The God of High School Episode 7

The God of High School Episode 7

Anima/Force

Last week I decided that I don’t like The God of High School. And while that’s still the case, I did appreciate episode 7’s heavier focus on action and Charyeok abilities because it gives me something to discuss. But before we get into the good stuff, I have to mention the bad stuff.

Okay, so this first thing isn’t actually bad, but there are new opening visuals to accompany the new arc. The song (and some of the visuals) is still the same, but the part where it showcased random first-arc characters fighting was replaced with scenes of the commissioners fighting.

This tells me two things. First, the commissioners are going to play a larger role in this arc than they did in the first. So far, that checks out. And second, I was wrong to assume that some of those random characters would be important just because they were featured in the opening. Now I know better.

Jin Pum Kwang from the anime series The God of High School
Jin Pum Kwang

The bad part of the episode came with the first round of the three-on-three portion of the tournament. Why are we getting background for these random characters we’ll never see again after this episode? Who cares about Jin Pum Kwang, his younger brother, and the high school girl who has a crush on him?

They didn’t even have good background stories. Jin Pum is a 38-year-old guy who’s been working a construction job, just entered high school, and uses “working man’s style” fighting. His brother got no backstory. And the girl’s backstory is just that she admires Jin Pum’s never-give-up attitude.

At least during the fight, Jin Pum mentioned that he has an actual dream he wants to be fulfilled by winning the tournament. But, his real dream wasn’t powerful enough to beat Daewi’s dream of “I want to be stronger.”

It Must be the Work of an Enemy Charyeok

Things started to get interesting when all the various Charyeok users showed up — and I don’t mean Jin Pum and the girl. Jin Pum’s Charyeok was just a giant hammer, and the girl’s was a “bastard sword” made of light. That looked like a two-handed sword, though, not a hand-and-a-half sword, so the name was wrong.

Besides those useless abilities, we got to see seven other Charyeok abilities in this episode, starting with the joker ability we’ve seen before (which I previously referred to as a grim reaper). I don’t really have anything else to say about that one other than that it’s also connected to a magic deck of cards.

The first villain in the episode had a more interesting ability that was a giant silkworm. With this, he could reattach any body parts that were severed, which is a pretty useful ability, I suppose. But I doubt it would prevent him from being decapitated or stabbed through the heart.

Saturn's Charyeok manifesting from the anime series The God of High School
Saturn’s Charyeok manifesting

Then we saw the abilities of two other antagonists from the Nox organization. Exly’s Charyeok ability appears to be based on a fallen angel, or maybe just a bird. I assume fallen angel because of the black wings combined with the “Priest” title. He can fly, and that’s about all we’ve seen so far.

Saturn has my favorite ability so far. She’s the BDSM girl we saw early on in the series, and her Charyeok ability reflects this. She can make hands (and weird, multi-eyed slime creatures) appear out of the ground to restrain her opponents. It reminded me a lot of Robin’s Devil Fruit from One Piece — and that’s probably why it made the most sense to me.

Another that was somewhat straightforward was the dragon ability of the other commissioner. Basically, he can manifest a giant dragon and use fire-type attacks.

The final two Charyeok abilities we saw in this episode were previewed in the previous episode. One is a giant shark and the other seems to have something to do with elemental magic since he used both fire and lightning “spells.”

Is Charyeok a Good Power System?

The short answer is, no. I don’t think Charyeok is a good power system. As I’ve mentioned in earlier episode reviews, there doesn’t seem to be any grounding rules that apply to it right now. We don’t really know anything about it. How do people acquire it? How is it used? Is each ability unique to one person? Etc.

But the worst part about Charyeok as a power system is that we don’t know the limits of each ability individually. Some people might argue that this isn’t a problem because they don’t want to be told the limits of every ability we encounter in the series right from the start. But while I understand that perspective, I think it’s avoiding the problem.

We don’t need to be told everything an ability can do. But we need to at least be shown enough of what it can do that we can infer what it can’t do as well. If there’s no known limit on an ability, then anything goes and that’s how you end up with extreme power scaling and Deus ex machina conclusions to every fight — just like in Sword Art Online.

Jegal Taek's Charyeok attacking Jeon Jugok from the anime series The God of High School
Jegal Taek’s Charyeok attacking Jeon Jugok

Let’s take this shark ability as an example. From what we’ve seen, it can be used to create a giant mouth on the ground that swallows people up, manifest a giant shark that attacks people on land (seemingly anywhere), and even randomly impales people with shark tooth-like spikes.

Those are some varied abilities that don’t tell us much about the limits. Does the user have to aim the spikes? They seemed to just appear within his opponent. Can the shark appear literally anywhere? It appeared behind his opponent, away from its user. Can the mouth manifest anywhere as well? And, are there other abilities it has that we haven’t seen yet?

In contrast, look at stands in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, which probably has the closest power system. Stands can do some pretty crazy things, but their limits are generally clearly defined early on. From there, the users make use of their stands in unique ways while staying within those limits — like Buccellati’s Sticky Fingers which can unzip things and open pocket dimensions.

Conclusion

What do you think of The God of High School episode 7? Did you care about the random character backstories? Do you think Charyeok is a good power system in its current form? If not, what improvements do you think it requires? And, what’s your favorite ability in the series so far? Let me know in the comments.

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My review of the next episode is available here.

One Reply to “The God of High School Episode 7”

  1. I think this was more serviceable of an episode than the previous one, although, much like you, I do not like The God of High School.

    Apparently, the character backstories that were shown were supposedly shown more frequently in the manhwa. I’ve seen some people complain about them being cut, but personally, I can’t care much about characters who will never show up again either, so I’m with you on them being pointless.

    I agree with you that the lack of info on these Charyeok abilities will be a problem as it’ll create power scaling problems. Jagal Taek’s power on the surface based on what has been presented so far seems to have limitless power aside from spawning on the enemy, which would be extremely broken. Meanwhile, Jeon Jugok’s power requires a very slow and bothersome incantation that hinders him considerably since Jagal Taek doesn’t need to say anything. Taek just thinks with his mind, and the shark powers activate. I agree with you that being told what the powers can and can not do would be an improvement, but I have a feeling the fans of this show as well as the author are uninterested in this.

    Mori appears to have indicated that he received off screen training from the monk guy who is one of The Six. Mori could not have learned to boost his power through stimulating pressure points just from having his foot sprain fixed.

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