The God of High School Episode 10

Oath/Meaning

Right before watching The God of High School Episode 10, I actually looked at the cover art for this anime for the very first time. And that was surprisingly good timing, considering the cover art fairly obviously reveals the charyeok used by two major characters: Daewi and Ilpyo.

The cover art hints at Mira’s charyeok as well by giving her the two feathers coming off her head, but that wouldn’t have been enough for me to guess that her pact would be with Lu Bu. Maybe it would have if I had seen it directly after seeing Lu Bu in Fate, but even then I don’t know if I would have connected the dots.

Technically, I guess the cover also hints at Mori’s charyeok, but I can’t really comment on that too much at this point. His looks like generic charyeok, and he’s already stated in the series that he doesn’t plan to rely on someone else’s power. So my assumption is that maybe he just sticks with generic charyeok and never forms a pact with a deity.

As for Daewi, I don’t actually know what deity or legendary being his charyeok pact is with. It’s a water-based charyeok, but aside from that, nothing has been officially revealed. However, if we look at the image above and assume that the background is a hint, we can make a guess.

It looks like a dragon to me. So does that mean his pact is with some kind of water dragon? It’s possible, but I think that would be a bit strange considering Mori already has an attack that looks like a blue dragon. So if that’s not it, I have no idea what his charyeok pact is with.

Good vs. Evil?

We’ve already known that the organizers of the God of High School tournament want to awaken a “key” who will then help them kill God. And we know that Nox wants to prevent God from being killed. But aside from that, we didn’t have too much information on either side until now.

So, what do we know after the events of this episode? Well, even though it was already implied, this episode seemed to reinforce the idea that the god Nox believes in is the Christian God or at least a monotheistic god. Why is that important? Because their goal is to eradicate all other gods, which is to say the deities that charyeok users form pacts with.

This is a pretty understandable development. Over the years, I know I’ve mentioned in multiple reviews how the Christian church, or an equivalent thereof, is always the antagonist in anime. I’m sure there are a few examples where this isn’t the case, but in the vast majority of series, the church is the evil group.

What I find interesting about how The God of High School is portraying this trope, though, is that it blurs the line between good and evil more than usual. For example, in many cases (not all), the church is revealed to be some kind of front for a shady organization that takes advantage of people. But apparently Nox actually has a pact with God.

This implies that Nox isn’t some random organized crime group. They actually have the backing of a major deity that’s generally viewed as “good.” On the other side, we have Mujin Park, the apparent leader of the anti-god rebellion. We still don’t know exactly what his charyeok is, but it seems to be tied to Christianity in some way as well due to his cross symbolism.

But what’s stranger than that is that Mujin himself has a character design reminiscent of a devil. So the bad group, Nox, has the literal God on their side, and the leader of the good group, Mujin, seems to be a reference to Satan and wants to kill God.

Like I said, organized religion being the antagonist is nothing new. But you don’t normally see series go so far as to say that Satan is the good guy. I’m interested to see how this all plays out.

The Kitsune Key

The final thing I want to discuss is Ilpyo’s pact with a kitsune (nine-tailed fox). This is something that’s obvious just from looking at the anime series cover art. There, you’ll see that Ilpyo very clearly has multiple fox tails made of fire. But what I didn’t expect was that he hadn’t previously made this pact, especially when we saw him using fire-based attacks.

Also, it was revealed that Ilpyo awakened as the “key” when he forged this pact with the kitsune. That doesn’t make any sense to me. Kitsune are important deities, but they’re not the most important. So it’s strange to see a kitsune being treated as the most powerful deity when we literally saw God get summoned earlier in the episode.

I could understand it if they used a polytheistic god to rival the power of God, but that’s not what’s happening here. A kitsune isn’t on the same level as a god. It’s more like a high-ranking spirit. If Ilpyo forged a pact with a fire-based god like the Egyptian Ra, it could make sense because at least that’s comparable to God.

They could have even gone with Amaterasu if they wanted an Asian fire god. Why did they choose a kitsune?

Putting the fact that I don’t understand why a kitsune is the key to taking down God aside, what powers will this grant Ilpyo? Will he gain all the powers of a kitsune? Or is he basically just a fire user? We already have one of the commissioners who has a pact with a fire dragon, so I assume Ilpyo will be able to use other kitsune abilities like shapeshifting.

Hopefully, the charyeok of this series works like Devil Fruits in One Piece where there are actually differences that make would-be similar abilities unique. Like how the flame fruit and phoenix fruit are both fire-based, but the phoenix’s fire heals wounds instead of causing burns.

It’ll be pretty lame if we end up with a bunch of people with similar, generic abilities. I don’t want multiple standard fire users.

Conclusion

What do you think of The God of High School episode 10? Do you have a prediction for what Daewi’s charyeok pact is with? Do you think Mori will actually forge a pact or stick with generic charyeok? And, how do you feel about the key being a kitsune? Let me know in the comments.

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My review of the next episode is available here.