#The God of High School Episode 8 – Close Friends (Review)

“#The God of High School Episode 8 – Close Friends (Review)”

This week’s episode of The God of High School gave a nice balance of fighting and character interaction. Crunchyroll describes the episode as:

The team led by Park Ilpyo, one of the participants considered a top Key candidate, faces the team led by Gwim Gi. Gwim Gi calls upon his charyeok, Jack the Ripper, but Ilpyo uses his antiquated taekkyon fighting style rather than relying on charyeok. Meanwhile, Daewi is suspended from the competition after interfering in a match and hitting Jugok. Mira scolds him, but Mori seems distracted. Something he sees on Ilpyo’s back looks familiar…

I kinda enjoyed this episode, even though I dreaded watching it. I can’t believe I’m letting myself be strung along by this show.

While there isn’t a lot of fighting this episode, I love how clean the animation is for Park Ilpyo and his fights.

That’s the thing. There isn’t much fighting, but the play fight is really good!

The first scene with Ilpyo really highlights how much I miss the energy from episode one’s bike scene.

I like more of the interactions outside the arena where the competitors can flex their powers without having the tournament stakes involved. It makes for a more organic way of showing off their prowess in their interactions.

I cannot agree more. The banter between Park Ilpyo and Jin Mori is brief yet felt very impactful. I hope they do more of this.

I just feel like there’s pressure to try to speed through everything because we’re limited to the episode count.

There are visible limitations but episode 8 does a pretty good job of giving color to the characters.

It felt like Mori, Daewi, and Mira grew more as a team and as individuals this week than in episode 6.

I like how matter-of-fact they were about Daewi being suspended, since it was a direct retread of Mori’s interference in episode 2. The comedy might be the only aspect to benefit from the lightning-fast pacing.

Commissioner Q constantly getting his pay cut will never not be funny to me.

I knew that Park Ilpyo’s backstory was supposed to be tragic, but I laughed anyway because it was so cliche. I guess I’m a monster with an affinity for orphans.

We all know that tragedy is the best comedy.

That was a good flashback. Please protect Park Ilpyo.

Except, it also feels like some of the scenes in this episode could have been in earlier episodes.

Yeah, a ton of the scenes in this episode were flashbacks to expand on things that were only briefly shown in previous episodes. It only makes me wonder why the scenes weren’t properly fleshed out the first time around.

For example, not only do we not know about the puppet power until now, but revealing it for something that isn’t really even plot relevant anymore is a waste of time.

In general, the exposition and storytelling feels very thin. I get the impression that the unfolding plot and the world of this story are painstakingly detailed, and that the author probably put a lot of thought into these details. Unfortunately, it’s all being delivered so awkwardly that I’m left guessing on which details really matter.

My question from last week has been answered, and the answer is “no”.