Before we get into this week’s episode of the God of Highschool, I have a couple of things to say, First: Happy Labour Day everyone! I hope you are taking full advantage of a lazy Monday! Second, I would like to tell you all about my morning!
On Saturday, I edited a bunch of posts I had written throughout the week. I do this every Saturday and a few days ago was no different. I went into WordPress, added some pictures, fixed the layout and scheduled my posts on the classic editor as always. Skip over Sunday and here we are. WordPress has completely shut down my classic editor plugin so I am forced to use the block editor. And I am not happy about it.
There are a few functionalities that are nice and once I get better used to it, I will probably like it a lot more. But here are some things that are simply worse. For instance, the posts I already have scheduled don’t appear in the calendar when I schedule new posts, so I have to open a new window and go through the list of scheduled posts writing down the dates to make sure I don’t publish articles one over the other.
For most people, I figure that’s no big deal but it is for me since I have certain posts on specific days and reviews and essays the rest of the time. So I have to make sure I leave empty spots on the right days. I can’t just pick the first available date. It’s a small pain but still a pain. I also can’t easily copy posts and bring over the tags anymore. Why? The word count is hidden and the only way to get Grammarly to work at al is to go through the dashboard instead of just pressing the write new post button. Oh, and if I use a classic block, I can’t justify… Great! I have a feeling this is not what you’re here for. Let’s talk God of Highschool!
I really only wrote one thing down for the first part of the episode: blue hair = bad man! That’s kind of the message we were told over and over again. Hee was a big bully and purposefully ended the career of Iipyo’s friend. Considering he killed a guy a few episodes ago, that’s actually a step up. He’s also loosely associated with Nox it seems but he turns on them at the drop of a hat because he’s a bad man! Oh, and it seems he will go out of his way too meet a random guy and bring a huge entourage with him, just to tell that guy he’s not gonna help! Bad man!
Actually, I lied, I did take another note and that was, doesn’t Dae have a t-shirt to change into for the fights. I do a couple of sit-ups in long sleeves and I’m already overheating. How is he exerting all that effort in a sweater? I will give this show so many extra points if next episode Dae collapses in the middle of combat because of heatstroke and everyone rightly makes fun of him.
Otherwise, the first act didn’t do much for me. I already knew blue hair = bad man because they have been beating us over the head with it. We got a humanizing backstory for Iipyo butt since he was already one of the few likeable characters not in the main three, I didn’t really need it. I was happy to root for him regardless and the backstory is really plain and redundant with everyone else.
Things started to get a bit more interesting in the second act. It started a bit slow. At first, I thought the fight between Ji and Iipyo was rather anticlimactic with all the build-up it haad gotten but the story quickly shifted to some more ox shenanigans.
I still don’t really care about Nox but I liked the set up here. The ridiculousness of that gigantic sword and the robe-clad cult members forming a very modest circle in the street. I don’t know, the scene had a lot of humour for me and I appreciated it. We also finally got some concrete motivation for.. well everybody. It seems the God of Highschool tournament is just a way to bring out the candidates’ latent abilities in order to discover the key. And everyone, from Nox, to bad blue hair man to the administrators, simply want that key. For the moment we didn’t know what it was yet but it’s a clear goal and it’s easy to follow. Mcguffin got it!
I also realized something else. Mujin and is in essence the same character as Tower of God’s Yu Han Sung. Powerful characters that know way more than they let on and have dubious affiliations. They can help or hinder seemingly on a whim but potentially do have someone to answer to. I tend to like these types of characters and Park is no exception.
The last act was where it’s at!
One of my readers left a comment on my review for episode 9, telling me that the director had told reporters this episode was his favourite. I have to admit, I really didn’t know why until the latter half. At this point, everything went into high gear.
A new member of the six arrived at the scene to help Park take care of that god. Who was straight from Minecraft, let’s not pretend otherwise. The judges started using their moves to take out the members of Nox and Jin and Iipyo finally got serious. Everything was in movement! The images rolled around and pushed each other out of the way as one scene exploded into the next. Mixing backgrounds, and colours and fighting styles. the camera work was a thing of beauty during this entire sequence. Not only was it exciting but I also knew exactly what was happening on-screen at every moment! It looked like it would have been a lot of fun to direct!
The big reveal though was the finale. When we found out exactly what and who the key is. I don’t know if it was unexpected. To be honest I had stopped thinking about the whole key deal pretty much as soon as that scene was over. But I don’t hate this turn of events and it certainly makes the first part of the episode much more relevant now! I want to see where this goes. And I can tell you already there is no way this narrative will be contained in a single season. If the show doesn’t get a season 2, it will be unfinished.
Sounds like you got everything planned for your posts. Very cool. Wish I had that disciplined.
You’ll get there!
I think the rooftop monks were my favourite part of the episode, at least until the fighting began. I quite liked the episode actually, but the over-the-top powers don’t have the impact they should have. Really, I’ve found I like the show best when it’s being at its most mundane.
I really liked the rooftop monks as well
You know what’s interesting… director or GOH Park is korean himself. He put extra effort for ep 5 and ep 10 . In ep 5 korean tradition brush painting was used and in ep 10 along with motion capture(which gave us fluid hand to hand combat between Jin and Park) , korean traditional music was used (in that scene when dude just brought his own band before opening his weapon arsenal) . Painting and sound were drwan and recorded in Korea itself. I wonder how much it would have affected GOH if MAPPA was given enough episode for this adaptation.
Now it’s interesting to see if we can get one more this animation quality episode or MAPPA used most of budget on this episode.
I really liked hand to hand combat between Jin and lipyo.
I hope they kept something back for the finale. Always good to end with a bang
O m g… I don’t know what to think!