You know if the God of Highschool is going to keep throwing new characters at me and expect me to care about them, they are going to have to slow down a touch and let us get to know each other a bit. You know, share some precious moments. Smell roses, talk about our feelings and hopes for the future. Maybe we can just spend an evening chatting over a cup of coffee. No string attached. Taking it easy and all that.
You can’t just wham bam me like that straight into a fight and then peace out without so much as a look back. I’m a dedicated flower. I need to be wooed…
I know I said last week that I really didn’t think Q was dead but I still expected that they would keep us n suspense a tad longer. What was the point of making us think he was a goner if you’re going to undo it in the first 2 minutes of the next episode? I say that but I sympathize. I have to buy presents no more than a few days in advance or hide them from myself or else I end up giving them to the person ahead of their birthday… I would totally fake kill a character and revive them in the next scene.
But just because I’m an impatient doofus doesn’t mean everyone else has to be! This brings me back to my opening paragraph as well. Readers have been commenting on my God of Highschool posts for a few weeks now that the pacing is out of whack in the series and I have to agree. More precisely, I think the show is impatient. It’s not giving us the time to get to know any of the characters. We barely know the main cast. It’s not letting the plot elements simmer. It seems deadset on moving on from one fight and antagonist to the next as fast as possible and I wonder why that is.
Sometimes that can be a sign that the writers think their audience won’t have the attention span for too much development. Like if they happen to be very young for example. But it can also be a sign that the deeper context and development simply doesn’t exist. You know how sometimes a plot or character is just a loose collection of cool ideas with nothing to really held it together.
and there are some really cool elements. I liked that Jin was out of the match before it even started. That took me by surprise and it made me smile. Of course, when I thought about it, I realized he was the only one of the three that had nothing to prove this week and by Sports! anime rules, one of them had to lose a team match. You can’t just have a full sweep victory. That’s no fun!
Also, the new Nox members seemed entertaining. I always loves me an angel-like character and a girl with an elaborate Woldwoood cross-filed with evil teddy bears that shoot energy balls from their mouths! Just writing that sentence was fun! But it went by too frantically and was part of an already crowded sequence so I couldn’t properly enjoy the moment. I still enjoyed it though. C’mon, evil teddybear energy cross weapon. That’s gonna make for some great cosplay.
In theory, I’m more interested in the Nox confrontation than the actual God of Hiighschoool competition at this point. But I also don’t really care that much about it. Like I don’t really care about Nox or even know who they are and I’m not sure if I want them to succeed or not. I’m also not sure what it would change in the grand scheme of things. This is starting to sound like a me problem.
You know what, I guess my personal issue here is that I don’t have anyone I’m rooting for. I can get passed a contrived or not fully thought out narrative. I can accept underdeveloped or even mildly annoying characters. I could easily watch this show as a mindless distraction to enjoy the pretty colours and fight animation and leave it at that if I just had some mild investment in who won those fights.
And it’s not like I don’t care because they are all great so I’ll be happy no matter who wins. It’s that I just don’t feel the stakes. Yeah, I wanted that nice guy to have his dream and go back to high school. But he still can right? It’s not like he’s barred from all high schools now. And I wanted not Mira to… I dunno gain self-confidence was it? She already has though. And it’s cool that Dae won but also what would have happened if he didn’t? He doesn’t need the money now. Mira got a bit of publicity, I bet she could get her dojo going no matter what happens from now on.
I don’t know if I’m getting my point across. I guess I’m just not feeling the stakes and for me, that’s important in a series that revolves so much around winning fights from week t week. It seems we finally got another clear antagonist to root against though. I suppose that’s something. I liked his hair. I don’t see how they’re going to work him in since it seems part of the tournament is 3 vs 3 and another part is still one on one.
II feel bad for Q. Loosing 6 months’ pay has got to hurt!
You are not an “impatient doofus” – as we’ve discussed before, the pacing of the story telling is ludicrously fast and to the detriment of the enjoyment of this show. I’ve personally forgotten most of the characters’ names since everything is such a blur to me now..
They are clearly trying to cram a two-cour show into a single cour when they should follow the example of a show like Haikyu!!, and build the story and the characters up over a steady course, which also includes spacing out the matches to make them feel more spectacular and strengthen our emotional investment in them.
Although it is a bit late to say that now being just a few weeks away from the end. It will be interesting to see how this show will be remembered and rated by anime fans come the end of the year polls and lists since it had a lot of hype prior to its debut, and that hype is cooling off.
I’m still seeing a lot of good comments on Twitter although much less than in the early episodes. Despite some of the bloodier scenes, I still think this may simply be a children’s show.
Well, I don’t follow the same Twitter accounts as you so I’ve not seen what you have, but a look on MAL and other places and the honeymoon is quite clearly over for a lot of people there. Oh well… :-/
I was curious, MAL has it at 7.8 – it’s not fantastic but it seems average enough. There’s a lot f shows people generally like with lower ratings. The reviews on MAL are always usually undying fanboys with perfect 10 ratings, elitists who never rate above 5 or trolls but the ratings tend to reflect public opinion decently. I didn’t check before – was it much better?
I don’t pay attention to MAL scores until a show’s run is over. I was referring to the forum comments of current episodes where it seems opinion is divided between those who still enjoy it and those who re angry and disappointed with it.
As you say, MAL opinions are in either one of two definite camps of love or hate so I take them both with a pinch of salt (unless I agree with them). 😉
And here I was thinking there wasn’t enough blood. Most Anime lately has to deal with these kinda censorship which is pretty sad. I had high hopes for the GoH anime adaptation, but at this point they clearly messed it all up :'(
I can’t say I care much about the Nox side either. The pacing here really is a problem. For example:
When the Nox assassin bragged about killing not only the announcer but the entire family, that’s probably a sledghammer method of telling me he’s evil, but I’ve seen none of it on screen. Am I bloodthristy? Well, in the context of anime, to an extent, but the real problem is that watching a lot of it has conditioned a response of the kind “if I don’t see the body, I doubt the death.” I really do believe they’re all dead, but old habits die hard, and it’s psychologically easier to doubt their death than to assume pacing problems. The end result is that I don’t much care.
The show full of little moments like that, and there’s a cumulative problem: since things go by so fast, I have to pay more attention to know what’s going on, but my motivation to do so actually decreases, because there’s just no impact.
A cross-shaped teddybear energy weapon definitely is awesome, so it’s not like the show isn’t entertaining at all. And I actually quite liked the never-give-up backstory, too. They’re not doing anything special with it (and scenes like that), but these kinds of scenes are pleasent and relaxing for me.
I find God of Highschool pretty mediocre. Maybe a step above this? Good avarage? I don’t know.
I think I find it mediocre myself. This said I really like anime so average anime is not a bad thing for me.
It’s a little frustrating when you can see that a show has talent and resources but doesn’t quite manage to come together