#The God of High School manga | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

neonscandal · 2 years

Text

9 Anime to Watch if You Want to Feel Like This 👇🏾

At the heart of everything, anime (and manga) is an expressive art form worthy of being appreciated. If you're looking to break your art block or perhaps you just want something scintillating to look at, these short series/movies are worth a view.

Promare (movie) - Studio: Trigger and XFLAG

Trippy dippy effects and uncommonly contrasting color palettes (triads and squares), this action movie is dazzling and the character design, for some reason, reminds me of something retro that I’m having trouble putting my finger on. The movie logo for the film is a nod to Akira for sure. The film focuses on the hunt for flame wielding mutants who are believed to be a danger to themselves and others. Kind of like Fire Force but with mechas.

Sub/Dub | HBO Max

The God of High School (series) - Manwha by Yongje Park, Studio: Mappa

This was actually one of the first anime I watched upon getting back into anime and was the first indication of how far animation and design had come since my last nerd phase ended in like 2005/2006. The more I caught up, the more I realized a lot of my favorite projects were animated by Mappa which is no surprise. I chose to include TGHS for its brevity (to meet the bite size requirement for these recs) but also I adored the character design (which was a departure from shows I’d watched previously) and the storyline focuses on the action you can only get during training arcs or tournament arcs in your favorite shonen shows. This was a fun watch that accomplished that and forged a friendship you root for in an abridged format.

Sub/Dub | HBO Max

Devilman Crybaby (series) - Manga: Gou Nagai, Studio: Science SARU

So many simps for Devilman Crybaby so I had to see for myself. The series is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea unless you like your tea topped with titillating carnage, fornication and light body horror. The story is dark and debaucherous as main character Fudo evolves into Devilman having merged with a demon. The whole series is a sad and lonely trip that oscillates between the banal depiction and color of “everyday life” and the saturated and starkly contrasted psychedelic scenes of the underbelly of a demonized/sinful subculture. The series explores the beauty and hideousness of human nature and our tendency to cannibalize those that stand against mob prejudice and mentality.

Sub/Dub | Netflix

Bubble (movie) - Manga: Erubo Hijihara, Studio: Wit Studio

On this list, you’ll probably find more than a few recommendations that have a water or space element simply because of how enchanting I find them to be. Bubble is a modern retelling of The Little Mermaid’s traditional story and it has gorgeous animation that translates in its action scenes as well as in the more delicate details.

Sub/Dub | Netflix

FLCL (series) - Studios: Gainax, Production IG, Signal.MD, REVOROOT, NUT

Based on that lineup of studios, you can probably imagine the chaos that is FLCL and still not come close. Artistically, it’s interesting? But this show and each of its iterations really shines for its innovative and unexpected concept that I’m not sure is ever truly clear. It’s just weird and expressive in a way that makes sense when you’re coming into yourself. How it can be raw and awkward and difficult to confront. I won’t say that the show is stylistically avant-garde but it manages to animate and bring into fruition that discomfort for the viewer and I think that’s the goal.

Sub/Dub | Hulu

Nanbaka (series) - Manga: Shou Futamata, Studio: Satelight

Over saturated is an UNDERSTATEMENT. The flamboyant and garish character designs paired with scintillating visuals despite taking place in a prison adds to the humor in this series about a group of prisoners’ attempts to escape an inescapable prison. It’s made even funnier because, usually in shows with superpowers or supernatural elements, they’re generally explained somehow through exposition. Nope, not here just powerz✨ it has an ever present silly and fun veneer masking an underlying harshness that surfaces every so often. All in all, the series has the potential to be a Haha that Ends in Tears (*ahem* Assassination Classroom).

Sub/Dub | Crunchyroll

Ponyo (movie) - Studio: Studio Ghibli

I’m surprised this is only the second water focused show so far but no list about beautiful anime would be complete without at least one Studio Ghibli feature. Ponyo is another adaptation of the Little Mermaid that allows for dizzying imagery of marine life (as above) that also features a signature Ghibli food scene (uh, yea, slide me a bowl of that ham ramen, Sosuke). Something about the dulcet color palettes of Studio Ghibli films always feels like home on a rainy day with a comforting bowl of soup.

Sub/Dub | HBO Max

Weathering With You (movie) - Studio: CoMix Wave Films

Speaking of beautiful food, CoMix is another studio that just gets it right ✨ The way they capture rain, light, fireworks, skylines… just dumbfounding. This piece, in particular, is a perfect deluge into magical realism especially in moments of Hina’s transcendence. The film follows a runaway who strides to start a life in Tokyo and meets his very own Sunshine Girl. “Your Name” is also worth checking out and hails from the same studio but isn’t available without buying or renting (and I try to keep recs relatively convenient and inexpensive).

Sub/Dub | HBO Max

Blue Period (series) - Manga: Tsubasa Yamaguchi, Studio: Seven Arcs

OKAY. Maybe I’m cheating with this one. An art appreciation recommendation about art? Is this subversive or the opposite therein? Don’t care. The premise of this show and what lends to its beauty is that it’s about art. Follow aimless Yaguchi as he falls down the rabbit hole of oil painting in his second year of high school then works his ass off to close the gap between himself and other college hopefuls trying to get into a competitive public art college. The way the animation takes care to provide texture for each medium that’s experimented with. TBH, the show made me nostalgic for when I was in traditional art classes at college. This show had me shopping for drawing benches with back support at my big age. So if you’re experiencing a block, fall in love with art again by checking this show out.

Sub/Dub | Netflix

338 notes · View notes

regarding-stories · 3 months

Text

Literally hard to finish: The World God Only Knows

There are some shows that are hard to finish for various reasons - you don't like where the plot is going, you don't like a twist, or the character arcs, or even the characters themselves; for some reason quality dropped, etc. But some shows are literally hard to finish - because you have to chase their content across multiple media to do so. Astoundingly, this is not always easier in the age of the internet!

This review will contain spoilers. The show aired ten years ago, but is still popular enough to be retained and recommended on Crunchyroll. (Or to have animated GIFs here on tumblr.)

The basic premise of the first two seasons is as following: There's a hell that keeps particularly bad souls in check. "Some" escaped. Keima is a guy who played a lot of dating sims, he's an over-the-top obsessed gamer known as "god of conquest" on the internet. One day a "demon" called Elshie "tricks" him into signing a contract that requires him to capture loose souls or lose his head.

Over the course of the first two seasons Keima then "conquers" girls through his knowledge of dating sims - basically figuring out the central problem for each that "caused an emptiness in her heart" to appear to allow the "loose soul" in, and then finding a way to fill that heart with a romantic moment that helps them over that emptiness and drive the soul out for capture.

This sounds like the setup of a harem show, but the first two seasons avoid this through a tiny twist - once conquered, the girls don't remember the key part and that they fell in love with Keima Katsuragi in the first place. So each girl gets to stand on her own and gets her own story without there being a pre-determined "number one." Episodes don't match up with girls, instead each story unfolds at its own length and pace which works quite nicely. Side plots fill us in on the true extent of Katsuragi's gaming obsession, how New Hell works, and so on.

It's an enjoyable, light show, damn funny, good characters, and with a whiff of romance.

And then...

Let's Do The Time Warp Again

If you're very confused starting with season 3 you're not the only one. We finish season 2 with Keima having "conquered" 9 girls and us seeing a preview of five more characters to appear. At the beginning of season 3 we are informed that it's 14 now, and characters appear we haven't seen yet while the plot begins to focus on them. Also, you get flashbacks of conquests that haven't happened on-screen - what is going on?

The production of anime series in general used to be focused on promoting well-selling manga. Especially in light romance and similar genres you would usually get one season and that's it. This is gradually changing. But "The World God Only Knows" is an odd case. They basically skipped their original plans for season 3. So you'll only get to know what became of one of the girls "previewed" at the end of season 2.

To make this even more confusing, the story unfolding in season 3 had already started with two OVA (direct-to-video) episodes not included on Crunchyroll. So you're starting in the middle of things, having to pierce things together. They simple cut an entire season's worth of content and the beginning.

And this creates even more problems. But we'll see that after we look at season 3.

Where We Go Off The Rails

So, let's review what this series was for 2 seasons: A light, episodic show where each installment can largely stand by itself and actions in one part have few consequences in others.

Season 3 throws this over board entirely. Childhood friend Tenri is host to a goddess named Diana, and Keima has to find 5 of her sisters among his previous conquests to protect them from a scheme by an evil organization trying to bring back Old Hell, appropriately and cringeworthily called "Vintage."

And girls that host goddesses remember the previous conquest, blowing the original setup out of the water. The start is Kanon, the idol girl, who publicly declares her love for Keima for all the school to know, acting as the inciting incident that allows the protagonist to spot the goddess hosts, as they're all kinda mad at him for neglecting them and getting confessed to by another, VERY popular girl.

Quite frankly, this shows an ugly side of the protagonist. Yes, he tries to save everyone. But he comes across as even more calculating and manipulative across this season as he tries to balance finding and "conquering" four more girls among the possible candidates.

To further complicate things, two of them are friends, Ayumi and Chihiro. Really close. Like "I'm willing to stand aside for you and support you." Keima goes really far with Chihiro only to realize in the last moment that she doesn't remember the conquest. She is not a host! She just fell in love with him, a teenage crush.

This is a defining moment and a moral dilemma. What will Keima do? He doesn't take advantage of Chihiro's feelings, but he hurts her horribly to get her out of the way. He comes across as cruel and cold at this point, a culmination of the whole trying to act detached and just conquering girls for their own good.

At this point we can't see inside Keima. Even his thoughts are tightly guarded. What's even worse, in order to save the goddess inside Ayumi he has to enlist Chihiro's help. And she helps, but she also retaliates against Keima. But she stops short of making his job impossible. That establishes her character very effectively. She's hurting, but she's not consumed by jealousy or her hurt.

The whole season concludes by the goddesses stopping Vintage's plan for hell on earth. Chihiro actually notices the goddess wings that Keima's "love" brought out in her friends as she plays a concert with them on the school festival stage. She cries over her hurtful youth romance.

And we see Keima crying over regretting what he did to Chihiro, the only girl he ever truly feels sorry for.

And then it all ends.

The fuck what??

Chasing The Wild Goose

The makers of the anime royally screwed up. They skipped an actual season 3 to make the season they probably thought had more potential. But. When they ended that, they were stuck with a series that hadn't finished yet. They never made another season. Though admittedly the manga itself finished half a year later, so maybe that's not the reason.

But if you know only the anime you have missed out on not only the content that season 3 points at, you also don't know how it ends. What's with Chihiro, dammit? That's all I wanted to know.

This is where you have to turn to the manga. And there you have another problem. No electronic version. Yes, somehow this manga only sold as paperback. Can't find it on ebook sites.

Good luck scouring the used book market for old volumes. It's unclear why no ebook marketing took place, why they can't be had anywhere. But what's clear is that at this point you can't even get money to the author as used sales only shuffle money around between people that already bought the book and people who can't buy the book any other way. Isn't capitalism great?

Anyway.

How It Ends (Eventually)

Now, the goddess arc was... debatable. It infuses action elements and an ongoing plot and recontextualizes previous parts of the story in order to create a new story. Or you could say: It recycles the characters of one kind of story for a different story.

While that new story is okay, it's real redeeming quality for me is the potential "Chihiro ending" that's written on the wall during anime season 3. But before we can get to that, we have to wade through the content of a potential season 4 that never materialized, the final arc.

What do you do if you beat the big bad? You reveal the bigger bad behind the lesser bad. And behind Vintage is Satyr. What unfolds next is a story that almost entirely leaves the world the series built before behind as Keima travels ten years to the past.

The main character of the final arc is the mind of 17 year old Keima in his own 7 year old body. Conveniently for the drama the goddesses didn't tell him why he was sent back. So he time-loops through some really unnecessary stuff so that we can learn why.

I think the final arc isn't that great. After all, it leaves the premise almost entirely behind, but it gives us peeks at some of our heroines at age 7 (Ayumi and Chihiro, of course), it also introduces some new characters. What unfolds, basically, is that Keima has to set up its own timeline in the past. So 17 year old Keima is, in a sense, his own grandfather. (No, he isn't. LOL.) Actually he's the instigator of events that lead to all the goddesses being in girls at his school that he will link up with in the future.

I still was a bit glad when it was over. I mean, after revealing that Elsie, the hapless demon, was secretly the personification of the Ultimate Weapon... Lord...

But we do get a decent enough happy end. Keima confesses to Chihiro who blows him off. But they end up together as she actually is in love with him - the only girl to fall for him before he even started his machinations.

There's also a sad note. All the goddess hosts retain their feelings and have to come to terms with them. This is hard on Tenri who not only loved him for ten years straight, but who hosts a goddess that's also crushing on Keima. So there's a bit of heartbreak. But somehow it all feels right.

While the foreshadowing of the ending only truly started in season 3, the romance between Keima and Chihiro doesn't seem random. It doesn't feel like a last minute twist. It already started to feel a bit like this might happen during Chihiro's conquest in season 2. While Keima tried being her Cyrano to get the other boy, she just so naturally fell into the flow of talking to him instead. She felt like the only girl who doesn't entirely depend on a big, dramatic setup to just chat. Even more convincing, she does what some teenage girls do, though likely at a much younger age than 17. She teases her crush. Right from the start. Calls him dweeb and such.

So, looking back at the series, they have a satisfying dynamic. Unlike some series I know... As I said before, a romantic story needs to clue us in on who has feelings and chemistry with whom. Even if they don't end up together because of problems along the way. But romance is about the feelings you have and show but maybe not act on. It's not about surprise twist endings and off-screen character development. And on this count "The World God Only Knows" qualifies as a decent love story. We see our main couple clash and quarrel, but we can believe the ending.

Now, whether if the two final arcs were really good... They were decent. They lost most of the innocent charm and goodwill for the MC built in the first two seasons. They did build a grander story and expanded the setting, but arguably so late in the series (technically a season 4 and 5) that it wouldn't be surprising if part of the audience simply opted out. But they're done well and I enjoyed reading it enough to stick it through. Though admittedly, skipping to the very last chapter would have done, too.

Finality

There's one benefit to the time travel arc, though.

Elsie/Elsea/Elshie gets to pick her own ending. The demon orphan that not only adores her "Nii-sama" older brother but also her adoptive mom reinvents herself in the time stream as the younger child of Keima's mom and dad, undoing the separation she caused between the parents to fit in as the illegitimate child. (Played for laughs, but oh boy...) As befitting a time travel story she's always been there and spent not only all her life at her brother's side, she will always remain his sister Eri and have a loving family. That must have been her one true desire, given that she became human for it. I mean, she spent 300 years in hell on cleaning duty before. (Immortality is not really that sweet deal for some.)

We also learn that their duo was the only hunter team to successfully employ love as means to fill gaps in hearts. And without relapses. So maybe our ditzy demon had the best intuition of them all as she made Keima her buddy in saving the world from loose souls.

Give this story a chance, it's among the better long manga. It overstays it's welcome a bit but it does end at a good point. It doesn't reset progress like "My Dress-Up Darling", or, worse, "Rent-A-Girlfriend". It changes what story it is but I don't think it stalled us unduly.

Be prepared to chase it around for the complete picture.

#the world god only knows #anime series #manga series #romantic anime #high school anime #chihiro best girl

5 notes · View notes