"Tsuki Guile Kirei / As The Melee So Beautiful" is a rather accurate description for "High Score Girl" (HGS) anime. For a young teen romance it has parallels with 2017's celebrated "Tsuki ga Kirei / As The Moon So Beautiful" series. Meanwhile the story never loses focus of its video arcades theme, the main characters play person-vs-person fighting games obsessively. Haruo, the boy MC even receives occasional guidance from his entrant of choice, the famed american Street Fighter warrior Guile-san.
The rudeness of neon blood on screen could form unsettling contrast with a rivalry which turns into affection, but the director manages to balance visuals with the story. I think the anime surpasses its manga origins in success of execution and general opinion holds HGS on TV is best described as "charming". The simplistic, low framerate,cheap CGI animations blends tolerably with gaming footage copied verbatim from actual vintage CAPCOM titles. Characters are drawn in caricature-like "nendoroid" style but still easy to emphasize with - after all, we are in the post-Yapari Park era and poor animation is OK if the studio has a compelling story and the heart to tell it.
On to characters: Haruo Yaguchi a.k.a. "Forcible Fingers" is a single-minded action games otaku who has suprising facets of personality: he cares about those in his neigbourhood or at school and appears to grow at a suprising pace as the series progresses, eventually taking up work before school hours. Him being the focus of two cute girls' affection isn't unexpected: the carefree and jolly lifestyle he leads early on must be enviable to the cram-school oppressed young ladies.
Although there are two ladies for our guy, HGS is not a harem, already the OP makes it clear who wins in the end. The clever and beautiful heiress Oono Akira hails from an elite family and has adopted voluntary muteness in the face of excessive strictness shown by her private tutor. She sneaks out to play fighting games at video arcade and has achieved unparalleled success, like 100+ consecutive wins, able to capitalize on her piano-trained manual skills and martial arts induced tactical prowess.
Haruo initially defeats her but only through the use of obscure and unethical / unfair movement combinations. Oono expreses her excitment over a true rival through physical violence and a gaming pals' bond quickly forms between them, aided by Haruo's tolerance for injury and his ability to decipher the girl's emotional faces. On the other hand, there is a limit to how interesting and mysterious the completely mute princess Akira can be, so the manga author relies on time-skips to keep the story flowing. Yet it is done in an unobstrusive manner and allows for some great dramatic scenarios.
Unusually, the main couple avoids the theme of love and by the end of the anime (first season) they seem to have progressed from pals straight to virtually waifu / husbando status. Thus a third character enters to form a triangle: Hidaka is a diligent and calm schoolgirl who secretly finds her life boring. She quickly falls for Haruo in Oono's absence and takes up gaming to approach him. Hidaka quickly finds out Haruo is playing games ever more just to be able to keep up with Oono as she returns one day from the USA but she refuses to give up on hopeless love.
The re-union of Oono and Haruo doesn't go smoothly and Hidaka reacts by doubling her gaming efforts, eventually curb-stomping the depressed boy who has abandoned PvP arcades for fighting console CPUs alone at home. The shock of such humiliation by a rookie motivates Haruo to re-learn the path of the arcade warrior, in time to become helpful in a big crisis for Akira. Hidaka sees firm proof that she became the third wheel but still refuses to give up and proposes a daring love gambit.
That's where the HGS series has ended as of now, but 3 OVAs are already scheduled for March 2019 (ooh the long wait...) The franchise may even earn a second cour of 12 eps and further OVAs, based on already strong Blu-Ray sales in the japanese market. All in all, the outcome of HGS's TV adaptation is great gratification for those who have followed the manga and witnessed its protracted copyright clash with a certain game industry brand. The franchise was in grave danger but come out victoriously!
The anime isn't without faults, but one has abandon pure enjoyment to notice them. OP sounds a bit weird and has apparently been composed with the grand sponsor's screen chime as the main theme... ED is childishly cute, but its references to fringe theories are jarring: what does NASA's conspiracy have to do with Lennon's killing? Animation sometimes feels like a Powerpoint slide struggling on a Celeron netbook. The MCs "delinquency" or lack thereof may seem shallow from a US point of view, they are not true "rebels without a cause" but that's probably the most creators could show to socially strict japanese audiences.
Some side characters should also have received more or more evenly distributed screen time, I mean HGS has the best mom and best bro ever! The mid-episode ad breaks for modern games are nerve-wacking and best skipped. Certain gamer otaku gags / visual clues occur in the series but quite hard to note and decipher, yet fansubbers did a great job of referencing them. (Incidentally, the series isn't available overseas in a business-like manner until end of 2018. One has to turn left at the Indian to find it now...)
Can one watch HSG as a non-gamer? Certainly! I'm no gamer, only played prboom / doom for a few weeks over a decade ago. Never been to arcades, thus unaffected by nostalgia and solely recognized the in-game character of Guile from some movie poster. Yet the anime's story is compelling enough to suck in the viewer, the ladies are cuter than anything "moe / tsundere" trends have ever produced and gaming is even better integrated into the story than with Wotakoi, up to par with MMO Junkie.
I even dare to say HGS is 2018's Kemono Friends: a miracle borne from peas thrown to creators instead of a production budget, subbed on a tablet by some anon sitting on a bench at Comiket. Embarrassing comments are prohibited though, so I finish this review here!
