Hi☆sCoool! SeHa Girls

Nekoyaki here. I watched this absurd anime, then looking for this anime database in MAL, I typed "sega", this anime is linked immediately. Wow. The only SEGA anime!

Don't look to comparative-based score, I'm trying to compare the quality there. Let's talk about how the anime seeps into my "soul", There ya go, SeHaGa Review!

This is comedy 3D CG anime featuring old consoles of SEGA as main character (MegaDrive, Sega Saturn, Dreamcast). They're so old-skool, using dial-up modem to go online, AIWA cassette player, and other old things (which I find it really funny). If you want to kill some time, If you want to ... see old skool things as joke, this anime is good choice. Let's cut the descript-bable-bablin..

Its.....really bring back memories of my childhood days. I went to arcade, play some virtua fighter with random strangers, gone to my friend's place and playing sonic.. Bring back memories.. In a funny way, in-game graphic into anime.. lol..

SEGA. Of course, the very impression of this anime!
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Are you a SEGA fan? As in, a die-hard sega fan that knows a lot about the company's history and has played a lot of its excellent first party titles?

If so, keep reading.

Hi☆sCoool! SeHa Girls is a CG series based on the character designs of the antropomorphized versions of sega consoles released throughout the years (hence sega hard[ware] girls) made by KEI, of Vocaloid fame.

While the artworks were done for the entirety of the hardware lineup, SeHa follows only the antics of mega drive, saturn and dreamcast, the flagship consoles for 4th, 5th and 6th generation respectively (while it does acknowledge the other girls' existence).
Characterizing ... a piece of hardware may have been a daunting task but with the memorable designs behind them and some inside jokes about each girl's technical capabilities, this series manages to do so fairly well.
Their characters are done quite decently and succeed in what they must do: they're cute, cheerful, naive at times and fun to look at, but unfortunately don't come off as too memorable or particularly likeable: they all seem quite stale and could have used a little bit more color in their personalities, but given the scope/budget of this project they're acceptable and manage to do their job fairly well.

Environments are all taken from real games where they spend a few episodes in, same as the music, for the most part.The few actual academy shots are quite simplistic but nice to look at, and make for a good backdrop for events to unfold. The plot while episodic has a larger scope and manages a very heartfelt conclusion for anyone who is a fan of everything SEGA has done over the years.

Some episodes are quite blatant advertising for other current SEGA videogames for modern platforms, but they're few in number and manage not to stick out like a sore thumb amid the countless references to old school software. It's a necessary "evil" given, again, what the actual budget was for something made clearly from fans, to fans.

It's not a long series: it lasts little over an hour and possibly less than this review, so I'll jump straight to the point: is SeHa worth watching? It depends. Are you a SEGA fan?

If you answered 'yes' to that question, my answer to yours is 'absolutely'

If not, you will definitely not understand the appeal for this series, and honestly, there's nothing wrong with that. It's an extremely lighthearted series that is just pure and sweet fanservice for anyone in love, like many, with the memories collected during the years with one's own hardware. But for anyone else, it's just a mediocre title made with miku miku dance.

Yes, I gave it a 6: it's mostly an objective score and speaks of the overall quality of the series that is not up to par to larger scale productions and has some issues related to its aformented small budget. It is however very enjoyable: it manages to make you smile, have some bittersweet nostalgia and get a little sad when it's over.

It's not a life changing experience, but ever since i saw this, whenever i booted up my dreamcast to play, I found myself smiling.

A weird anime and commercial combo, Sega Hard Girls's is all about Sega and its franchises. Even the show's characters get in on the act, each embodying one of Sega's systems (or HARDware) through the ages. To graduate from university, Dreamcast, Saturn and Megadrive enter various Sega games, including Virtual Fighter 1 and Space Channel 5.

Sure Sega Hard Girls's plot won't win any awards, but its an excuse to get the girls into games where the comedy and nostalgia can take the reins. Style-wise, Hard Girls's shiny CG works given the show's light and cute comedy tone and its focus on old ... games. And although its squeaky characters can get annoying, I found the show's funny in-jokes and game nostalgia enjoyable. Occasional guest appearances, like the dwarf from Golden Axe, spice things up and help to quell the main characters' quirks. Longtime sega fans should find Sega Hard Girls's nostalgic walk down memory lane enjoyable, but if you're not a Sega fan, Sega Hard Girls isn't worth your time.

"It seems like it wasn't that long at all." ~ Sega Saturn-chan, Episode 13.
(NO duh Saturn-chan, the total runtime of the series is only about 3 hours)
I guess this is what you call pandering to the most niche audience possible.

Let us Break this Down.

Story: 3/10
Story is often one of, if not the, most important thing in any media. So with that in mind, one of the most damaging things for Hi*sChool SeHa Girls is the overall lack of an interesting story. While a story that can be simply summed up is a good thing in some cases (See: Lyrical Nanoha's first series, Highschool of the ... Dead), it actually hurts this series in a worse way.
The story is summed up as such: SEGA consoles inside of Anthromorphic bodies go to this Sega Academy to graduate and do something with their lives. School is run by a dickish rabbit. To graduate, they must be transported into a SEGA game and do XYZ to earn gold coins. 100 gold coins = Graduation. (And inflation is apparently a thing in this series, anyone with a basic understanding of economics and education will likely find this hilarious.)
Of course, this being a Slice-of-Life comedy series, a simplistic and weak story is, sadly, expected.

Art: 5/10
And now for the hardest part of the review, simply because it is complicated.
SeHa Girls' Art style of Art alternates between being cramped to being empty, showcased between the two types of settings in the series. The Highschool setting, and the Game-world settings. Both have significant strengths and weaknesses, and it's really hard to explain such weaknesses without the viewer having already watched some of the series, or at least have decent knowledge of old SEGA games.
Cramming excess amounts of outdated product placements (aka, the Nostalgia for SEGA fanatics) into the first of the two setting types, the Highschool setting itself, is a massive issue. The Highschool environment always looks small and cramped, because of excessive STUFF. This issue is slightly averted by having the girls be in 'chibi form' while in this setting. But, it is still crowded. Granted, for the hardcore SEGA fan, this is beautiful. It becomes a game of 'How many references can I get before the scene changes!?' (I was quite guilty of playing that game while watching this).
On the other hand, uninspired world copies and Windows Movie Maker level effects cloud the second of the two setting types. Every time the girls would go into a game world, it was a literal rip off of the game world's setting. While I'm sure this is GREAT for those looking for a taste of SEGA nostalgia, it worn on me quickly. We already know what Jet Grind/Set Radio's location looks like, same with Virtua Fighters' arenas, and Space Channel 5's space port. Borderline nothing has changed. This really isn't too much of an issue considering that something is almost always going on in the foreground, but...
(Yet, maybe this is to grab the Nostalgia of hardcore SEGA fans?)
As for the characters, they really aren't anything amazing. The psychotic teacher who runs it all is a pixelated rabbit (I'm sure this is a massive reference, but I'm not getting it...), and the three girls are decently done, especially in their 'game forms'. But outside of the giant ass Dreamcast controller on Dreamcast's head (and other controller symbols on the other girls), none of them feel very inspired, or even connectable to the consoles. Whenever a game character appears, it is either ripped right from the game's models (Primarily if they came from a Saturn or Dreamcast game), or have a basic 3-D model built from their old 2-d one (Primarily if they came from Genesis/Mega-Drive games).
Somewhat overlooked in my entire diatribe of the art here (Which is something I rarely, if ever, bother taking note of), is the type of art used. CG/CGI. Virtually everything not lifted from a game is done in CG. And this is...ok. At many times it feels uncoordinated and sloppy, but when comparing the animation of many of these older games to that of today's games, they also feel uncoordinated and sloppy. It all kind of balances out in the end...which is actually sad when one thinks about it.

Sound: 4/10
At no point did the sound in the game catch me. The voices were uninspiring, the sounds were either generic tunes or ripped straight from the games with no change attempted. At least Pokemon Origins, another short series which was based on some level of pandering, attempted to spice up the music. I saw nothing here. It wasn't egregious. It was just...there. A pointless detail that was only added because anime is an audiovisual broadcast. Again though, maybe I'd love it more if I was of the Nostalgic SEGA fanboy type.

Character: 4/10
Most characters that came from the games stick with their original purposes in the game, save for the exceptions of two suitors (Some baseball player and a dwarven axe-wielder) from other games who only have the personality of 'Being there to chase/annoy Saturn-chan' or 'Be used by Dreamcast/Mega-Drive to taunt Saturn-chan'. If a character was memorable from a game, you will still only recall that character for what they did in that game, and not from this anime.
The rabbit that runs the school has two personalities. 1 is: 'Be dickish to the girls and torment them with technicalities (Especially Saturn-chan)' or 2: 'Be video game exposition dumper, in case you don't recall this game'.
The girls are mostly uninteresting. Dreamcast is the genki-girl stereotype with no attempt of making her anymore. Mega-Drive/Genesis is the shy bookworm stereotype with only minimal attempt of making her anything more. Saturn-chan is the most interesting, but only by nature of being the butt-monkey of the series (And being abnormally eager to be fan-service girl...)

Enjoyment: 6/10
This was the show's only strong point. It was funny at numerous points, but for every hilarious moment, there was a roughly equal number of flat-on-your-face-this-is-dull moments (And then the entirety of episode 13, which tries to be emotional but just feels flat and forced). When the humor shined, it SHINED. Everything is funny about the 2nd episode, and it rolls like the perfect joke stacked ontop of a joke. On the other hand, episode 6 feels like a very bland Sonic fanfiction.
When the show tried actually doing something other then comedy, it failed. Bad. A sense of adventure never went anywhere, a sense of emotional drama was stupidly flat. Comedy was the only area it shined, and yet so many jokes were either so Meta or so forced that it deadened it's effect.
There were subtle references here and there. (Saturn-chan not knowing who Sonic was, Dreamcast being slow as all f* on the internet, the girls' aversion to Smartphones, etc). These were cute little nods to anyone worth their salt in SEGA console/game knowledge.
But cute nods and the occasional good joke does not salvage a show.

Overall: 5/10
In all honestly, I'd say the numerical rating should be closer to a 4.5 or so, but 5 will do. This project never went anywhere, but it would be silly to expect it to actually do something. The concept is pretty niche, and that alone alienates alot of potential fans. The execution was...off to say the least. There was nothing to save the show, but it almost doesn't need to be save as the possible rock bottom SeHa girls could have even hit is only slightly less then the best it could have been.
By being marketed to a niche audience, and by trying to do not enough of too much (Only 15 or so SEGA game franchises were touched upon of the hundreds), and having such a short runtime, it never went anywhere, partially because it never got the chance to go anywhere.
With that said, I fully believe that your enjoyment of the show will be directly influenced by the viewer's familiarity and enjoyment with SEGA's franchises. I love my Dreamcast and my modest collection of DC games to death, but I only ever got the chance to start playing games in the last 4 or 5 years of my life. I did not grow up with SEGA consoles, as by the time I even started caring the DC was out the door, the Saturn was forgotten, and the Mega-Drive/Genesis was already considered 'ancient'. I never got emotionally attached to the consoles and their games as a child, so the excessive Nostalgia bating in the show never pulled me in.
And here in is the biggest issue of the show, worse then the inconsistent comedy and the lack of anything else: By being so niche, it alienated not only fans, but possibilities. Expanding the concept would have been out of the question, expanding the length would have likely dragged the show down even more, and constricting it downward the same would have happened. It was a concept that never could go anywhere to begin with.
Outside of the likes of Adam Koralik, there is no one I would recommend this too, because there is nothing there for the majority of anime viewers.
(That said, even if you were emotionally attached to the consoles as a child, I do not see representation of the consoles in these girls. At all.)

...Why did I go through this entire review, only using honorifics for Saturn's name?

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.