Crunchyroll continues their Originals program and collaboration with Line Webtoon with The God of High School. And unlike Tower of God, this show seems very straightforward.
Basically, the show revolves around the titular God of High School, a martial arts tournament where candidates duke it out to determine who’s the strongest fighter around. All fighting styles are welcomed and certain weapons are seemingly allowed. Leading the story is Jin Mo-Ri (Tatsumaru Tachibana), a young martial artist. Joining him is fellow martial artist Han Dae-Wi (Kentarou Kumagai) and swordswoman Yu Mi-Ra (Ayaka Ohashi), a swordswoman.
This is an action anime through and through and I won’t deny that there is entertainment to be found here. For the A part, you have Jin chasing after a motorcycling thief on his bicycle, gradually meeting and receiving assistance from Yu and Han in the process. After that, you have the opening brawl of the tournament where every candidate dukes it out in a battle royale/last man standing brawl. The staging alone sounds exciting enough but the animation and direction most certainly back it up. Every move the characters make is well choreographed and slickly animated and despite how chaotic things can get, you’re able to keep track of who’s fighting who perfectly fine.
That being said, this premiere is almost entirely action and light on story. When you think about it, the only two major events that happen is Jin getting sidetracked and meeting his new friends and the tournament starting. Some kernels exist such as some apparent political unrest and backstory surrounding Jin but the episode doesn’t dwell on them for very long. Aside from basic personality traits and knowing that these are the people I’m rooting for, I have no real incentive to connect with any of the characters. I understand wanting to draw in the viewer’s attention with spectacle but looking past that, it does feel like that was the singular priority of this episode and that’s rather concerning.
Obviously, this can all be addressed in subsequent episodes and I hope for that to be the case with this show. I love action as much as the next person and I don’t need a deep story to carry it but unless there is a story of some kind, I will lose interest real fast.
Thanks for reading!
Watch The God of High School on Crunchyroll
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