Post — Aaron Ngo

Major Spoilers are included in this Webtoon review. Please read with caution.

The God of High School’s “Sage Realm Arc” misfired about halfway through, but they sort-of stuck the landing for the next arc. I was disappointed to see how the whole structure strongly resembled Naruto’s “Fourth Shinobi World War Arc”, but before I lose myself listing off the negatives that happened, let’s talk about the positives at least, starting with the evil organization that was working deep in the shadows during the first two volumes of the series.

The main antagonist group—known as Nox—became a real threat after the events of the “Nationals Arc” and publicly blamed The God of High School participants in addition to the Judges for recent terrorist attacks against Seoul, South Korea—particularly the organizer of the G.O.H. Tournament, Park Mu-Bong. Nox fronted as a “good company”.

Nox’s hierarchy from bottom to top—follower, priest, bishop, and then King—and their desire for world domination were also established during the “Sage Realm Arc”. This was a huge positive that I appreciated in addition to how Judge R—the blond guy that Jin Mo-Ri fought against in episode 1 and the traitor—rose to the rank of Bishop. I really wished Jin Mo-Ri and Judge R fought each other during this arc, but the showdown between Judge Q and Judge R would suffice.

Episodes 119 through 124 were setting-up the adventure into the other world known as the Sage Realm. Jin Mo-Ri and the other G.O.H participants were supposed to break into their respective teams to achieve certain objectives like restoring Jin Mo-Ri’s original memories as The Monkey King, collecting pieces of Park II-Pyo’s “The Key”, and rescuing Park Mu-Bong from Nox. All of this quickly fell apart due to their battle against Nox interfering with their travel through the dimensional gate.

Episodes 125 through 128 centered around Jin Mo-Ri, Yoo Mi-Ra, and Han Dae-Wi exploring the Sage Realm—meeting the monkey people and learning about their world—and encountering the False Monkey King, who possessed the gourd harboring Jin Mo-Ri’s past memories. I enjoyed this aspect of the arc, and how Jin Mo-Ri battled against the False Monkey King without really caring about proving he was the real deal. Jin Mo-Ri simply wanted to reclaim the gourd and his memories first.

Once Uma—the King of the Minotaurs—was introduced into the series, she started to hog the spotlight for a good duration of this arc when she started battling Bishop Byron, the “main antagonist” after he stabbed the False Monkey King in the back. This was where my negativity and association with Naruto started to seep into my back of my mind. There was antagonist after antagonist that kept taking over as “main antagonist” throughout this arc, which made the pacing somewhat out of control and the story hard to follow. The God of High School had this pacing issue before in previous arcs, and I hoped the author would’ve fixed this problem by now but… Sadly, that wasn’t the case.

In addition, the other characters were screwed over in the power scale—particularly Yoo Mi-Ra and Han Dae-Wi. They weren’t able to defeat Priest-level opponents.

My biggest complaint was Jin Mo-Ri’s diminished role toward the end of this arc. He disappeared in episode 140 and didn’t return until the end of the arc. That was a major issue that bothered me because it tied into how everyone else was made weak in his absence. In addition, Yoo Mi-Ra was wrongly characterized in an episode—acting like a useless Sakura from Naruto when she was defeated by a Priest-level opponent. It was pretty dumb.

Park II-Pyo’s role in the “Sage Realm Arc” also took a backseat as he was learning to understand “The Key” and his connection to the Nine-Tails Guardian, not making an appearance with his new direct contract power until the arc was almost over alongside Baek Seung-Chul, who had also made a direct contract with King Uma.

Overall, I think I miss the simple fights from the earlier arcs. The borrowed powers broke the series’ unbalanced power scaling—unfortunately in DBZ fashion—and the pacing and unneeded plot twists—antagonist after antagonist—caused the story to feel uneven at numerous times. I was getting the hang of the story’s convoluted plot, but it didn’t change how convoluted it had gotten over this arc. I’ll read “Second Great War Arc”, but I might take a break from the series afterwards. I have more than enough to go on for the anime coming in July 2020.

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