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Last season I promised to release mini analyses of the running anime that piqued my interest/gave us stuff to talk about. Unfortunately life got in the way. It's actually happening this time around. These threads will be updated regularly and may become essays. GOD OF HSPermalink On twitter.com
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It's... It's fine actually. Good even. HuhPermalink On twitter.com
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I saw how much people were hyping up Tower of God. It's not only not good but obviously not good from the first episode. Tower of God doesn't contextualize anything. It's not about anything. They just throw wacky situations at your main cast and hope they stickPermalink On twitter.com
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But God of High School is competently written. The comedy works. It takes some established gags and uses them to build character. Speaking of character we spend 15 minutes getting to know and like them before launching into a high-stakes tournament arc.Permalink On twitter.com
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The action is fantastic and the show looks amazing. I don't have much else to say. Sometimes you're just watching anime made by people who know what they're doingPermalink On twitter.com
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At the beginning we're introduced to a world of corrupt politicians and a government controlled by corporations. Of course, as the democratically elected emperor of weeb antifa this excites me. But themes like that are easier to tease than they are to execute.Permalink On twitter.com
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We'll have to wait and see if the show can deliver on being more than just cool action and quirky charactersPermalink On twitter.com
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Episodes 2 and 3 of God of HS are just good. Don't have much else to say. The fight choreography is outstanding and the writing is "efficient" (it gets you to care about characters by introducing just what you need to know about them).Permalink On twitter.com
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It really is just fantastic shonen with a lot of talent, care (and money) thrown at it. Might not update this thread so often until the show does something that changes my general conclusion that this show is just really fucking goodPermalink On twitter.com
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Okay so I'm pretty comfortable in saying The God of High School is one of the best shounen ever made, just from these 5 episodes. If it does its political themes with any of the skill its done its character work thus far it will quite possibly be one of my favorite anime everPermalink On twitter.com
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The first 5 episodes of The God of High School could stand alone as their own season of shounen anime. But it's arc fucking oneOn twitter.com
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I guess, if I wanted to, I could break down the subtles of how fantastic this writing is. How the show masterfully handles set-up and payoff, giving us only what we need to know to get invested at the time.Permalink On twitter.com
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I could talk about how the show looks fantastic, how the martial arts do as much storytelling as the writing, the way the writing is able to play with emotional beats as well as it does comedic ones.Permalink On twitter.com
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But sometimes you just need to sit, and watch. And experience good writing happening to you. And leave with that warm feeling in your chest when you experience a story so masterfully put together all you can really say is "wow"Permalink On twitter.com
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If My Hero Academia's season 2 tournament arc set the bar for good tournament arcs in modern anime, The God of High School just blew that shit out of the damn water. The God of High School is the best at what it does and it's sheer joy watching it happenPermalink On twitter.com
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Damn has it been a month since I updated this thread? I thought it was sooner. Okay so here's the deal, right? I still think this show is very, very, very good. But it's no longer my favorite show this season (Deca Dence), and it's got some flaws I'd like to talk about tooPermalink On twitter.com
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The annoying thing is, God of HS seems to have generated quite the backlash to it. Manhwa fans hyped this show up to high heaven and I personally think there's no shortage of elitists looking to looking to shit on anything too new and too popularPermalink On twitter.com
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I would even go so far as to compare God of HS to SAO in terms of how hate around it is more anime fandom culture war bullshit than actual criticisms that make sense for the show. But God of HS is a LOT better than SAO in basically every aspect so there's that.Permalink On twitter.com
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So the positives: 1. The show is a series of really well-done tournament arcs, and it's best when it sticks to those tournament arcs. God of HS has a really solid rhythm where it'll introduce a character, then, in the space of a scene or two, make them feel real...Permalink On twitter.com
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...only to have them fight our protagonists, who have also been characterized and explored. I think the writers know that a tournament arc is a simple way to get satisfying conflict and resolution, and the writing team has perfected this cycle.Permalink On twitter.com
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2. The fights. A lot of online critics say that GoHS is "just pretty fights" with "no story". This is reductive and borderline racist, actually. Because the fights in GoHS aren't just bright lights and action you can find in any other show...Permalink On twitter.com
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...the fights are culturally informed by various martial arts styles in Korea and elsewhere. The GoHS team has taken the manhwa's premise and turned it into an exploration of culture through martial arts.Permalink On twitter.com
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Side stepping ALL of the visual work and storytelling GoHS does just because you didn't like this or that story element to give the show a 2/10 on MAL shows media illiteracy, in my opinion.Permalink On twitter.com
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Now for the flaws: The God of HS has a bit of a habit with using the pain of its female characters as, like, shock value. It understands that seeing men get hurt is bad, but seeing women get hurt is EVEN WORSE so women get the brunt of the worst scenes.Permalink On twitter.com
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Of course, the only reason why it "feels" worse to see women getting hurt is because we assume they're the weaker gender, which is why it's a bit sexist.Permalink On twitter.com
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Second big flaw: the story outside of the tournament arcs is mediocre. To be clear, I think it does work. There are shows this season that just fail to tell a coherent story and GoHS is not one of them. However it's not the strong suit of the show.Permalink On twitter.com
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I get that we have Nox on one side and Park Mu-Jin on the other, and the two are like fighting for control over God. And I get Park Mu-Jin wants to awaken a Key to destroy God while Nox wants to use God to purge the degenerates from this Earth but like...Permalink On twitter.com
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It's just not compelling? Eh. I care about the tournament, the individual fights, and the story created in the conflict between characters. I don't care about this sacrilegious stuff as muchPermalink On twitter.com
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Like, when Nox summons God with a capital G in the middle of Seoul, is like supposed to be cool? Or intimidating? It feels like invoking God because it's the highest power you can think of and, by definition, the highest stakes But it ends up feeling childishPermalink On twitter.com
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I'm much more interested in the fact that, in the same episode, Jin Mo-Ri picks up his friends' signature techniques, and he needs them to win. Now that was cool!Permalink On twitter.com
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God, like, the concept of a singular higher power, means different things (or even, nothing) to different people. So you can't just invoke the idea and expect it to work in a narrative about high schoolers with spicy Tae Kwon Do skillsPermalink On twitter.com
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So the God of High School. It's over. I really liked this show so let's talk about it.Permalink On twitter.com
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When I wrote my HeroAca article for Anime Feminist, the initial draft I submitted with the editor they assigned me was too long. It was like, way too long.Permalink On twitter.com
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So the head editor (who by the way is a very chill and amazing person), they kind of just started cutting shit? Like throwing out whole paragraphs to get the essay down to size. And I was like "woah woah wait you can't just cut shit the argument doesn't flow anymore".Permalink On twitter.com
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And they, being cool and awesome, told me it was hundreds of words above AniFem's size format. They instead left me to rewrite the essay to be shorter, which I did, and that's what ended up getting published.Permalink On twitter.com
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I mention this story to you because God of High Schools feels like an editor just cutting shit for time, and not necessarily being aware of how that impacts the story.Permalink On twitter.com
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The finale of this show just... makes no logical sense. Up until this point I've been able to follow the story along, even with its revisions and changes and cuts. I've been anchored by the character work of the three protagonists. I've been patient and understandingPermalink On twitter.com
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But then the blue-haired guy ate something called a Key? And this turned him into a baby. And then the baby grew wings.Permalink On twitter.com
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It feels like somewhere along the line, MAPPA gave up. It was too much work to figure out how a story that clearly does not fit into 12 episodes could possibly fit into 12 episodes, so they just blasted you with cool-looking shit and begged and pleaded for more episodesPermalink On twitter.com
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The God of HS has, I think, exposed a flaw in how I critique anime. I tend to see anime as an unfiltered, one-to-one line of communication between the text and me, the viewer. This works for lefty analysis quite well, because we figure out what the show is "saying"Permalink On twitter.com
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However, that's not how anime is made, right? Anime are funded by capitalists who want to make money. They make strategic investments. They give time limits. The workers have their own needs. There are 50 different people competing to add their little piece to the equation.Permalink On twitter.com
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The God of HS isn't well written in the end. But I don't think it's because the writer doesn't know how to write. The parts of the show that I admired in the beginning are all still in tact.Permalink On twitter.com
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The reason why the show doesn't work is because some executive said "this show gets 12 episodes and a massive budget" and someone else said "we're not paying writers to rework the story just cut stuff".Permalink On twitter.com
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Someone somewhere said "it doesn't matter if the story doesn't make any sense. The manhwa has a dedicated fanbase. All we have to do is hold out until the studio gives us more episodes".Permalink On twitter.com
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I don't know how to factor scheduling issues, planning failures, adaptation missteps, and other studio interference into my analysis of anime, which mainly focuses on themes and communication. I've kinda been caught with my pants down here.Permalink On twitter.com
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My recommendation: watch the first 5 episodes. If you're interested, just read the source material. If you're not, then it wasn't for you, and that's okay. With that, the God of HS thread is over. Peace y'allPermalink On twitter.com