Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: The God of High School
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jeckersly
Posts: 26 |
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Did YOU write the manhwa? Because this is a whole bunch of nonsense apologia to excuse the worst writing I’ve seen all season. This anime is an embarrassment. |
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Heibi
 Posts: 50 |
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All I know is - this is a fight anime. I'm entertained by it. The story is not meant to be Shakespeare, it's a simple "good guy" vs "bad guy" series. The critics are trying to read way too much into it. As for me and my friends watching it - it entertains us and we enjoy it.
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AdamW
 SubscriberPosts: 19 |
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But... it's the show that keeps extremely inexpertly shoving all the nonsensical overcomplicated story stuff in our faces. If it just wanted to be a simple good guy vs. bad guy series it wouldn't need this whole nonsensical backstory of jin's grandpa and the war and all the nox and charyeok and mysterious powers and nonsensical wedding side plots and magic swords and nanomachines and mysterious hands crushing islands and good grief what else. It could just, you know, be an actual high school fighting tournament and give us some good old standard cliché Plucky Underdog Good Guys and Arrogant Sneery Bad Guys characterizations then get to the fighting. You know, like Hinomaru Sumo or something. That got by just fine without weird Stands showing up to assassinate someone or replace them with a spooky clone or something every five minutes. |
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R.Obliv
Posts: 31 |
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I think I’ve been overly defensive in my previous posts. As a whole GoH is trash, but it is my kind of trash and I think trying to explain how it’s good actually isn’t really worthwhile. There is no real plot, the characters are basic as hell and the designs are a bit odd, but the fights looked fantastic (they are some of the best ones you will see put to page). In the anime the plot is even worse and character arcs are iffier than before, but the fights are much flashier, if lacking the logic from the webtoon. However, I still like it and should stop being so defensive about that. I enjoyed most of the anime that has come out so far, including this episode and the one before. So, while it’s all nonsense, I’m screaming “Isn’t this awesome?!” at it.
I respect these criticisms you've had in this episode and previous ones, and if you can't engage with the characters or the plot it can be hard to engage with anything in the anime. It's a reason I can't engage with cynical stories, as I struggle to deal with characters within them. But sometimes I just want to see a dumb muscle-head channel the spirit of a dead Chinese general to defeat a member of a death channeling the spirit of the Kraken. And everything outside of that is just cogs turning to set up the next fight. I’ve never really had an issue with rooting for the leads like James has had throughout. The anime tells me “Cheer these guys” and so I do. I’m basic like that. And then it gives me ridiculous stuff like a building blowing up and the main character treating it as though he only got sucker punched, before using Taekwondo to defeat an army of duplicates of Pay-Long (his name was brought up one time when the cult asked what had happened to him). I completely get how if you can’t engage with that it’s just a waste of your time - but for me, it was the most pumped I’d been for a fight scene in ages. I just like dumb stuff that knows it’s dumb and doesn’t try to justify itself. Charyeok? It just works as the plot demands. National Treasures? Basically lets Excalibur and other such weapons turn up. Why is there a cult? Because it justifies flashier fights between the judges and the priests. What is this key BS? A macguffin that means the cult wants to destroy the tournament, so now they'll fight the heroes too. I understand that for many, lack of ambition is worse than failed ambition, but I can’t stand watching shows that fail to achieve goals they have set themselves. GoH has no ambition beyond cool fight scenes… and it’s still got cool fight scenes so, *shrug*. For an incredibly strained, highly regional metaphor that will probably cause my computer to spontaneously combust in shame, give me a satisfactory Cornish pasty over a burnt beef wellington. So I’m going to enjoy my trash pile, where someone can be punched from Seoul to Shanghai, Jegal fights using a megalodon shark (because extinct animals are also contractable – Charyeok makes no sense and doesn't even try) and Jupiter isn’t a gas planet because the author forgot how planets work spoiler[when it crashed into Mars one time] (this is a real thing and I love it). But I’m going to respect that a lot of people are just going to walk past the trash or only engage with it because they are obligated to write a review for each episode. I’m happy at least, but I shouldn’t try to force others to experience media the way I do. Anyway, all this is to say – if you’re not into the trash so far, I’m so sorry, because it’s getting bigger, but it’s not getting any better. Also r.e. that conspiracy thing - that's an adaptation issue - GoH is an invite only competition that most of Korea isn't aware of in the Webtoon, and the audience attendants are people who failed to qualify, not the general public. Another thing cut was the explanation Charyeok is hard to see without training, so it just looks like really impressive shockwave attacks or feats of strength - akin to Mori's Blue Dragon Kick, which is just a kick which creates an air current that happens to look like a dragon. Cutting these explanations and outright changing the context of the tournament was an odd choice. |
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Yuvelir
 Posts: 1595 |
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Personally, I dropped this a couple of episodes ago because, while the fights ARE cool (except for the Stand battle) there isn't enough of those to justify enduring the rest.
It's also hard to engage with a battle, the hardships, difficulty and stakes when you know that the world has no pretension of following any rules whatsoever. |
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jeckersly
Posts: 26 |
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And yet the show has botched—over and over and over again—just the basic, bare minimum requirements for simple storytelling and plot. |
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AsuraTheDestructor
Posts: 470 |
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And Some people, Like Myself, don't care. |
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Izanagi009
 Posts: 464 Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA |
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For some reason, I find the assertion that the show's plot is noise to be very different from how i feel.
I admit i'm normally harsh on a show in terms of plot and the like. For some reason though, I find enjoyment in the loose plot being told for this show. It feels similar to the fate franchise with a mix of other shows in terms of concepts. The characters are basic, I agree, but there is amusement to be had in the simple characters and I personally thought there is enough to each of them to make what happens in the plo have some impact. I will concede that the show is baffling and stripped back to a fault but i still feel there is a structure and logic to it. Edit: I admit i may be missing something so lets discuss if needed |
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Gasero
 Posts: 939 Location: USA |
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Some anime should just be weekly tournament fights. God of High School's sad attempt at a plot is making people enjoy the series less. The more the series tries to justify a plot with convoluted world building, the sadder it gets.
It also doesn't help that the manhwa was hyped beyond belief. The fights are cool. That's all viewers want to see. No need for much else. |
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AdamW
Subscriber Posts: 19 |
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I think a lot of it is the kind of stuff r.obliv mentioned at the end of his post - standard little cliché fudges the manwha used that the anime is just straight up leaving out. I mean, on one level I figured the explanations for things like the magic wooden sword and the flashy Special Powers and noone in the audience being surprised and/or terrified and/or running straight to a journalist must be along those lines. But as a viewer who didn't read the manwha - that's the kind of stuff the show *needs to put in*. We're anime viewers, we know the conventions, if you do the work to put in a bit of exposition about that stuff, we'll probably buy it. But you can't just cut it entirely and leave us hanging. Like the reviewer says you can pick holes almost endlessly and it almost gets tiring, but just in this episode - the tournament so advanced it has has nanomachines that can heal any injury nevertheless apparently just flat out doesn't notice three of its contestants have been flat out murdered and replaced with sketchy shadow clones? We're still supposed to believe that Jin doesn't have *actual* superpowers (I think) but he can survive an actual giant explosion (I think? Or was that just some kind of metaphor too?) basically unscathed and then beat the crap out of two strong enemies with nothing but The Power Of Guts and some magic acupuncture he just learned and the show spent like two minutes on? We're supposed to buy the janky-ass timeline where all of the following seem to take approximately the same amount of time: * Mira walks into the arena and wins a fight that - as her dialogue keeps emphasizing - isn't very long * Daewi wanders to the bathroom, has a couple of conversations and an even shorter, abortive fight * Mori bikes to some apparently fairly remote warehouse, kneels over Fake Gramps for a bit, gets blown up, fights a bunch of shadow clones at some length, fits in some terrible dialog with doppelganger guy, beats the crap out of doppelganger guy, bikes all the way back to the stadium and walks into the arena just in time for the end of Mira's fight? I mean, this is all stuff a battle anime *can* sell to a sympathetic audience, if it's willing to put in the work. But this one isn't trying. It's just dumping all this tangible nonsense on us and expecting us to swallow it whole. It could have come up with some excuse for the shadow clone infiltration and sold it in twenty seconds of screen time, but it just didn't *bother*. It could have done some stuff to help us swallow Mori's extremely high explosion defense stats. Doing more work to establish the Magic Acupuncture would have helped. But it didn't *bother*. A better job of editing and directing might have helped sell the improbable timelines, but nope, didn't bother. |
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zrnzle500
 Posts: 3767 |
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I don’t know that I agree the timeline represents poor editing or direction in this case. The timeline is only an issue if one assumes that what is happening at the same time on screen is happening at the same time chronologically, when in fact Mori’s portion almost certainly happened well before Mira and Daewi’s. Making it clear that they weren’t happening at the same time or implying it too obviously beforehand would defeat the purpose, which is to create uncertainty about whether they will make it in time for the fight by playing on the assumption that what is happening on screen at the same time was happening at the same time chronologically. It’s a pretty common storytelling device, both within anime and outside it. Yes, it would be unbelievable that all the segments took the same amount of time, but you need to take it to the logical conclusion and not just point out the seeming contradiction. |
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TexZero
Posts: 585 |
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No, but you know who did ? https://youtu.be/rHgxoRz_qC0?t=339 The guy who says he's completely happy with the adaptation being quick and doing it's own thing. It's not me being an apologist for this, i've only paraphrased what the manwha author himself stated so kindly take your own accusations somewhere else. Thanks. |
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AdamW
Subscriber Posts: 19 |
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I mean, if you're okay with it that's great. I'm not gonna tell you you're wrong, ultimately the amount of disbelief you're willing to suspend and the amount of work you're willing to do on behalf of the show is your own call. I'm just saying for me it doesn't wash. I want the show as a bare minimum to do the work of establishing this stuff. That's what I mean about directing and editing: I kinda disagree with you in that I'd say it *wouldn't* be hard to spend a bit of time establishing the timelines to something believable. But the show just didn't bother. OK, we see the very start of Jin's timeline slightly before the other two, but that's it. Everything else is just straight up intercut with no kind of effort to establish a believable overall flow to it. For me at least - that's work I want the show to do. I'd also emphasize that it's not just *any one* incident like this that's the problem really. Like I said, we're anime viewers, there's tropes, we get it. I'm willing to let a few things slide if the show is doing other stuff well. But this show is just becoming a constant cavalcade of nonsense with almost nothing redeeming in it. It's not just that timeline, it's that timeline *and* the explosion resistance *and* the way doppelganger guy's plot seems absurdly over complex given that it's stated goal is to make the tournament go very slightly faster or something? *and* Jin's mega explosion resistance stats *and* all the other stuff we discussed above and the reviewer has discussed over the last few weeks. It just keeps piling up, and getting worse, and there are fewer and fewer good bits to buy enough goodwill for at least this viewer to keep doing all the mental spadework to even remotely buy into the absurd plot that's meant to make us care about any of the fighting that's happening. Even the fights are kinda meh at this point. What was the payoff of this episode in terms of fights if you're willing to do all that mental spadework? Mira's about to lose but then wins because she...decided she really wanted to, and the end of the fight itself is just a standard Two Whooshy Bits Of Light Enter, Only One Leaves. Plus given the track record of this show and the whole "oh they're actually doppelgangers!" thing, does the fight even mean anything at all? Is this whole round going to turn out to be invalid because one of the teams was a bunch of replacements? Cos if so Mira's fight was pointless, and if not, that would be another bunch of extremely hard nonsense to swallow. Then we get about thirty seconds of Mori beating the crap out of a couple of people, which okay, was about the best thing about the episode, but still, it's not a lot. And the grand finale of the whole thing is...his special move upgraded from Kick The Other Person In The Face Really Hard to Kick The Other Person In The Face Really Hard Twice. Woop. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11431 |
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Everybody keeps saying they don't have any reason to care about the 3 mains, but I'm starting to like them, now that they've settled down a bit from just being Broody Boy, Dojo Promo and Fighting Loon avatars. And since I like them now, I'm somewhat invested in their Fight Club adventures.
I guess Mira leveled up and won her fight through the Power of Friendship™ so her sword found her worthy, while Jin was fighting on the fumes of the Power of Being Super Pissed Off™. I'm fine with that. Not sure what the Bathroom Blitz was about. I can wait for that to pay off, if it ever does. And I honestly liked the interlacing of Jin's fights with Doppleganger and Squidward. That just looked cool. |
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FilthyCasual
Posts: 2237 |
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The superlong fightscroll of simultaneous beatdown and the rainbow kick make glorious appearances, I'm satisfied. Five stars.
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