The God of High School – 07 [anima/force]

It’s never a good sign when an anime has you thinking, “What’s the point?” in the middle of an episode. Realizing afterwards that it wasted your time is bad enough, but to prompt the question during an initial viewing? Unless you’re watching some sort of mystery series where generating questions is the goal, that’s probably a bad look. Consequently, The God of High School was looking bad at multiple points this week – except for the part where it looked incomparably cool.

Let’s start with that last bit, which was obviously the extended fight scene between the GOH judges and Nox priests. I wrote last week that Judge Q had been killed off, but I was merely deceived by the giant sword piercing his unmoving body. How silly of me! Honestly, it’s a good thing I was mistaken, because his scythe-twirling combat style was one of the best things about this showdown, especially in conjunction with the animated backgrounds near the start. Q styling on a cult flunky was a great way to open this multi-phase battle, too, since it provided a lot of room for upward mobility once Exly and Saturn showed up. Those two had ridiculous weapons and abilities, including flight, sword creation, limb generation (a la Robin from One Piece), and a cross-shaped laser gun. Top all that off with a hideous shadow monster that the foul-mouthed Saturn summoned in an attempt to kill Judge O, and you’ve got a nonsensical but painstakingly drawn action scene for the ages.

That animation bonanza was the main draw of this episode, which was made clear by its format. We cut back and forth between the GOH arena (where Mori and company were engaged in their first team match) and Q’s apartment every few minutes, which meant the best bits of this installment were distributed throughout its runtime. There wasn’t a pressing timeline-related reason to employ this structure, though, which leads me to believe that the director was using the carrot and stick method. As long as we were willing to sit through a few minutes of dumb and/or repetitive story, we’d be rewarded with the tasty carrot of judges vs superpowered priests. That’s an excellent reward, but was it worth watching Mori paralyze himself in ‘hilarious’ fashion, or sitting through the backstories of two swiftly-defeated opponents? I’d say no. Last week’s information overload may have been chaotic, but at least it didn’t default to “believe in yourself” as the moral of a mid-match flashback.

“What’s the point?” was the question on my mind during the low-octane half of this episode. Why did Mori link up with the pressure point specialist last week if it was just going to result in some half-assed comedy? Why did we need an advance look at contestants like Jin Pum Kwang and Jangmi if they were just going to be first round fodder? Furthermore, why did two fodder characters need heavy-handed backstories demonstrating their resilience, when their job was to succumb to adversity in round one of the tournament? Even their charyeok lacked flash, especially in comparison to the dragons and energy beams of the Judge Q fight. The tourney scenes weren’t a total wash, since we got a better look at Jegal Taek – he’s cut from the same sadistic cloth as Manseok from phase one, but with much bluer hair. Other than a longer look at a significant antagonist, though, this week of GOH was packed full of head-scratching moments. With the chaff having been freshly eliminated, I’m expecting a major recovery next week, though I may be just as dumb as the show for having faith in its storytelling abilities.