Let's Talk About Something[By Hex]

LTA: Hi Score Girl - A love Letter to Video Games

You know, I think that we, gamers, who have been born and grew up between the 90s to 2005 are really lucky because we have witnessed history and we sometimes take it for granted. The progression of video games is amazing to behold. Think about it, we use to play games that took up only megabytes of storage and had either pixelated or unrefined polygon 3d graphics, and yet we thought these graphics looked amazing, revolutionary and beautiful. And now look at how far games have come, they can take up hundreds of Gigabytes with realistic and refined graphics and incredible storytelling to boot. 

Back then, most games couldn't even be played on home consoles so everyone would head out to arcades to play the new hit games or compete with friends and rivals.
It was a golden age of gaming! A true mark of history in the making!

Children of the current generation will never be able to witness this amazing progression that the rest of us have, and its a gift that we should appreciate. 

Now, this is where I transition to an anime/manga that I felt the need to make an LTA chapter about and that anime/manga is called Hi Score Girl. A beautiful coming of age, rom-com story about two children who love video games and how they become rivals/friends while slowly developing feelings for each other.

Hi Score Girl use to be a manga until it recently (2018) has been adapted into an anime, and a very good adaptation too. 

Summary

"The year is 1991 and 6th grader Yaguchi Haruo only has video games to live for. He's not popular in school and he's neither handsome, funny, nice nor even friendly. The only thing he has going for him is that he is good at video games. One day at the local arcade, he plays Oono Akira, a fellow classmate but who's popular, smart, pretty and a rich girl that absolutely destroys him at Street Fighter II. Not only does he lose to her 30 times in a row, he can't beat her at any game. Haruo can't seem to shake Akira off as she follows him from arcade to arcade every day after school and beats him every time. As weird as it sounds, the odd couple begins a strange bond and friendship." - summary received from Kissanime.

I'll be splitting the next part into two sections, The Story/Characters, and the Video Game Trivia. 

The Story/Characters

Here, I want to talk about two characters, Akira and Haruo. 

Haruo is the main protagonist of Hi Score Girl and he is presented as someone who is not good in school, he sucks in almost every single subject but he prides himself in being the best at video games to the point that it is his ultimate passion. Video games are an escape for him and he always goes to the arcades where he feels he is at home. I must say that I very quickly grew to like him, as his passion for games resonated and related to me and while he seemed like a brat delinquent at first, he is an observant character with a kind personality. 

Akira, as mentioned in the summary, is from a rich family and early on in the story, it is shown that she is often forced to study nearly every day by her home tutor. Although she never speaks in the anime(nor in the manga) its clear that she doesn't want to study and only does so because its her parents demand. As an escape, she too seeks to play games and this is where the similarities between Akira and Haruo meet and how they learn to understand each other. 

At the beginning of the story, Akira is quite violent and bratty which many people may not like (including me when I first started reading) but its clear that this violent behavior is more of a gag and the annoying effects of her violent antics go away for something more lighthearted and cute. 

The story overall is a little episodic but there's also a sense of progression with each chapter/episode and the plot does have progression since you get to see the characters go through elementary to middle school and then to high school. There are some good emotional bits in between as well but since this is more of a recommendation, I can't really go further without spoiling some bits of the plot.

The Video Game Trivia

Honestly, I'm glad how well the anime/manga handles video games in the story. It feels like the author is an actual gamer who lived through the golden age in the 90s and just wants to express his passion for how video games affected our culture in those beautiful times. There's a sense of nostalgia there, even if I haven't lived in those times, I can still imagine how the gamers of that era must have felt. How there were common techniques and combos that gamers used when playing Street Fighter 2 in the arcades and how some arcade games had hidden secrets where you had to input specific combinations to get a hidden character or easter egg.

There's so much video game trivia and references that it just fills me with joy whenever I read or watch this series. I find that having the story take place in 1994 was a great idea, it just felt like it catered to the audience of that era yet also making gamers who havent lived through it to get an idea of how crazy video games were for people back in the day!

This small scene where Akira and Haruo first battle each other is a really nice blend of storytelling while also giving trivia and nod to Street Fighter 2 and how the Street Fighter community was like back then. 

While the manga does go over a lot of these trivia, the anime actually goes above and beyond by actually showing real video game footage while talking about specific combos that beginner players would use in the arcades of that time. 
This is why I keep mentioning both the anime and manga because both mediums are great in their own way. It's more that since the anime is CG(its good CG though), I think that some people will not like it and therefore the manga is a viable alternative. 

In conclusion, Hi Score Girl is a love letter to video games and probably the best video game related manga/anime out there IMO. I love this series a lot and highly recommend it if you love video games!
If you want to get in on the HI Score Girl train then now is the time because season 2 of the anime has been announced to come this year which means it's a good time to join in!
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Here's some questions!

1) Ever been to an arcade? If yes, Do you feel at home there? What is the best thing about being there?

2) What is a classic (think, 90s to early 2000s) video game you have often played in the arcade?

3) What is a modern game you wish was made into an arcade cabinet that can be played in the arcade?

Let's start a discussion in the comments! Have a nice day!