Hmmm… I think overall I liked this episode? But it felt pretty choppy and something doesn’t sit right with me, but I can’t put my finger on what it would be. I think it’s the lack of context behind Nox, the commissioners, and just the goal of the tournament as a whole really causes me to feel flat at the end of this episode. With the amount of content that was in this episode and the fast changes between scenes in their contents, this episode certainly felt like it was an in-between episode. One of those where they just had to get everything out in order to move on, rather than giving us enough time to take in what was going on. I probably would have enjoyed this a lot more if the content were spread out between two episodes.
Looking back on the episode, a lot of things happened, but nothing really made an impact. We start out revisiting Mori’s grandfather out in the mountains where one of the cults approach him. The next time we see him, he’s completely destroyed the entire forest and a massive sword has come down from the sky? At this point, I’m not too sure what I should take away from these interactions. Animation wise? Cool as heck! But with the actual dialogue? Well… I’m just confused. Perhaps it’ll make more sense when Nox and Mujin’s group go up against one another in the future, but if it doesn’t clear up soon, I might have to jump into the webtoon to figure out what’s going on. (And personally, I want to wait until after the anime has finished airing to read the source material!)
But aside from that big mystery, there’s been a new development in The God of High School tournament. Namely, it isn’t the end for Daewi and Mira, so they now get to participate in the tournament as well! That’s certainly one way keep our main characters together. Seeing the three of them go about their separate ways for training, daily activities, or to get more information was fairly enjoyable. Mori has an interesting training regiment, but it did bring him to find, supposedly, his new trainer. There isn’t much more to say about that development, aside from the fact that this trainer is also Mujin’s teacher, but I don’t really know how that will affect Mori in the future. Daewi… probably had the least engaging segment of all three of them since he just had a conversation with Mujin about the underlying force. I would have hoped I would have understood more about what was going on… but alas I did not. I’m also just not a fan of how the whole conversation went in keeping him motivated for the tournament. After a pretty solid emotional episode last week to have it just be “lol i need to make sure he rests in peace” probably would have been better left out tbh.
And lastly there’s Mira’s segment. Despite her not actually doing very much, I think her conversation was the most worthwhile at least in the sense to get us attached to the announcer, Sim. I liked that we got to see him in a non-announcer role… but I’ll be honest…. His death felt like nothing more than something added for shock value. We didn’t have the chance to get to know him aside from that conversation with Mira and the brief scene with his wife and child. If anything, I’m surprised they gave him background beyond just being an announcer. But in terms of deaths that didn’t pack a punch for me… the commissioner left me feeling … well nothing. If anything, it was a “oh no! a commissioner???” but we’ve barely had the chance to get to know him – and honestly, up until this episode I really thought Mujin and the commissioners were the target bad guys. But I suppose it brings the hype in for the next episode, so I’ll have to give them credit where credit is due.
Looking back on everything, perhaps I just wasn’t the biggest fan of this episode, and that’s why I feel so weird talking about it. A lot of things were crammed into this episode and I’m still trying to piece things together. But at the same time, there’s enough excitement for me to look forward to next week’s episode, so at least they ended with a bang. I’m excited to see where these new developments will take us in next week’s episode.
