God of High School

Genre(s): Shonen, Action

Age-Appropriateness: 13+ (Violence, language, blood)

Platforms: Crunchyroll

Episodes: 13

TheAwersome Rating: 6.5 / 10 (No real substance)

Premise: The “God of High School” tournament has begun, seeking out the greatest fighter among Korean high school students! All martial arts styles, weapons, means, and methods of attaining victory are permitted. The prize? One wish for anything desired by the winner. Taekwondo expert Jin Mori is invited to participate in the competition. There he befriends karate specialist Han Daewi and swordswoman Yoo Mira, who both have entered for their own personal reasons. Mori knows that the matches will be the most ruthless he has ever fought in his life, but instead of being worried, this prospect excites him beyond belief. But will they be able to uncover the secrets that lie behind the tournament?

TheAwersome’s Thoughts: While I’m very happy to see that anime are being made from new source materials, namely WebToon webcomics, this really felt like an amateur webcomic, and it wasn’t always a good thing. The show and story felt very disjointed and while the animation for the fights is great, a lot of them felt very rushed. I was almost able to feel a connection to the main characters. That is, until the show decided they weren’t the main characters anymore? I feel there were a lot of neat and cool ideas in this show but none of them got fleshed out or even really explored much. As such, there wasn’t any emotion behind the fights. We either didn’t know the characters well enough or weren’t given a reason to care about them. That, and the show doesn’t really explain or go into any detail about the main overarching plot. Like, literally at all.

TLDR: If you want to watch some pretty cool-looking fights with nice animation and don’t care for any story or heart behind them, go for it. Otherwise, I’d say pass.

This was one of the first truly Crunchyroll originals (not just helped fund, but they’re the primary producers) and first Webtoon-turned-anime. And they didn’t let you forget it, because all of the ads plastered around the fighting ring were for Crunchyroll and Webtoon! Other than the fourth wall breaking, it was… kinda cool maybe? It certainly didn’t help with the already difficult time I had immersing myself in the characters/story.

The show started out feeling like Naruto, then Naruto x JoJo with the powers getting ridiculously out of hand (and frequently just being Stands) and characters being over-the-top caricatures. Then it ended up feeling like Naruto x Fate with how confusing and constantly it kept adding new premises and plot points. By the end I had no idea what was going on, I was reminded of the response Sakura gets in Zombie Land Saga when she asks how they came back to life: “You’ve seen Zombie movies right?” Which is fine; if an element isn’t important to the story and its explanation would be a distraction, don’t worry about it.

But that doesn’t work when you want me to be invested in that as the main plot. You don’t need to explain exactly how and when the Joker set up his explosives, or the explicit science behind superpowers, but you do need to explain character motivation and deus-ex-machina resolutions if you want me to take anything seriously. That’s what separates an emotional ride and seven-year-olds role-playing their Dragonball Z OCs. I honestly felt like I’d missed every other episode with how much doesn’t get explained, and because of that lost attachment to the characters and their situations.

You’ll likely enjoy this if you enjoyed:

• Good fights and plucky protagonists of Naruto
• The evergrowing “deeper lore” of the Fate Series