The God of High School Episode 12

Fox/God

I’m sorry if you’re a fan of The God of High School. I’m sorry that the series you like received an anime like this, I’m sorry that you like this series, and I’m sorry for what I’m about to say about it. It’s literal trash. I don’t know what I just watched. Episode 12 alone was like watching a full 24 episode season of a shounen series in the span of 20 minutes.

It was actually worse than that. I think if I watched 24 episodes of something like My Hero Academia in 20 minutes, I’d have a better understanding of what I watched than I do right now. So, uh, let’s get into the review, I guess?

First things first, “God” is apparently actually a demon hiding inside a giant Buddha statue. I’m not really sure what that’s all about, but that’s what I understood based on what I saw. There was a Hannya mask inside the statue, so unless there’s something else inside that mask, I’m calling it a demon.

Now that we know what “God” is, let’s move onto some of the other things we’ve previously seen but didn’t have names for. Daewi’s Charyeok was revealed to be a haetae, which is basically a one-horned goat/lion creature. It has the ability to prevent fires, so I suppose that’s why it manifests as water.

The other one is Commissioner O’s dragon. Obviously it’s a dragon, but she(?) refers to it by the name Changsik. I looked up what a Changsik was and found nothing other than a Korean manga about a red dragon. There’s clearly some myth these are both based on, but I couldn’t find it in 5 minutes so I gave up.

An Impoverished Shark

Jegal Taek’s Charyeok is another one that was just revealed, but I think I need an entire section dedicated to it to attempt to make sense of it. So, before this episode, his Charyeok was always depicted as a giant shark, giant shark mouth, or giant shark teeth.

Obviously, his Charyeok is based on a megalodon, right? Wrong.

The official name of his Charyeok is “the Impoverished” and it allows him to summon large things with mouths, I guess? Suddenly, Jegal isn’t summoning a giant shark but is instead creating eyes and mouths all over his body and summoning giant humanoids with the same features.

When I see the word “impoverished,” I think of poverty — as in poor people. My guess is that Jegal’s Charyeok isn’t meant to compare the poor to ravenous beasts, though. So, what exactly is “the Impoverished?”

The other definition of impoverished is “deprived of strength or vitality.” I think this definition is the one we need to use to understand Jegal’s ability. Basically he’s starved for power, glory, riches, etc. and his Charyeok is the embodiment of this. To put it in terms that more people can probably understand, his Charyeok is Greed.

Characters based on the seven deadly sins are pretty common. I just wasn’t really expecting that from this series since that’s not a tangible thing. It’s not a creature, person, or entity of any kind. It’s a state of being which isn’t something we’ve seen Charyeok based on up to this point.

Who Would Win: 567 Nuclear Missiles or Zeppeli from Jojo?

While I was confused as soon as Jegal’s Charyeok was revealed to be “the poor” rather than a shark, I think the true confusion started when the United States military showed up. Apparently, they’ve been working alongside Mujin Park to defeat God or something.

But, when it became clear that God was too powerful for Mujin, they decided to send in the Air Force armed with — wait for it — 567 nuclear missiles. Yes, that exact number was given to us.

Nuking one of your strongest allies into oblivion in an attempt to kill God makes sense to me as an American, though. So that part isn’t really confusing. What was confusing is that some Zeppeli from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure look-a-like showed up to single-handedly kill God and save South Korea from annihilation.

He teleported the entire population of Seoul to safety, used alchemy to turn all 567 nuclear missiles into a giant, nuclear statue, and then summoned an asteroid through a portal to drive that nuclear statue into God. Oh, and the damage done by all of this to the surrounding landscape was surprisingly little.

The civilians definitely would have died despite being teleported away if something like this actually happened. I think they were still in the blast zone of the nukes. And even if they weren’t they all would have gone blind and been irradiated half to death. Oh, and that’s not even considering the literal asteroid that would probably have wiped the entire peninsula off the map.

But of course, Zepelli and the bad guy both survived all of this at ground zero. God wasn’t so lucky.

A New Human Evolution

The last thing I want to mention about this episode is Jegal turning into a new form of being after ingesting the key, which was apparently a literal, physical key. I’m not sure how that key was supposed to kill God though. Does it unlock the rest of the Buddha statue that the demon was inside of?

Anyway, Jegal inserted the God-killing key into his stomach mouth (as one does), reverted back into a baby, and then evolved into an angel/demon/Kaguya Ōtsutsuki cosplayer. So I guess that this is the demon referred to in the OP for the season, not that random side character who was turned into a demon.

I need to point out that this development feels like some real end-of-series stuff. Did we just skip from the first arc of the series to the final battle? We went from the introductory tournament arc to killing God and a new, god-like antagonist being born to destroy the world in the span of 2 episodes

This feels way too early for the final boss of the series to show up. And if Jegal isn’t the final boss and is defeated here, then the whole setup of him becoming this god-like being was for nothing. Either way, the series is in terrible shape and I can’t wait to see what kind of train wreck episode 13 is going to be.

I should also let fans of this series know that if it gets a second season, I’m not going to be reviewing the episodes weekly. This show just isn’t good enough to warrant doing that.

Conclusion

What do you think of The God of High School episode 12? Do you actually like this anime? Do you think these are good developments? Would you nuke South Korea into oblivion to kill God (or to stop terrible series like this from being written there)? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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My review of the final episode is available here.