The God of Highschool ep. 13 – Winners

Those of you following along at home may remember that I like God of Highschool bestest when it’s just a tangle of stylized fast action nonsense. And I am using nonsense as a deep term of endearment here.

And so, if you have watched the last episode of God of Highschool, you should have a pretty good idea what I thought of it. I’m going to tell you anyways! If you haven’t watched it, well this post probably won’t spoil that much cause I’m disorganized and usually forget to go over the plot, but the screencaps are going to give some things away…

II once wrote a post about Son Goku so I felt really proud of myself when they first mentioned Taisei. But then the episode sort of gave it away and I would have figured it out anyway.

Still for those that don’t know exactly where the Seiten Taisei comes from, let me reiterate here, because I love this part of the legend:

“Seiten Taisei” is an honorary title which Son Goku decided to give himself while he was throwing a hissy fit and it means: “The Great Sage, Heaven’s Equal” (his tendency to give himself super pompous titles is one of my favourite things about the character, I’m sad we never really see that trait in his many adaptations).

There are a whole bunch of Gokus, Taiseis and Wukong all over Eastern fiction but I always find it odd how the Gokus in anime tend to be pure-hearted heroes if somewhat troublemakers. The original was not necessarily a good guy, at the very least, quite the bloodthirsty fellow. Mori seems to follow the tradition of much nicer Gokus.

When I mentioned a few weeks ago that Mori didn’t have a charyeok I think the only reason I remember that name is that it really sounds like a native American word to me) because he was a god himself 1) I swear I did not know this would happen and 2) I was kidding guys. IIn this case “guys” are the author.

I mean I’m not against it. I actually think it’s kind of hilarious. But it’s going to make balancing power super tricky in future seasons if there are any. Usually, these things get solved by throwing in some lame contrived reason the over-powered character can’t just steamroll all over the narrative and no one likes that.

On top of that, it seems we have a character that negates almost all consequences. There’s a reason classic shonen had single fights that last entire seasons. If the characters power up too quickly then the stakes start feeling pretty irrelevant and it gets tough to care.

This said Ungnyeo is amazing. I would also have cried for three days if she rejected me. I would watch another season just to get more of her. And not just because she’s voiced by Romi Park. Although I won’t deny it’s a factor. That woman is a genius! She is exactly the foil the show needs and they bring her out in the latter half of the last episode. Well isn’t that great? I really wanted to see her beat up Mujin. I bet she’s doing it right now.

You know, even though I indirectly made fun of it in the paragraphs above, I don’t hate the mega happy ending. It still did leave a few little stingers and God of Highschool is a silly action show with reimagined gods. There is no need to make it all serious and heavy. Everyone is alright again and all the people we care about sort of win. That’s perfect.

Even the one super bad guy, who obviously had to die (I mean he was soooooo bad) died in a badass cool way that made it seem like he was kinda alright with it. II probably won’t remember this episode next week, but it left me smiling today.

One thing I really appreciated about this first season of God of Highschool is that although there is a ton of set up for future seasons, and some of it seemed genuinely interesting, it didn’t end on a cliffhanger. There was a true sense of closure to the present arc and if no more seasons are announced, I won’t feel like I’ve been left hanging.

That’s actually pretty unusual for anime adaptations of long-running works and I have to give them proper credit for that. It certainly felt like a much more satisfying wrap-up than Tower of God which was just a frustrating tease of an “ending”.

So there we have it, season 1 of the God of Highschool is done. There were some issues, pacing being one of the biggest and fairly shallow characterizations but all in all, I had a generally good time with it. I would watch another season but I would also be o.k. if they didn’t make one.