Hi Score Girl

 Time for an innocent looking anime on Netflix this time round, and so me and Noshi sat down for Hi Score Girl.

Which, as it takes place in 1991, features some melancholy for me I must say.

Arcade games are the latest craze, and Street Fighter II in particular is having a high.  Sixth grader Haruo wants to become a professional gamer, which back then was a farsought idea.  But at the local arcade, a young girl named Akira Oono defeats him time and time again.  One day, they hear about a myth, an arcade that charges only 10 yen per game.  They cycle there, but suddenly as they are out, the arcade has disappeared and is apparently gone for 4 years already...

 

She experiences a lapse in focus that reflects on her games as she has been invited to the flower garden with classmates.  But she quickly elopes with Haruo into an arcade where they spend the whole trip playing games, before they go try some rides with the two of them.  But then he hears at school Ono is seemingly moving overseas due to her parents divorcing.  Haruo races to the airport to give her a ring, and she falls into his arms crying.

In class, another girl, Hidaka, starts showing intrest in videogames, Haruo starting to initiate her into the hobby.  Her grandfather has a liquor store that just placed some arcades, and she wants to learn more about the attraction of them.  But while she finds him a total idiot, she still has a crush on him and tries to get into his world.  

Ono has returned to Japan though, but she keeps Haruo at arms length in the arcade.  But after a local tournament they get into a little brawl, and console the fact they missed each other.  During a game of Virtua Fighter, their old rivalry in gaming starts growing again.  As they hang out more, Haruo realises he just wants to be with her and tries his best even to study more, in order to get in the same high requirement high school as her.

Oono's butler and Haruo's mom run into eacht other, and together they bring them together in the arcade to make sure that their connection doesn't water down.  He ultiately doesn't get into the school, but as he can now focus back on games and his new Sega Saturn, he starts doing a part-time job as well to pay for the games.  Hidaka on the other hand got the other newly released console, the Playstation.  They go to the arcade for Street Fighter 2... and she soundly defeats him as he seems out of touch with the current arcade games.

But as her mother wants to have her isolated in intrests to solely focussing on school and her career later in life, Oono elopes.  Haruo goes looking gor her and finds her, and they go to a hotel to stay and play console games.  But as they get back home, Hidaka tells him her feelings...

A fun little series with some good laughs, and the nostalgia of the games was something I fondly remember as well giving it an extra dimension for me personally.

I was there readers, I was there at the very beginning of the console wars...