High score girl is a small slice of life comedy that takes place over Haruo’s life. From his elementary school years, until his first year in high school. The story describes his growth and how Ono along with the various other characters in his life, help Haruo grows and improve. This, by itself, sets itself off of a lot of other slice of life shows. Where they don’t go through long periods of someone’s life. The only example I can think of off the top of my head is Clannad, which is in my top ten and is considered one of the greatest anime of all time. Main difference is, aside from the smaller eyes, is that the characters are a bit more one dimensional then Clannad is. It's not that they’re bad, it's safer and uninspired. They fit into normal protagonist and -dere stereotypes, but they are handled in a wonderful way where you don’t mind. I must say, Ono is the only main character I’ve seen who never says a word over the course of the entire show. She only communicates by facial expressions, actions, and the occasional grunt. She’s cute though. Its heartwarming.
As you can guess, the show’s main driving point initially was that it has to do with being a kid in the 90’s and an obsession with video games. This describes its audience pretty well. It was appealing to mid to late 30’s Japanese men who grew up to playing these games. To them, it's a nice nostalgia trip tied up with a protagonist that they could easily imprint themselves on. I understood this from the beginning of the show, and I didn’t think I would particularly enjoy it due to how I couldn't relate to growing up in the 90’s. But, I was wrong, and ending up being very invested in these characters and how they’re relationship grows. I loved their character dynamic, and what they did together as friends. Just friends playing video games, Harou treating her as a rival and Ono just following him around.
Video games is the backbone of this entire show. If video games were involved I doubt this show would have gotten any traction at all for reasons I will explain later. This show was made/sponsored by square enix themselves. Therefore, they had enough to get entire clips of game footage where the characters explain and react to what's happening on screen. The very first episode they explained how some cheap strategies worked in Street Fighter 2. It's not just Street Fighter they reference and directly mention a bunch of big time games that were popular or hyped at the time. There was an entire scene talking about how hype they were for the new virtual boy coming out, which if you know you’re gaming history, didn’t do very well. High Score Girl really put you in the place of a kid that’s hyped for the newest games in the 90’s. I’m not even a fan of arcade games and I feel like I’m that kid being excited.
The main problem, which is pretty major when watching this show, is the animation. High Score Girl is an entirely CG show, but do not take that away from the experience this show can give you. But man, it does look pretty garbage. I loved the soundtrack for this show, especially with the OP “New Stranger” and ED “Houkago Di(e)stra(u)ction”. I mostly compare this show to Dagashi Kashi. Mostly where 1) its 2 people being brought together by the same passion, and 2) it's a show made to sell things. Yeah High Score Girl is an advertising show, it displays games coming out now in the transition periods between in the middle of the show where ad breaks would role. It’s sort of off putting, but it's neatly and clearly separated from what's happening in the actual show, so it doesn’t really matter. I give this show a 10 out of 10, with the recommendation for everyone and anyone to watch if they don’t mind some CG that isn't really disruptive to the type of show. This was truly the best show of the Summer anime season. This has been PixEFit’s spoiler free but not really review of High Score Girl.
