju. Obviously that’s foreshadowing something, but so far it seems completely unrelated to the rest of the episode.

Are all the high schoolers going to be fighting with superpowers by the end of the series? It’s clear that the series is eventually going to move in a supernatural direction, but what form is that going to take?

The God of Noses

Let’s talk about some of my petty complaints about this episode and the series in general. These complaints don’t really affect how good or bad I think The God of High School is, but they’re the little things that I can’t help but notice and be bothered by.

First up, we have some dialogue from when we were first introduced to Daewi Han, one of the three main characters. Daewi is finishing up his shift at work when his boss thanks him for working the night shift. He then responds by saying, “Hey, it’s my job.”

Just let that sink in for a moment. He’s thanked for doing his job by his employer and his response is to tell his employer that doing his job is his job. That’s on par with the infamous “people die when they are killed” line from the original Fate/stay night anime.

Some woman from the anime series The God of High School
Some woman

The other petty complaint I have has to do with the art. I think the character designs are pretty average, but that’s not what I’m referring to here. No, what I’m referring to is the elephant in the room, if you will. That’s right, the noses on the characters. Just look at the nose on that woman in the picture above.

I have two main issues with the noses in this series. First of all, they’re pretty large most of the time (they strangely vary in size from scene to scene even on the same characters). Second, the shading they have makes them stand out even more.

All the characters have extremely large noses that are shaded to draw your attention to them even more. Why? Probably because the creator of this series got their start as an amateur artist on Tumblr. If you’ve ever seen art on Tumblr, you know what I mean. Tumblr artists love noses.

Conclusion

I’m going to keep watching this series because despite my complaints about it, I did enjoy watching it. And because I know it’s going to be a popular series, you can expect reviews of the latest The God of High School episodes every Monday for the rest of the season.

But what did you think of this first episode? I’ve heard mostly good things from fans of the source material, but that’s generally always the case. The only other person I know of who watched it and hasn’t read the source material had the same complaints about the series that I did. Do you agree? Or are we the minority? Let me know in the comments.

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My review of the next episode is available here.

4 Replies to “The God of High School Episode 1”

  1. It’s certainly the best animated thing of the season so far by a massive mile. His a absolute action series, the plot is quite basic, good guys vs the evils, Hear he makes references to popular legends and myths in Asia, but it’s not important, their success will depend if they manage to maintain the good level of animation.

    1. I would have said that the newest season of Sword Art Online has the best animation of the season (despite all of SAO’s other shortcomings). But after watching the second episode of The God of High School, I have to admit that it’s the best-animated series of the season.

  2. Well in very first episode they skip first 2-3 webtoon chapter which explains why and how they end up in GOH competition which raises questions for now but I think that MAPPA did it to reach action part in very first episode to get people invested and create hype for season (by showing well animation fights)

    They will probably going to put those initial chapters through flashback in next few episodes.

    Tbh GOH strength is it’s fights and hype moments (like DB series) . In term of story it’s simple and can make people who are looking for good story plot ignore it.

    1. I’m definitely one of those people who’s more interested in good story and characters, but I can still enjoy some well-animated action.

      I just really hope that this series makes more people notice MAPPA. They’ve done a lot of anime I’ve really enjoyed, but I feel like not many people know of them. This series and the final season of Attack on Titan should change that.

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