The God of Highschool ep. 9 – The Cub Bears Its Claws

One thing I have noticed now that I pay a minimum of attention to anime-related social media is that anime fans are just not that happy about anime. It seems every season has a show or two that’s picked out to stick in the wicker man and everyone just picks on them. And even when shows are popular you’ll get people angry about other people not liking them enough. Now, I’m not brand new to these here parts. I know it’s just the nature of the beast called internet.

Still, when I see everyone gang up on a poor little show, I can’t help but want to protect it. After all, I love anime and even the anime I don’t like is still anime… This is making less and less sense.

As you probably guessed, I’m fully expecting someone to comment about how bad this series is. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying at all that the God of Highschool is a perfect show. Far from it. In fact, it’s not exactly my cup of tea. But I do feel like the early episodes where praised way beyond their worthwhile now it’s getting a lot of undeserved flack. The two most likely being related. My personal opinion is that it’s a fairly average shonen with some good parts and some lame ones just like most shows.

My other personal opinion is that it is meant for a demographic that’s likely way younger and differently chromosomed. So it’s written for an audience that has different sensibilities, preferences and frames of reference than I do. That makes a pretty big difference.

O.k., I’m sort of done with defending GOH now. I’m not even truly defending it. I guess I’m about to tell you that once again I generally enjoyed an episode of God of Highschool and I have a feeling that’s going to disappoint some people. It was a bit of preventive damage control. You figured me out!

I learned a while ago to stop trying to put together some deep plot full of meaningful lore for this show and just go along for the ride. There’s still the evil(?) organization trying to take down the possibly equally evil(?) God of Highschool organization and they have new bad guys of the week out. Why? What happened to the last ones? How did Taejin get captured by that big sword when he was destroying entire armies and ripping the scenery apart with a flick of the finger? I’m not sure and you know I’m fine with that. You can’t sweat the small stuff man. Maybe this is why that very earnest opening sequence with Jin’s grandfather felt out of place to me. It was just so serious.

But we quickly got back to what mattered this week, which was that Jin tried to save his grandpa but it wasn’t him and then he had a fight with an army of clones in a smokey warehouse and he went super saiyan. Mira also tapped into her superpower against an oily muscly swimmer fighter. I mean that sentence has got to tell you what type of show this is… One thing I am going to nitpick about is that Mira loves big muscles. It’s the first thing we learn about her. They really should have had her drooling at least a bit over her opponent. Maybe making a suggestive comment or doing old school heart eyes that pop out of her head. I kept waiting for it!

Anyways, as usual, the bulk of the episode was the fights. Between Mira and swimmer boy, who was, in fact, a Nox clone. I’m assuming they’re Nox. It’s pretty heavily implied but I guess there could be mercenaries mixed in. It was fin. I liked her magical girl moment but I’m still bitter about her lack of thirst. Between Jin and a grey version of Q who makes clones. I enjoyed the visuals of this fight quite a bit, especially when they superimposed it over his stadium fight at the end. I thought it was a fun delivery. And between Dea and a fanservice girl who turned out to be on the evil blue-haired guy’s team. God of Highschool really wants us to remember that blue hair guy is bad news!

We didn’t learn much this week. I don’t feel like the plot progressed at all except that Jin’s team won another round. We did see the judges at the very end talking all cryptically about Jin again.

I guess the biggest thing was really Mira tapping into her god power. Her Charyeok. I only remember that word because I took a very convenient screencap of it. In the end, it didn’t do much other than make the moves she was already doing hit harder I guess. Visually the only difference was that she had antennae now.  There aren’t enough costumes with antennae. Am I the only one who misses the Tick?

It did get me interested in seeing what the guys will transform into. So far we’ve seen animals, historical figures and monsters. I wonder if inanimate objects can be a Charyeok? I guess Jin kinda has to e a tiger but maybe Dae can be something fun.

Speaking of Dea, this is possibly the most important part for me. Can anyone tell me where I can buy a sweater like Dae’s? This one:

I know it’s not that special but I fell in love with it. I need to get my fall wardrobe together and I feel like that would be a really solid neutral piece that I could pair with just about anything. When I asked Google it showed me a bunch of sweatshirts with the GH logo. That’s cool and all but not exactly what I’m going for. I realize that there’s almost no chance I’ll get an answer but I needed to try!