Sep 28, 2020
My first review, spoiler-free, anime only.
I decided to watch God of HighSchool because it’s famous on Webtoon, and considering how much I liked Tower of God, I figured I would give Webtoon more support in having anime adaptations. I haven't read it, but it’s an anime about martial arts, should be cool, right?
Well, let's start with what did not impress me.
>>>CONS:
PACING: The pacing in this show is messed up. It’s so ridiculously fast that you can’t bother to care about what happens next. There is no build up or anticipation for fights, drama, or anything. It just happens--sometimes before you’ve even processed what happened right
...
before. Fast pacing can be good for some animes, but for this storyline it made the show feel like somebody wrote plot points without writing the transitions between them.
PLOT: Speaking of the storyline, not only is it messed up by the pacing, but it is also generic. A competition of “who is the best fighter” with (who would have guessed it?) ulterior motives. I won’t spoil anything, but as mentioned before, plot points zip by one after another, and yet none are unique. If you write down a list of generic shounen plots and tropes and string them together, you have God of HighSchool.
CHARACTERS: When I see a bad plot with good characters, it instantly lifts my spirits. This is not the case in GoH. Our three main characters have no depth to them. Each has one specific motive and nothing else. The pacing of how we get to know them and how they get to know each other makes them unrelatable, and even makes their friendship feel forced. We are essentially introduced to 3 generic tropes (the goof ball but strong protagonist, the silent type, and the female trying to prove she’s as strong as everyone else) and are told they are friends despite very few interactions together beforehand. They have little chemistry together and are not interesting on their own.
So what’s good about this anime? Two things and two things only.
>>>PROS
SOUND: If you are a fan of EDM, this anime has a great track. The opening is an epic dubstep that fools you into thinking the rest of the show will be as good. This is, of course, a lie, but the song is still great. The ED is also pretty chill.
ANIMATION: The true gem of this anime is the animation. Despite how bad everything else is, the animation is the reason I do not rate this show lower. Certain fight scenes are flawlessly smooth and intriguing with the martial arts. The problem here is that, first, the pacing is so fast that these fights are unsatisfyingly short in the first 6 episodes (I’m talking 2 minutes long). Second, after the first 6 episodes, the fights do not have the same martial arts choreography and lose some appeal. Third, since there is no attachment to the storyline or the characters, it’s difficult to get attached to the fight scenes. The best fight scenes have great background, buildup, and context to hype you up for it beforehand; GoH has none of these.
>>>CONCLUSION: The only thing GoH really has going for it are the animation and sound. My recommendations are to either 1.) look up just the fight scenes and soundtrack, 2.) watch the show without being sober so you don’t care about it having no context or 3.) Skip the show altogether because there are far better shounen animes out there.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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