There are few franchises in the world that are as popular as Dragon Ball Z. In the anime/manga world, it is considered by just about everyone to be the "godfather" of the medium, especially in the shonen genre. Because of this, many people have tried to recreate the magic of the series, usually through rip-offs that fail to ever stand on their own and ultimately fail.
The God of High School however has managed to do just that in the best way possible. At first glance, the two series don't have too much in common, but it is only after reading The God of High School that the similarities become clear. Thankfully, they only stay somewhat similar rather than evolve into examples of pseudo-plagiarism like what happened with many other series that came before.
The first thing that needs to be said is that the protagonists of both series are both based on Sun Wukong from the mythical story, Journey to the West. Son Goku from Dragon Ball was not only named after him (the Japanese name for Sun Wukong is actually Son Goku), but Mori Jin from The God of High School was literally Son Wukong reborn. Mori and The God of High School leaned more into the mythology than the Dragon Ball franchise ever did, but the connection is still there.
That isn't the only connection that the two characters share. They both love fighting and dream of fighting stronger and stronger opponents, with very little else interesting them. Thankfully, even with that being said Mori is still very different from Goku. In the Dragon Ball franchise, Goku's character doesn't really grow all that much. He definitely gets stronger throughout the series, but his actual growth as a character is relatively stagnant. Mori, on the other hand, was the opposite.
Mori started off quite similar to Goku, but as the series progressed he grew quite a bit. It might be due to the nature of his history, but much of The God of High School was centered around Mori's journey of self-improvement, especially in Volume 6. Mori realized his shortcomings in his previous life, specifically the battle-hungry side that he and Goku share, but also the ones he had currently. This made him a much more interesting and deep character than Goku while also reminding readers of his best qualities.
Another way that The God of High School was like Dragon Ball Z was that the scope of both worlds was so vast. Both series featured gods, heavenly planes, even fights in space. They both also featured humans trying to fight those very gods. In the same way that the Dragon Ball franchise has relied on power-ups to keep the story going and help the heroes face their villains, so too does The God of High School. Characters got major power-ups, some of which involve gaining the power of literal gods or even becoming them entirely, much like in Dragon Ball Z and Super. These power-ups lead to spectacular battles and fights in both series.
Speaking of fights, they are incredible. Much like in the Dragon Ball franchise, they are the meat of the series. What's nice about how The God of High School handled them though is that it tried to really explain the techniques of both the heroes and villains as well as incorporating those differences into the plot. It made it easy for readers to understand the differences in power between fighters as well as get a clearer idea of how the characters grew after and during each fight. The characters all had abilities and powers that are mostly unique to one another as well, a far cry from everyone using different kinds of ki blasts.
The scale of fights was also unreal and somehow surpassed the scope of those in the Dragon Ball franchise. Even the Tournament of Power arc from Super can't compare to some of them. In one instance, Mori created millions of clones of himself to fight Satan, who had the ability to copy and learn the moves of his opponents. The result was a battle between millions of Monkey Kings fighting millions of Satans. It was as absurd as Goku giving a senzu bean to Cell after their fight but infinitely less infuriating and much more exciting and fun.
While The God of High School started out as a title that could have been little more than a rip-off of the Dragon Ball franchise, it managed to become something else entirely. Rather than try to copy or steal the ideas from it, The God of High School instead managed to recapture and recreate the essence that made Dragon Ball Z so great, to begin with in the form of a completely original series. It even managed to improve on some of the Dragon Ball franchise's flaws by having a more interesting main character. If there's someone that likes Dragon Ball, then they will love The God of High School and they should go check it out right now.
