The God of Highschool’s Opening Is WORSE THAN YOU THINK

Let’s just cut to the chase here. No silly intro, no long history lesson or thing I usually do, let’s just jump into it. God of Highschool’s OP is not good. It’s just definitively, in every way possible, not a good opening from every aspect I can think of. It breaks most of what I consider to be the standard for what makes a good opening and it’s a microcosm of the problems that I have with both of the existing Webtoon adaptations by Crunchyroll. That statement in and of itself seems to be a very divisive opinion to begin with, as you’ll find probably as many fans as there are haters of both Tower of God and the God of Highschool, and this criticism of a bad opening has very similarly been levied at TOP, the opening of Tower of God, and while I also think that OP is bad, it’s bad for entirely different reasons than God of Highschool’s, and arguably even with TOP, the problems it does have are very easily fixable, as they mostly just amount to the black screens with plain white text ruining the flow and the drop in the chorus being fairly weak, but without one of those problems, the OP is actually pretty good.

Contradiction by KSUKE featuring Tyler Carter is an entirely different story, and what problems it has as an opening are beyond simple fixes, and the difference in quality between Contradiction to TOP are also reflective of the difference in issues between the mediocre adaptation of Tower of God versus whatever the hell is happening with this mistreated, Beyblade-kicking, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer abomination that Crunchyroll is trying to tell me is God of Highschool. This video, however, is not about the show as a whole, as I’m saving that for later. Rather, I want to point out how this OP being terrible is foreboding for the inherent misunderstanding of the material that the staff has for the original manhwa, but also for the future of Webtoon adaptations as a whole.

So what better place to start than with the song itself?

I don’t really have any strong opinions towards dubstep. I’m fairly neutral on the genre as a whole, but it has to be executed particularly well for me to think anything highly of it. So take what I’m saying less as an attack on dubstep as a genre but with the song itself: the song is irritating. It’s not a good song. It’s a very simple buildup, then it slows down, builds up with vocals and then hits you with a bunch of bwaaahs with a repeat of the same line until the end of the song. It’s probably the most generic example of a dubstep song that you could possibly do, which doesn’t aid it when not only the instrumental is irritating…the lyrics and what the song is about can only be described as generic. I don’t use that term often because I find its usage to be wrong more often than not, but especially in the case of an anime opening, a song about how a guy or girl is hot or cold, yes or no, in or out, up and down and is structured like a song that you would dance to in a club or at your white friend’s birthday party is not the best for an anime opening.

I am a heavy advocate for the importance of lyrics in anime openings, and you can find me talk more in depth about it in this video here. But an anime opening’s lyrics usually tend to say something about the show itself. Take Aruite Ikou! from Winter’s Koisuru Asteroid. The entire crux of the show is that two girls made a promise in childhood to discover and name an asteroid together. By chance, they meet again in highschool as part of the Earth Sciences Club, where the Astronomy and Geology clubs were forced to combine when neither one had enough members. As such, the theme of the show is these two sides, heaven and Earth, learning more about each other and pushing each other to pursue their dreams. And as such, the lyrics for the OP are as follows:

When you look down

When you look up

There’s certainly a future waiting

So let’s keep walking

I don’t want to hold back

To do what I love to do

If you get rid of shyness and worries

The only thing you need is courage

No matter which angle you look at

The world keeps expanding

I want to find what I haven’t seen

Collect the shiny stones

When you look down

When you look up

There’s certainly a future waiting

So let’s keep walking

Along with this, the OP’s visuals match the words and the idea behind the show, separating the two sides until the light of the stars unites their worlds. The instrumental even matches the heartfelt and chill tone of the show. Compare this to the God of Highschool. It’s a story very much, as far as I’ve gotten in the Webtoon which is halfway into Chapter 2 by the time this video comes out, which is well after the events that will likely be covered in the anime (though if it somehow fits Chapter 2 of the manhwa into 12 episodes, it’s the equivalent of adapting over 6 volumes of material into that amount of time which is pretty yikes). The story of the Seoul God of Highschool tournament is about this inherent love people have for the martial arts they perform and if they do so for their own sake as opposed to justifying it for the sake of others. That’s why you see Jin Mori being the strongest out of everyone as he uses his Renewal Taekwondo for the sake of what he alone wants to accomplish with all of his heart. This is contrasted in Daewi Han, who is fighting to get money for his friend’s recovery, and Mira Yu, who fights to find someone to inherit her family’s sword style. So you would think that the OP’s lyrics would have to do with something along those lines: the love of fighting or the drive to achieve one’s goal…but Contradiction instead is just:

You make it look easy

I’m thinking hard right now

‘Cause I know that you want me

From the inside out

You got me speechless

Opening my mouth

I was keeping it secret

But the word got out

You’re fast, then you’re slow

Why you cold, then you’re forward?

You’re luring me out now

‘Til your walls come down

Yes, then you’re no

But I’m not letting go

I’ll be your contradiction

I’ll be your contradiction

I’ll be your contradiction

I’ll be your contradiction

I’ll be your contradiction

I’ll be your contradiction

You’re fast, then you’re slow

Why you cold, then you’re forward?

You’re luring me out now

‘Til your walls come down

Yes, then you’re no

But I’m not letting go

I’ll be your contradiction

I can’t tell you what these lyrics have to do with anything regarding that theme. Is the singer talking to the desire they have? But how is Jin a contradiction? Is it talking about the contradiction of their ideals? Well, the subject of the song is too vague to the point where that’s not entirely clear and the only logical explanation is simply that the song itself is just a dance song that they turned into an anime OP. None of the main three are inherently romantically involved with each other, and even the plot of episode 4 is strictly unrelated to any type of romantic desire, so there is just an inherent lack of meaning in the song’s lyrics themselves.

This isn’t even a problem with Tower of God’s opening, as that story is about the desire of reaching the top and the perseverance and drive it takes to go there. As such, the lyrics literally talk about that.

I see it clear, the stairway reaching up to the sky

It seems so far away now

I wonder if I’ll ever get all the way to the end

But it’s a risk I gotta take

I’ll keep on running all day and night

‘Cause even if it kills me

Never let you go, never let you go

I won’t give it up until I see the light, I go

Tell me something, how much higher can we go from here? We changing the game

And they all wanna know if this only a phase

Don’t have the answer but we keep on climbing, breaking boundaries and setting the pace

And we ain’t never gonna stop until the world’s our stage

Yeah, you might say that it’s impossible

Stronger together, we’ll turn it into probable

And in the darkest shadows we’ll be shining, uh

So hold on tight ’cause we KO every single fight

I see it clear, the stairway reaching up to the sky

It seems so far away now

I wonder if I’ll ever get all the way to the end

But it’s a risk I gotta take

I’ll keep on running all day and night

‘Cause even if it kills me

Never let you go, never let you go

I won’t give it up until I see the light, I go

No turning back

Go up

I’m not gonna fall

I’ll rise ’til I reach the sky

Go up

Never let you go, never let you go

I won’t give it up until I see the light, I go

If you think the lack of meaning in the lyrics is a problem alongside the terrible instrumental, you’ll find the visuals to be infinitely more frustrating. All of the animation present in this OP, minus this one section in the middle, is directly ripped from the first two episodes with different After Effects filters and graphics flying everywhere. This wouldn’t be a problem if this wasn’t the first thing you saw when watching the show and then everything you saw in this OP just happened again in the show but in a normal color palette. Not only do these cuts of animation not correlate with the lyrics, they also don’t tell you anything about the personalities of each of the characters. You never get that sense of Mira’s airheaded yet brutal and scary attitude or Daewi’s chill and caring nature. You barely get a sense for what Jin’s personality is, which isn’t helped when he’s the one who lip syncs the funny “I’ll be your contradiction” line when he’s literally the most straightforward in terms of personality in the entire cast. Speaking of that lip sync, the line is very obviously sung as if he’s belting it out or bopping his head, but Jin’s just standing there as his mouth is the only thing he’s moving…as his hand slowly reaches towards the screen like the one meme. In fact, arguably it only does a good job of showing the personalities of the wrestler girl and the baseball bat boy whose name I’m not gonna attempt to pronounce. 

I don’t have an issue with using shots from the show if it’s done so in a creative way. The English openings of the Pokemon anime do this well because the shots themselves are used creatively and vary in ways that show the many facets of the show and its cast as a whole. Even the usage of After Effects isn’t a problem either. The World God Only Knows, Blend S and Eden of the East have some of the most creative visuals I have ever seen in most anime OP’s, with the World God Only Knows being a masterclass in creative presentation that also ties into the meaning of the show itself. Even something like the Asterisk War’s OP has far better usage of this type of execution, along with the fact that AssWar uses ENTIRELY NEW ANIMATION for the sake of the opening. But the visuals in the God of Highschool OP, from the random text that shows up on the screen that just says battle and go don’t really say anything, and the entire piece just feels put together for the sake of having an opening.

Generic is a word I hate using but have to use when describing Contradiction, because even the way it’s paced and put together is so by the numbers and without any care to the meaning of the story it’s attached to, you can literally replace the song with anything and it still works. I have a bigger video on my alt if you wanna see that, but I also had an entire Twitch stream where all we did was replace the song and every single thing we tried worked. Follow me on twitch btw, it’s twitch.tv/watthewut. Because of the structure of both the song and the visuals for the OP, there is no clearly defined buildup or chorus that a normal anime OP would have, and thus just by replacing the song, you are almost guaranteed something will match the timing because where the chorus hits in any other OP can fit anywhere. In fact, there are two points in Contradiction that feel like where a chorus would usually go, and that’s nine times out of ten where the other songs will sync up.

The haphazard production of Contradiction is very frightening for any potential anime adaptation of a Webtoon, because there is this very clear lack of specific care or even understanding of the heart and meaning of the story it is trying to tell. And trust me, this OP is just an example of the problems the show has as an adaptation. Oh BOY does this adaptation have problems, and this isn’t the last you’ll see me talk about these problems. I’m currently working on a breakdown of what’s going wrong with Mappa’s adaptation and why I’m scared for the future of Webtoon and Crunchyroll works, because this is how the community is going to view these stories from now on, and as someone who really likes the manhwa, God of Highschool deserved better than this, and I’m honestly just disappointed.