Let me just state for the record, I know Hi Score Girl is a very personal indulgence.  I expected it to be generally low-visibility with the English-speaking fandom, given its thematic makeup and art style.  Then I heard it was going to be full CGI, and figured that would make it about as anonymous as it gets.  That was until the news that Netflix Japan was burying licensing it, of course, effectively erasing it from the space-time continuum until after it’s finished airing in Japan.  When it comes to market penetration, this has become a case of limbo if ever there was one.

That doesn’t change one essential fact for me, though, and that’s this – I love this series.  I love the nostalgia factor (and I’m not even a gamer, really).  I love the characters, some of the best of whom we haven’t even met yet.  And I love the slow-build relationship that develops between Haruo and Oono, and one of those unmet characters too.  Maybe most of all (though it’d be hard for me to pick one element) I love all the little details that give every element of the universe of Hi Score Girl depth and color.

The thing that drives all this, I think, is how personal Hi Score Girl is.  There’s tremendous authenticity to this series, which ties into those details, which ties into how deeply Oshikiri Rensuke cares about this material.  You can sense the same level of attachment you get with FLCL (the original, not the sequel), which was very much Tsurumaki Kazuya’s personal story.  I could delve into this a little more deeply, but it would be bordering on spoiler material.  I’ll just say that HSG actually has an advantage over FLCL in that the story it tells spans a much longer period.  And this allows it to show the expansion of the protagonist’s world in a way that’s very tangible and realistic.

Take Haruo’s impassioned soliloquy about the PC Engine.  Now I personally didn’t give a crap about the relative merits of consoles, though I had many friends who religiously did.  PC Engine was a big success in Japan, and a total flop in America.  As a gamer purist, Haruo’s love for the console is fittingly pure – and his evangelicalism wins a convert in Oono-san.  So much so that she visits his home to drop off his handouts (and abysmal test results) when he takes a sick day after she sprays him with cold water while filling the school pool.  And splashes him after he gets well, hoping for another chance…

This visit is also the introduction of Haruo’s mother Namie (Arai Satomi), who (trust me) is one of the all-time great manga moms.  Like everything else in High Score Girl Yaguchi-san doesn’t reveal all her charms immediately upon introduction, but her relationship with Haruo (and Oono) is one of those details that Oshikiri-sensei absolutely nails.  The pool sequence also features the debut of Doi Genta (Yamashita Daiki), who sees himself as the natural pair-bond with Oono-san, and Haruo as something less than dirt.

Finally this week, we have the journey to see the legendary ¥10 arcade three stations up the Tama River, along whose banks a bike path runs for virtually the entire Tokyo metropolitan area.  This is the sort of adventure that forms the tentpole of a 12 year-old’s existence – at least it did for mine, though I never went on one with anybody like Oono.  This is another example of where this series captures the feel of the moment so perfectly – again that word authenticity rings loudly for me.  It’s also an important insight into Oono’s character – what drives her, and what she gets out of her relationship with Haruo-kun.

Again, for me Hi Score Girl is the classic personal series – I suspect this is either going to resonate with you or it isn’t.  And if it isn’t, it’s going to seem like much ado about nothing.  But if you are on the fence, bear in mind that it’s not the kind of series that reveals everything on the first deal – there’s always more to everyone and everything than it initially appears.  It doesn’t take a long time for the true depth of the story to reveal itself – I think it already starts to with this episode, in fact – but it does reward a little patience.