News Reporting

“Hi Score Girl” Anime Gets First Visual, Trailer, Staff


Get your quarters ready, and prepare to throw down this summer.

Earlier today, an official website and Twitter account for the upcoming Hi Score Girl anime opened its doors. The site features a teaser trailer and key visual, as well as the projects major staff members.

Yesterday, we reported that the series was back in active production.

We break the details down below. We’re listing the featured games for reasons we’ll explain below.

Trailer

The two-and-a-half minute teaser opens with a brief stinger, before flashing through snippets of footage from various real-world arcade games. During the footage, a brief overview is superimposed in text. All the while, an upbeat melody plays in the background. the trailer cuts to footage from the show at the 50-second mark.

Warner Bros. also started streaming an English-subtitled version of the trailer, which you can check out below:

Games featured in the teaser include:

  • Street Fighter II
  • Final Fight
  • Shadow Lands
  • Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins
  • Genpei Tōma Den
  • Wonder Momo
  • Street Fighter
  • Splatterhouse
  • China Warrior

Key Visual

The visual features Haruo Yaguchi and Akira Oono standing in an empty game center. The machines before them are on, and feature screenshots from various real games, including:

  • Street Fighter II
  • Golden Axe
  • King of the Monsters
  • Final Fight
  • Splatterhouse
  • Gradius
  • Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins

Series creator Rensuke Oshikiri took to Twitter to post a sketch celebrating the news:

Image Credit: Twitter (rereibara)

Staff

Yoshiki Yamakawa (B: The Beginning, Hells) was tapped to direct the project at J.C. Staff, with Michiru Kuwabata (Danchi Tomoo, Penguin no Mondai) providing character designs. Tatsuhiko Urahata (GATE, Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere) is in charge of series composition.

Composer Yoko Shimomura (Street Fighter II, Kingdom Hearts, Xenoblade Chronicles) is scoring the show’s soundtrack.

Other confirmed staffers include:

  • Animation Supervisor: Yuji Matsukura
  • CGI Director: Yūsuke Suzuki
  • CGI Producer: Tomoyasu Sakakibara
  • CGI Production: Shogakukan Music & Digital Entertainment
  • Sound Director: Jin Aketagawa
  • Sound Production: Magic Capsule
  • Director of Photography: Shingo Fukuyo
  • Character Model Director: Eri Sekido
  • Art Director: Akira Suzuki
  • Color Design: Miho Kimura
  • Editor: Kentarou Tsubone (REAL-T)

The trailer lists copyright credits for the following games publishers:

  • Square Enix
  • Bandai Namco Entertainment
  • Capcom Co., Ltd.
  • Capcom U.S.A.
  • Irem Software Engineering
  • Konami
  • Sega
  • SNK Corporation

Theme Songs

sora tob sakana will perform the show’s opening theme song.

Broadcast

Hi Score Girl hits Japanese TV in July.

The eighth volume of the Hi Score Girl anime hits Japanese retailers on March 24. An anime adaptation was originally announced in 2013, though progress was stalled due to legal concerns.

The Hi Score Girl manga was pulled from publication in 2014, following an incident in which the Osaka police department’s Consumer and Economic Crime Division searched the offices of Square Enix’s headquarters, as well as locations linked to the publisher.

Game publisher SNK alleged that the Hi Score Girl manga contained over 100 instances of unauthorized uses of characters from various SNK-Playmore properties. The King of Fighters and Samurai Spirits were among the named properties. Moreover, the end notes of compiled volumes contained a copyright notice that includes SNK, complete with the © mark, which implies that some form of consent was granted for the characters’ usage.

SNK alleged that they found out about the infringements in the summer of 2013, when a Tokyo-based production company approached SNK for permission to use their properties in an anime adaptation of the title.

SNK Playmore formally filed a formal complaint in May 2014. According to Article 119, Section 1 of the Copyright Law of Japan, such a filing required the company to press criminal charges. According to SNK, the company repeatedly requested that Square Enix stop publishing the title, both in collected volumes and in print, though Square Enix never gave a real response to the matter.

In October 2014, Square Enix filed counter-suit against SNK Playmore, claiming that Square was willing to reveal that SNK’s claims were invalid. The charges were officially settled between the two parties on August 24, 2015, when SNK Playmore officially filed documents in the Osaka District Court dropping its criminal charges.

The Hi Score Girl manga returned to publication in Square Enix’s Monthly Big Gangan magazine in July 2016.

Rensuke Oshikiri’s Hi Score Girl launched in Monthly Big Gangan in 2010. To date, seven volumes have been released, with volume 8 hitting stores on March 24. Manga resource Baka-Updates describes the title as:

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 everyday after school and beats him every time. As weird as it sounds, the odd pair begins a strange bond and friendship.

Source: Comic Natalie

About the author

Samantha Ferreira

Samantha Ferreira is Anime Herald’s founder and editor-in-chief. A Rhode Island native, Samantha has been an anime fan since 1992, and an active member of the anime press since 2002, when she began working as a reviewer for Anime Dream. She launched Anime Herald in 2010, and continues to oversee its operations to this day. Outside of journalism, Samantha actively studies the history of the North American anime fandom and industry, with a particular focus on the 2000s anime boom and bust. She’s a huge fan of all things Sakura Wars, and maintains series fansite Combat Revue Review when she has free time available. When not in the Anime Herald Discord, Samantha can typically be found on Bluesky.

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