High Score

Oh. It’s another one of those flash based animes. It’s another of those short flash based animes. It’s another of those 3 minutes short flash based animes. Yeah, High Score seems to fit that bill. But the good news of this kind of short series is that everything happens in a fast pace and this series doesn’t disappoint. It’s about a bunch of high school students and their romance. Each with their own quirky and weird behaviours, inflated egos, their love interest and yes, don’t forget the violence that comes with it. What else more can I say? Just watch this and you’ll know what I mean.

Episode 1
Everybody’s talking about Megumi Fujiwara. How cool this beauty is. Till she spots a bespectacled otaku and makes him her prey! Yikes! She’s chasing him around! WTF?! Thankfully we have the school doctor, Daimon to put a stop to her bullying. Everyone is envious of Megumi and her senpai boyfriend, Masamune Matsumoto. Both are so egoistic about their looks and popularity. He is late because he was busy looking at himself in the mirror. She went to the infirmary because she’s so hot that it hurts. WTF?! WWWTTTFFF???!!! Then some executioner-like guy threatens Masamune with an axe not to touch her Megumi but gets easily beaten up. Megumi isn’t afraid and thinks it’s her sin for having too many fans. Megumi continues beating up the poor chap and could’ve killed him. Why? A man should be happy to die for her! Later, she pesters the karate club to buy her stuff so Masamune feels they shouldn’t oblige her whims and fancies. But they admit they lost to her and are under her complete submission. Masamune is appalled they lost to a girl but they claim that woman is cruel. Yeah, she exposes her panties when she does her high kick. Do they enjoy watching that and getting kicked? Masamune beats them up for looking at her panties. Then everybody watches the cringing lovey-dovey moment. “If being beautiful is a crime, both of us would totally be put to death”. So cheesy that it hurts…

Episode 2
Emika Matsumoto catches her boyfriend, Kyousuke Masuda flirting and almost kissing with another girl! Emika isn’t thrilled her brother Masamune is dating with Emika. Even if Emika is accusing Masamune of cheating her, she is cheekily doing it so much so there is no hostility. It feels like she loves it to the point that she’ll punish him with 100 kisses if that was true. Emika asks the same towards Kyousuke and she violently grabs his collar when he lied. See that sexy kiss mark on his neck? That couldn’t be the mosquito bite, right? She punches him till the windows shatter!!! Later Kaori Tachibana asks Emika how she ended up dating Kyousuke. When he first asked her out, she punched him before he could finish his sentence. Then she throws down the challenge if he can get up in 5 seconds, she’ll go out with him. He stood up in 3 seconds. A record! Kyousuke feels her beatings are too much and wonders if she does love him. She assures she won’t punch any other guy no matter what they do because he’s the only guy whose neck won’t break, organs won’t rupture or cough up enough blood when he is beaten up. With that, Kyousuke wants to be the only guy Emika exclusively punches! Is he an M?!

Episode 3
Megumi’s dad, Reiji wants to get a kiss from his wife Kyouko. She tells him to close his eyes. Apparently Megumi kissed him and got money from mom. WTF?! Reiji asks his wife if there is anything she needs. Yes there is. Lie down like a stiff board far away from here. That’s as good as saying drop dead, right? Yeah, she finds him annoying. Megumi chides her mom for being awful but Reiji scolds her back for saying such things to her mom! He is willing to go as far as breaking her but gets hit by Kyouko instead. Yeah, he was really going to do that to his own daughter?! Later Reiji regrets his actions and goes to talk to Megumi for advice since Kyouko isn’t talking to him. She suggests texting her but he doesn’t know her email address. Suddenly Megumi keeps repeating “I will kill Reiji”. What is going on? That is Kyouko’s email address!!! Oh sh*t! But why is Reiji so happy? Because her email address has his name in it. He thinks it’s her love for him. Unbelievable… So when he texts her on what he can do, she tells him to take out the big burnable garbage bag. The kanji for ‘big’ and ‘husband’ is only a stroke different…

Episode 4
Kaori notices the height difference between twins Izumi and Arashi Hashiba. She has a magic that will make him grow taller. I don’t know about cutting his body in half and inserting somebody else’s body to make him look taller. More like oddly longer. Kaori also notes how Izumi and Megumi are alike but the duo got into an argument to dismiss why they’re not. Megumi asserts she is a rare masterpiece nobody can find in this world but Izumi tells her off about beauty in different standards and paints a picture of beauty that some like those who are fat, long neck and thick lips (imposing those traits on Megumi as an example). Then mentioning about her bad personality, the argument escalates into a physical fist fight. See, they’re both alike. Megumi spots Izumi being kind to a stray cat and gets an idea. She disguises as a cat and instantly Izumi recognizes her as Miiko the cat and hugs her. He apologizes he should’ve taken her to the hospital earlier so that she doesn’t have to possess the body of this stupid bimbo. Megumi gets infuriated and is going to send him to hell! Arashi finds Izumi’s fear cute…

Episode 5
Kaori sees Sayo Yuki looking through a photo collection of gruesome murders! She’s loving it! Kaori asks the girls what type of boys they like. Megumi: A guy who would die for her; Emika: Someone who won’t die if his neck is broken; Sayo: Someone who won’t die after you slice his head off! Is that even possible?! Well, someone who is like a planarian. What’s that? A kind of creature that splits and regenerates itself when it is sliced into 2. Yeah, nobody is like that. When they ask Kaori’s type, she couldn’t answer but her body reaction indicates Arashi. Sayo notices that guy looking handsome. This shocks Kaori as she wonders if she likes him too. Actually it’s that ghost behind him she finds handsome. WTF?! She sees dead people? But Kaori is relief it’s just a ghost. That’s not the point! Later Kyousuke goes to the infirmary to treat his wounds after another beating from Emika. Since Daimon is not here, Sayo treats him on his behalf. Kyousuke’s scream has Daimon come rushing into the infirmary. He is shocked to see Sayo putting her own medicine brand. Sayo escapes by jumping out the window! When Daimon treats Kyousuke, a monster appears out from his face! Looks like Sayo has replaced the contents too. See Sayo snicker… Later when she asks Daimon for some salve, he thinks of giving her her own medicine (no pun intended) but she refuses because if she rubs that, she’ll die from shock. I guess she’s more of a sadist.

Episode 6
Jiro Tokiwadzu wonders why girls avoid him. As Masamune points out, it may be his fluttering clothes. Megumi wonders who this kelp tea drinker is as Masamune explains he used to fight this Grim Reaper-cum-Satan delinquent back in middle school. Only Masamune was the one who defeated him. Megumi pictures him the wrong way and starts laughing. Masamune continues that he loves seeing blood but Megumi gets the wrong idea that it’s tomato and thinks he’s a weirdo. He denies so she settles for Fluttering Weirdo. Upon knowing her name, Tokiwadzu is reminded of his ex-girlfriend, Megu. She describes the perfect and nice sexy body she has and someone Masamune once had a crush on. Masamune shivers in fear upon thinking back because what Megumi didn’t know that Megu is a plus and large sized girl. Wondering if Megu is hotter than her, all Tokiwadzu has to say is that Megumi doesn’t have much of a figure like her. Yeah, getting the wrong idea again.

Episode 7
Rika Houjou who is also a pretty and talented fashion model has a crush on Masamune. But Megumi rubs salt into her wounds by describing how she and her love just kissed. Megumi blows an indirect kiss to her and it was enough to make her nose bleed. Megumi continues to tease Rika she is not good enough for Masamune so Rika puts her foot down and says her love is pure. All she has to do is to think about him and suddenly… A massive nose bleed! It’s like a crime scene! Daimon thought Megumi is the culprit since she too is covered with blood and chases her. Later Megumi hides in a weird outfit to avoid being seen by the doctor. Rika spots her but doesn’t recognize it is Megumi underneath. She treats her nicely so Megumi deduces as long as she isn’t found out, she’ll get this good treatment. Of course Daimon confiscates her outfit. Rika is being hounded by a couple of guys who wants to date her. She refuses. This time Megumi wearing a paper bag over a head beats up those guys, much to Rika’s gratefulness. Just when Megumi thought she is totally in awe with her, Rika has a request for her and wants her to take care of that Megumi b*tch. Damn…

Episode 8
Mikihiko Kitagawa is a professional shoujo mangaka. But he gets bad news when his editor Yoshida tells him he ranked last in last month’s poll. She thinks he must depict more love in his manga so he panics on the different meanings of ‘ai’ (love). First he suggests a love shot through the heart using Izumi and Kaori but Yoshida didn’t think a midget can protect that girl and suggests Izumi a towering gorilla instead. Needing to inject more passion, he writes up Kyousuke and Emika’s violent love passion as their love barometer. Though Yoshida likes the muscle bound Emika (she’s fantasizing about it actually), she finds Kyousuke weak and nothing attractive. So to depict an attractive couple, Mikihiko uses Megumi and Masamune. They may be annoying (Megumi just loving his outer appearance than his other good inner personalities), they are a good attractive couple that make heads turn wherever they go. So when Mikihiko finishes his manga, Yoshida didn’t like how clean cut and innocent it is and wants all the men to be muscular and macho. Would that even be a shoujo manga?!

High Octane Love, Violent Scores…
Yeah of course, with only 8 episodes and each are already very short themselves, it is hard to say that I’m ‘full’ but nevertheless because of the spontaneous nonsensical jokes and violent comedies, I was really laughing at them all. Even for a short flash anime series, the bunch of characters are wacky enough to be memorable even if they don’t have much screen time (each episode seems to introduce a new character). Like the selfish Megumi and Masamune who are so egoistic about their own good looks and popularity, that it feels they have the right to belittle others. So what kind of love is that? Sometimes the words they say to each other are cheesy but yet hilarious and witty. I guess if you have ego only this big you can say such ‘lovey-dovey’ cringing words. Sayo’s obsession with gruesome and occult stuff probably is why there aren’t any other guys interested with her. Kyousuke and Emika’s love is like saying love = pain. Well, love hurts. Literally. Reiji’s love for Kyouko is obviously one-sided and it’s amazing that they’re still living with each other and not divorced.

Of course even short animations like these they can even have several well known seiyuus voicing them. Probably it’s not much but fans do get a kick in spotting their favourite seiyuus in smaller series. We have Yu Kobayashi (Mariya in Maria+Holic series) here as Emika and her voice was definitely suitable for the violent girl who talks with her fist. Still love the way she goes crazy with her voice. Others include Eri Kitamura as Megumi and Izumi (Ami in Toradora), Katsuyuki Konishi as Masamune (Oga in Beelzebub), Takahiro Sakurai as Kyousuke (Suzaku in Code Geass), Ikumi Hayama as Kaori (Matsuoka in Mitsudomoe), Aya Endo as Sayo and Kyouko (Miyuki in Lucky Star), Ayuru Oohashi as Rika (Hajime in Double-J), Tetsuya Kakihara as Tokiwadzu (Natsu in Fairy Tail), Yuuki Ono as Reiji (Kaname in Kimi To Boku) and Shinya Takashi as Mikihiko (Masao in Shiki). The opening, probably the same name as the series is frantic and fast paced like the show itself seeing the lyrics consist of repeating “the lines of High Score…”. The ending theme, Sweetholic by The Lady Spade gives out that energetic and mischievous feel.

I guess they’re trying to say that there are different kinds of love in this world. Not every love in this world is like the fairytale kind that has everyone live happily ever after. Love makes the world go round? Maybe after all that punching and kicking, your world will definitely be spinning round and round. Haha! Just kidding. So it’s easy come and some it’s easy go for some types of love. What kind of love would you like to have? Well, whatever that is, I’m sure you would definitely want to impress and score highly in the books of the ones you love.