English Dub Review: The God of High School “anima/force”

Overview:

It’s all gas and no brakes as Mori, Daewi, and Mira head into the national round of the God of High School Tournament. Their team faces some impressive opponents that cover the entire spectrum and make sure to test each of them in different ways. While Mori’s team fights to progress through nationals, those that pull the strings behind the tournament find themselves engaged in just as much combat. Commissioner 6 faces the wrath of Nox’s Drake and this tense showdown slowly builds into an all-out war between Nox and The Six.

Our Take:

The God of High School remains an anime that’s very hard to predict. It advertises itself as a typical tournament series, but just when it feels like the series is going to deliver on some action it will take a curious detour to something else. “anima/force” is another episode that’s very emblematic of the feeling that God of High School doesn’t know exactly what kind of series it wants to be. Now that Mori and company have progressed into the national round of the God of High School Tournament it seems very likely that this will be an episode that’s full of fighting and competition. “anima/force” technically fulfills those expectations, but it goes about its battles in very surprising ways that are bound to cause some understandable frustration.

The God of High School has previously featured uses of charyeok and identified it by name, but “anima/force” is the first time that it actually provides some greater context for the force of energy, and it’s considerably creepy. It’s explained that the use of charyeok is actually borrowing these special powers from exceptional beings known as Greater Gods. The God of High School also works in some unsettling NERV-like ambition with how the God of High School Tournament seems like it wants to “transcend human understanding.” It wants to turn basic fights into the grand purpose of humanity as if humans are on the cusp of extinction and warring against evolution.

“anima/force” is by far an improvement over past episodes, but this is still a series that plays by its own rules and there’s something to respect about that. However, it often feels like The God of High School is afraid that they’re not adapting enough material and so they try to overstuff each entry. “anima/force” is easily the busiest episode of the entire series, but it’d be interesting to see how this material works if it were spread out across more episodes. If this were Dragon Ball or Yu Yu Hakusho then each of these three fights would be given their very own episode rather than combined into one. “anima/force’ is a very fun time, but it’s hard to deny that letting this material breathe more wouldn’t improve it on several levels. As it stands, The God of High School is just happy to check off certain items from its narrative checklist and make sure that it covers as much as possible. That works here, but that’s not always going to be the case.