Hi☆sCoool! SeHa Girls

Okay, straight up: I love Sega, and I have done so since I was literally five years old. So, naturally, one day when I was playing "Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax" for PS3 for like the umpteenth billionth time, I realized that during story mode, the "Denshin" had assumed the form of a girl wearing Sega Dreamcast-themed clothing, complete with a controller strapped to her forehead. I was actually very intrigued. Who is this person? However, at the time, I had just shrugged her off as being a completely new character specifically for that game. So, after looking up the words Dengeki Bunko on the Steam ... application for PC one other day, I came across a DLC item called the Dengeki Bracelet, for a game titled, "Superdimension Neptune Vs. Sega Hard Girls". Upon investigating the actual game, one could imagine my shock when I found out that half the playable characters in the roster were physical embodiments of Sega. I was later in that same week compelled to see if there was an anime of these girls, similiar to that of Virtua Fighter's anime or Valkyria Chronicles' anime. And I was actually slightly taken aback when I found out there was. I won't lie, I had slight doubts about it at first, but the fact that the people who did certain art for Hatsune Miku also worked on the art for this series had me convinced the second I heard about it. This show was going to be good, and I hoped it would be fantastic. But I was vastly unprepared for the full truth.
Hi Scool! SeHa girls is an anime following the school adventures (and sometimes misadventures) of three out of four main playable Sega Hard Girls in the previously mentioned video game, being Dreamcast, Saturn, and Mega Drive. I was at first a little disappointed that they had apparently forgotten about the existence of the vast numbers of the other Sega Hard girls, especially in the case of Game Gear, but later on, one of the episodes drops a F***ton of cameos and references to all the other Sega Hard Girls who, as it turns out, are all attending the exact same school as the three main ones, which completely amazed me, all things considered. And the fact that this show had SOOOO many other damn cameos and references galore to the rest of the Sega multiverse helped add to the overall charm of the show. This show, for a comedy anime, was actually as amazing as I was hoping it to be before I started watching it. And don't even get me STARTED on that amazing ending, despite this show only being 13 episodes long.
I think the only major fault of this show, at least for me, was the characters mainly staying in their chibi forms for what felt like most of the show's run. I personally have never really had much love for Chibi forms, but I also have never really hated them either. I think it's just because of how often the tiny versions of characters in anime are associated with comedy and/or comedic jokes. That being said, the chibi versions actually didn't take away from the humor of the show almost at all, at least for me. However, one other issue with the show is pretty minor to me personally, but I still believe it should be said. I am an adequate judge of 2D and 2D/3D blended animation at best, but enter 3D animation exclusively such as with this show, and I am a terrible, terrible judge when it comes to judging it. I couldn't tell you if the animation quality is good or bad for sh**.
In summary, this show is perfect for someone who actually cares deeply about Sega and/or someone who likes the Dengeki Bunko multiverse and likes checking other things out.

Sega Hard Girls is a very weird thing and the fact that they made a whole anime around it is just as weird.

The story is about Sega consoles "Graduating" by going inside random Sega games and completing objectives.
From the very first minute watching this show you can tell the budget is incredibly small, the show was animated in MMD and used artwork made by KEI (The guy who drew Hatsune Miku and most of her official art). Because of that every characters kinda look like Hatsune Miku in a weird way.

The characters themselves barely have a personality, Mega Drive is the smart one and I ... genuinely cannot differentiate the other 2 character's personalities.

The music and sound effects themselves are almost entirely from Sega games, which isn't an issue since they have phenomenal soundtracks, but because of that the show itself kinda lacked its own identity. It kinda just feel like you're watching a sponsored Youtube animation half the time where they just have a few Sega models in an empty map, but thankfully the jokes are funny and the fan service is really good.

Also since the show is entirely animated in MMD, almost every games you will see are 3D ones with only a few scenes being edits of 2D gameplay footage of older games like Sonic, which btw, they have Sonic in the show, but they didn't have his voice actor, so you have modern Sonic in the game, but he's acting like classic Sonic which caught me off guard and felt very awkward.

I genuinely don't know if I would recommend this anime to anyone, it has really good episodes such as the Space Channel 5 and the Virtua Fighter episodes, but they also have games like Border Break which was never localized outside of Asia and some Mobile game I've never heard of which they seem to have put a lot of effort in. And then there's just a lot of really boring episodes where the girls just talking about their future as a set-up for the next big episode.

Watch it if you're interested, but don't feel pressured to finish it, its not that good.

One of the great things about anime is that the story could be about absolutely anything! Unfortunately, this means that some anime choose some REALLY stupid subject matter. Sega Hard Girls is an anime about the different generations of Sega hardware undergoing anthropomorphism into little moe girls. The Sega systems must graduate from Sega High School in order to enter the real world as consoles. Yep! This is going to be an odd one. I think Sega rediscovered the same bag of drugs they used to make Toejam and Earl!

The main characters are Mega Drive, Saturn, and Dreamcast. However, virtually every piece of hardware that ... Sega has ever made gets at least a cameo appearance. The girls play classic Sega games in order to receive points and graduate upon winning 100 points. This means that each episode will spoof a different Sega game and the art style will change to match the game in question. Unfortunately for non-Japanese audiences, a lot of the games spoofed in the show were either Japanese exclusive releases or games that were released internationally, but were only really popular in Japan. In other words, non-Japanese gamers are going to miss a LOT of the jokes and references. I will give the show credit for including dozens of different Sega characters and games, but I would have personally enjoyed it much more if I actually knew more than 1/5th of the games being referenced! I grew up with a Sega Genesis and I recognized: Dynamite Cop, Altered Beast, Sonic, Virtua Fighter, and Puyo Puyo (which was released in the US as Mean Bean Machine). The best spoof in the show by far is the Virtua Fighter episode in which they make fun of the horrible camera angles, ridiculous looking sprites, and terrible voice acting. That was actually funny for people who have played the first few Virtua Fighter games.

Since Sega underwent a massive collapse and no longer makes hardware, the show predictably is ripe with self depreciating humor. Saturn is always getting screwed, Dreamcast is a nerd who always wants to show off her internet feature, but only has dial up. Gamegear has anemia and collapses from exhaustion every 5 seconds. Megadrive is constantly feuding with her self obsessed American clone Genesis, who is a redneck that only likes sports and beating people up as opposed to games featuring a plot. The greatest feature of Dreamcast is that her clunky, giant controller is basically indestructible. Some of the jokes are actually sort of funny, but "misses" are far more frequent with this show. That is of course assuming that you grew up as a Sega kid. If you weren't a Sega kid than ZERO of the jokes are funny.

Overall, this was an unusual idea that could have perhaps worked with better direction and a bigger budget for the CGI effects. People who grew up with these old video games will appreciate some of the references and laugh at a few of Sega's little jabs at its own failures. However, I couldn't actually say that this show was excellent and you should try find it online immediately. Just watch Wreck-It Ralph instead. You'll be glad that you did.