Hi-sCool! Seha Girls
As a fan of video games and its history, any time I see a new anime that has some connection to the video game business I will give it a try. Often, the stories shown are poor representations of the source material with a dull story, lackluster voice acting, poor animation, and seem to be used only for the purpose of marketing. There are a few notable exceptions with the most notable being Hyperdimension Neptunia, in which the anime series is a spinoff of the games and focuses on a story and characters that represent the video game industry as a whole.
When I first saw Hi-sCool! Seha Girls, the original concept seemed to be playing off of the interest in the Hyperdimension series. The short form anime, where each episode runs slightly under 12 minutes, focuses on three girls who are the physical embodiments of Sega’s three main console systems, Mega Drive, Saturn, and Dreamcast, who all show up arrive to take classes at the Sehagaga Academy. The classes at this Sega high school, that is complete with a school song that all Sega fans will know, consist of the girls transforming from their cute chibi forms into full, still cute, anime bodies to enter various titles from Sega’s history. While in these games they must complete various challenges within each title to earn medals, so that they may graduate. In the various games they meet with famous characters from various franchises, including some cross overs.
Before the girls enter each game a quick overview of the game and its history is given. Scenes within the game world consist of the characters being placed within gameplay. The contrasting art styles work fairly well in this series, due to the plot, however it makes me think of strange ROM hacks. The dialog is actually pretty good, and most of the jokes will make any fan of Sega laugh. The overall story, as described above, is bland and pretty straight forward. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but if you are looking for some kind of deep commentary on Sega or its role in the history of video games, past or present, you will be extremely disappointed. What this show is very good at is providing some ridiculous “what if” scenarios for various Sega crossovers. Personally, I think Puyo Puyo Online, where Phantasy Star characters are replaced by the Puyo blobs, could be a very weird and funny experience. With all of that being said, if you are not a fan of Sega, bizarre situations involving retro games, or just seeing some classic games, this is one to pass up. If you are interested in some of the things listed, you will enjoy this lighthearted ride through the classic Sega universe.
