English Dub Review: The God of High School “FOX/GOD”

Overview:

With the God of High School Tournament now in everyone’s rear view mirror, Mori and company get a better opportunity to focus on the current danger: the ongoing apocalypse. Everyone works together to keep the thousands of monsters at bay and reduce destruction as much as possible. Even though everyone’s united against this common front, Jegal Taek still uses the opportunity to secure the Key and prove to the world that he should be the one that’s running it. Mori and Ilpyo attempt to neutralize Taek as the rest of the world just tries to stay alive.

Our Take:

Hey, remember when The God of High School was still a simple anime about a fighting tournament?

“FOX/GOD,” the penultimate episode of The God of High School’s first season does its best impression of Tokyo Ghoul or Neon Genesis Evangelion as the world descends into chaos. “The God of High School has been frenetic in most aspects of the series, but this is particularly true when it comes to the enemies that have been faced. Part of The God of High School’s charm when the anime first started was that the different human fighters all represented unique styles of real martial arts and fighting techniques. The super-powered abilities of charyeok has slowly become a more dominant force in battles, but “FOX/GOD” moves The God of High School even further away from any place of realism. The villains may still technically be humans, but there are endless swarms of monsters that need to be eliminated. It truly does feel like the final act of some alien invasion epic and wile it’s an angle that still works for the anime, it’s just crazy to see how big things have gotten in so little time. If characters can flood the world with monsters this early in the series then it’s hard to imagine how the stakes will manage to be topped as the series moves forward. Events that are this apocalyptic in nature also make Mori’s goal to learn the whereabouts of his grandfather feel increasingly pointless.

The God of High School has been in a difficult position during the second half of its first season. The series now indulges in endless action and mindless destruction right after it’s cut short so many fight sequences and earlier opportunities for combat. This should technically be exactly what the audience has wanted, but its on such a gigantic and impersonal scale that it can often just wash over the audience. There are demons, fire-breathing dragons, nuclear missile raids, giant zombies, and golden Gods. It’s the same problem as to why a horde of aliens in The Avengers can end up having less impact than one good villain. Granted, MAPPA doesn’t hold back with the animation for this attack and “FOX/GOD” makes sure that all of this looks incredible, but it’s still easy to disconnect from it.

Another area where The God of High School has struggled is in its approach to the series’ grander lore and the mysterious characters, like the Nox organization, that are connected to it. The anime has been quite successful with a “less is more” strategy to this material, but now pandora’s box has been opened and this episode feels like it’s drowning in mythology. It throws so much at the audience and at a relentless pace that it just feels like big, random evil. At one point in the episode a character declares, “What in the world is happening?” and that sentiment is ever-present throughout “FOX/GOD.”.

It’s appreciated whenever The God of High School gets to breathe a little more, but it feels jarring at this point in the season. There at least looks like there will be a slightly more focused approach towards the finale. The anime also could have tried to explore this material in a more creative way, like intercutting this chaos with the final few matches of the tournament as flash-forwards. All of this action competes against itself for focus, but if “FOX/GOD” played around more with format it’d have been a more successful conclusion. It’d help add more variety to these scenes, but also create a genuine sense of mystery over how matters have progressed to this point.

“FOX/GOD” is a big episode that’s very much the first half of a story that will get concluded in next week’s finale. It’s a strange case where this episode would maybe be satisfying in another anime, but here it just speaks to The God of High School’s larger identity crisis. It’s an episode that’s technically entertaining and features the characters at their bravest and best, but it also feels a far cry away from where the series began and a further step towards the show becoming generic. That’s a big problem for an anime that’s so concerned about finding the unique powers that lie in special individuals.