The God of High School First Impressions

“That’s right… I heard a commissioner was injured by one of the participants he recruited.”

Look, you can’t blame me for going into this one with low expectations, right? The amount of deja vu that I had going into The God of High School was immense. Here we have a competition show based on a webtoon that has Crunchyroll involved in the production and uses a rather generic title which invokes “God” where the participants are promised that, should they win, any wish they have will be granted. Frankly, the key factor which sets The God of High School apart from Tower of God, at least on paper, is that The God of High School seems a lot more generic. Rather than featuring various bizarre races all competing for the power of a mystical tower, The God of High School features a bunch of teenagers fighting for the power of rich people. However, The God of High School is able to sidestep its presumptive shortcomings by being completely and wholeheartedly insane.

Our story focuses on Jin Mori, a high schooler who… actually, outside of his name, I don’t really know much about him. He seems a bit simpleminded, but, beyond that, it’s hard to say. He spends most of this first episode chasing after a motorcycle on his bicycle, and it’s hard to pay too much attention to subtle character beats when there is a high speed chase going on between a purse snatcher on a motorcycle and a wacky high schooler on a bicycle. There is a line that separates dumb, uninteresting series like The Ones Within from dumb series that are filled with insanity and spectacle like Killing Bites. While it may not contain the lurid and exploitative quality of the second title, I was pretty sure The God of High School would fall into that second category by the time I was just a few minutes in. You see, Jin has been selected to take part in the preliminaries for a nationwide competition between students who possess strong physical capabilities. Spectacle alone isn’t enough to get me on board with a series, but this series compliments it with a fun grouping of characters right out of the gate, and tops it all off with some strong comedic delivery. I’m sticking around for this one.

It seems Studio MAPPA is here to bring their A-game. I was initially thrown off by the character designs, as Jin’s weird eyes seemed like an unnecessary visual flourish, and I wasn’t a fan of how everyone’s noses were a bit redder than the rest of their faces like they had all been dipping into the sauce when no one was looking. That being said, once the characters really get moving, MAPPA’s influence could be felt more strongly. Much of this first episode is kinetic and frantic. There is some beautiful animation on display here and it is joyous to watch. It also does a great job of complimenting the show’s comedic sensibilities. Watching one of our female leads, Yu, fangirl out over a bunch of muscular guys only to have a bicycle wheel come crashing through her various hearts and into her face is comedic gold, and there are ‘blink and you miss it’ moments sprinkled all throughout this first episode. Even the shameless branding of having Crunchyroll and Webtoons as the sponsors of the God of High School tournament got a laugh out of me. This seems like it’s going to be a lot of fun.

Before I wrap up, a few Notes and Nitpicks:

• You can’t imagine the number of times I started to write Tower of God instead of The God of High School during this review. I look forward to the inevitable Tower of God of High School crossover.
• The OP isn’t really anything to write home about. It could have just as easily accompanied the subpar competition series that I initially assumed it would be.
• This show is so insane that they threw in a line about injecting all of the participants with nanomachines that will allow them to recover from any injury and I didn’t even bat an eye at the absurdity.
• I’m pretty sure Jin is just Taichi from Digimon, but with weird eyes.