Summary
“fear/SIX” feels like The God of High School getting its second wind, putting its main characters on the same page and fleshing out its worldbuilding in a way that suggests plenty of potential going forwards.
This recap of The God of High School season 1, episode 6, “Fear/six”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
The thing I was thinking all throughout The God of High School episode 6, “fear/SIX”, is that I hope all the people who weren’t entirely sold on the show stuck around for this installment. That isn’t to say it was the most exciting episode, since it wasn’t, or that it featured the best fights since it hardly featured any at all; but from here I think you can see in the distance where The God of High School is heading, as its worldbuilding expands outwards, its stakes begin to rise, and its core relationships begin to tighten up. “fear/SIX” wasn’t the best episode in and of itself, but it lets you know pretty clearly that the best episodes are coming.
Part of this is in how it reinvents the tournament format. Now that the regional primaries are over, the top three fighters in each are joining together as a team to take on all comers in the national tournament proper; that means, after a quick playoff scrap, Mira gets to join Mori and Daewi in representing Seoul, uniting all three main characters with a singular purpose. And they’ll need that kind of unity since what’s cooking the background becomes more complex than ever.
For instance, Mujin introduces the concept of “the Key”, a title that will ultimately be assumed by one of the fighters, though what exactly the key is and indeed what it unlocks remain nebulous. Also searching for the key are a secretive organization known as Nox, which I think are different to the other secretive organization that we’ve seen lurking in the background until now, and Mujin also calls on a bunch of legendarily powerful fighters known as “The Six”, just to complicate matters further. There’s a whole bunch of juicy worldbuilding here, and The God of High School episode 6 seems to be preparing us to unpack it.
That’s the explicit purpose of an episode like “fear/SIX”, which aside from one short fight featured next to no action but introduced and juggled so many new concepts – and so much potential – that you hardly noticed. In many ways, in expanding concepts that have already been hinted at and bringing formerly rivalrous characters together to compete on the same team, it’s rewarding those who have stuck with the Crunchyroll Original until now. It’s assuring you that there’s much more to come than what we’ve already seen. Far from running out of steam, this is the show getting its second wind.
