Post — Aaron Ngo

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

Before I dive into my thoughts on the “World Tournament Arc”, also known as Volume 5: Ragnarök, I need to take a minute and process the Webtoon as a whole. The God of High School had been a wild rollercoaster for the past hundred chapters or so. Devoting two weeks of my life to this series was a true blessing. There were moments when I thought about quitting, but after reading this volume in two days (May 19 to May 20, 2020), I found myself crying at the ending and truly loving The God of High School more than ever.

There were a couple hiccups along the way in Volume 5: Ragnarök, but the character development was mostly stellar. I stressed “mostly” because of my personal opinion on how the three main characters were treated in addition to the whole Jin Mo-Ri and Hui Mo-Ri protagonist situation. Since I had already set myself up there, let’s start with Hui Mo-Ri and his limited character role during the “World Tournament Arc”.

Hui Mo-Ri, clone of the original Jin Mo-Ri, acted as the main protagonist for the first half of this arc. Sadly, this meant Jin Mo-Ri didn’t make his triumphant return to The God of High School until the second half. However, the character development on Hui Mo-Ri’s identity crisis and character drive for individualism made him somewhat compelling.

The first half of the arc centered around the God of High School World Tournament, sponsored this time by King, the leader of Nox. The evil organization’s headquarters was also built and hidden underneath the G.O.H’s stadium, which lead to a plan being laid out by Park Mu-Bong—the original sponsor of The God of High School Tournament—to infiltrate and start war with Nox to stop them from using the bio-energy being gathered from the participants at the G.O.H World Tournament.

King wished to use this bio-energy to find a way to make himself immortal. Instead, the bio-energy gathered was unleashed by Bishop R—a triple agent traitor character—to start the Ragnarök war against literal Gods like Zeus and Satan during the second half of the arc. Bishop R’s backstory was also explored and his motives were sympathetic.

A lot of The God of High School’s plot points—from the previous volumes—were brought into play during this arc, but the writing wasn’t tightened enough to make them super clear for the audience at various times. Even the author confessed—in his Part 5: Afterwords—to making a couple mistakes when it came time to bring everything together.

Honestly, this was still the most emotional volume out of the five I’ve read so far. There were so many well-earned character moments throughout Volume 5: Ragnarök, and the God-tier battles were better-handled compared to the “Sage Realm” Arc’s constant God-tier battles that had no real progress for our three main characters.

Yoo Mi-Ra and Han Dae-Wi were also given much needed-power ups during this arc. The payoff to their character growth was amazing to experience. Han Dae-Wi was finally given the love he deserved in this volume, but the prophecy of him dying almost had me unleashing that Wave of Blue Dragon on the author.

Yoo Mi-Ra had improved tremendously in the first half of the arc, but her absence in the second half was bothersome. Bonus points to the author though for making Han Dae-Wi and Yoo Mi-Ri an official romantic couple without forcing it on us. Their feelings for each other were hinted at since Volume 4: Word Competition.

The God-tier fight scenes were handled—and drawn—a lot better in this arc compared to the “Sage Realm Arc”. There was more balance in the fights. Of course, all the G.O.H. match-ups in the first half were splendid to watch. My favorite in the first half was Team U.S.A.—specifically a ripped off Supergirl character named Anna, whose borrowed power was Thor. Yoo Mi-Ra literally slashed Anna’s lewd Supergirl suit to shreds. What a badass.

For the fight scenes in the second half, I had a lot of fun seeing Han Dae-Wi obliterating Zeus in one single move. While the Gods themselves were one-dimensional characters, they were incredibly powerful and destroyed most of the Earth when they were released from the Heavenly Realm. Jin Mo-Ri Original versus Satan and later Bishop R were amazingly drawn. It was good to see Jin Mo-Ri kicking ass deep in outer space.

Overall, The God of High School seemed ready to conclude. Then, a major plot twist involving Park Mu-Bong and Jin Tae-Jin occurred. This led to the last two episodes of the arc exploring a 17-year time jump. The characters have grown, and Volume 6 RE: A Match with Gods—the final volume of the series—had been set-up. As a result, I will be taking a break from reading and reviewing the Webtoon until the final volume concludes. Thanks for reading all my Webtoon reviews up until this point, and I’ll see you when it’s all over.

RUB-A-DUB!

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