Hi-sCoool! SeHa Girls, Episode 1.06: Center-sensei's Center Exam

Hi-sCoool! SeHa Girls, Episode 1.06: Center-sensei's Center Exam

Original Air Date: November 12, 2014

I think I've mentioned this before but Japan, as a culture, seems rather fixated on the idea of the mascot. Here in God's country, mascots are only associated with those lowest forms of entertainment: School sports, breakfast cereals, fast food restaurants, disingenuous anti-drug/crime/gun safety organizations. Basically, the kind of otherwise boring shit corporations want to trick six-year-olds into liking. In Japan, however, all sorts of stuff have colorful cartoon mascots. Big cities, small towns, organizations, or companies are encouraged to create a mascot to further promotion, identify their core values, and endear themselves to the public at large. This practice is called "yuru-chara" – short for "yurui mascot character," in which "yurui" is best translated as "light-hearted" – and has been embraced by everything from massive companies to tiny local initiatives. These mascots are often characterized by their overwhelmingly cute and simplified designs, often all the more apparent in the large costume suits – known as "kigurumi" in Japan – that appear at events and gatherings. Some of these mascots have become so popular in their own right that their link to whatever they were originally made to promote – Hello Kitty for the Sanrio corporation, Domo-Kun for the NHK television network, Chiitan for the city of Susaki – becomes hazy, the characters becoming a brand in their own right. To American readers, this is like if Smokey Bear became so internationally beloved that you could buy everything from slippers to vibrators featuring his likeness. Or if Dig 'Em Frog was so popular that you could be a lifelong fan of the character and have ton of his merch without once being within mouth's reach of a bowl of Honey Smacks. 

Japan's all-abiding fascination with mascots is largely a result of the country's embrace of kawaii as an aesthetic philosophy. This has, unsurprisingly, crossbred with more hardcore nerd circles in order to create the spin-off concept of moé anthropomorphism. This is when the link between the mascot and whatever product or concept it is promoting is tossed out, the very thing itself becoming the character. If you love your favorite open-to-the-public-to-edit online encyclopedia so much that you want to marry it, there's now a cute anime girl version with which you can live out that disturbing fantasy! Being so closely linked to otaku culture, moé anthropomorphism crossed over into video games, anime, light novels, and manga very quickly. Essentially, if you are a fan of a type of thing, there's probably a cute Japanese cartoon girl version of it out there that you can imagine vivid erotic scenarios about, if not an entire animated series or gaming franchise devoted to a whole horde of them. World War II battle ships? Animals? Countries? The cells that make up your very body? Pandemics that devastate the global population? Yep, yep, yep, yep, and yep. Is there a manga out there in which the rivalry between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung's schools of psychotherapy is symbolized as a love-hate relationship between two big titty waifus? If not, I call dibs on that one. 

Being an ultra-nerdy conclave within already super-dorky fandoms, it should be unsurprising that gaming related phenomenon has spawned quite a lot of moé anthropomorphism media. There's a fantasy series reimagining the Nintendo/Sega console wars of the nineties as a Tolkienian epic. The extremely popular "Hyperdimension Neptunia" series does something similar within the JRPG genre, turning every gaming console you can think of into provocatively dressed, suspiciously young looking "digital goddesses" with enormous eyes. Yes, this process, of re-imagining objects you can buy as cutesy 2D babes, has also crossbred with Japan's idol culture. You can show your fidelity to Sega products by decorating your home with figures, posters, and shrines to a cutesy personification of your beloved console. This feels like the end game of capitalism, doesn't it? The product itself becoming an object of desire or literal worship for the individual, people willingly creating a creepy parasocial relationship not with a public figure but a sexualized personification of their favorite possession. Marx would have an aneurysm if he lived to see this. 

Anyway, I bring all of this up on my stupid "Sonic the Hedgehog" blog for a reason. In 2013, some mad scientist deep within a Japanese publishing company came up with a light novel series in which Sega's various game consoles are reimagined as kawaii anime girls that go on wacky adventures together. This quickly led to a manga, which soon beget video games and an anime adaptation. The umbrella term for the entire brand is "Sega Hard Girls." The title refers to the difficulty of the referenced video games but I'm betting a double entendre – what might these anime girls in short skirts and thigh-highs do to your pants, UwU – was intentional. Which might explain why the series is usually abbreviated to "SeHa Girls." Following another common trend in anime storytelling, most of the installments in the series depict the various consoles/girls as students at a high school. 

TMS Entertainment would follow that template with "Hi☆sCoool! SeHa Girls," a 2014 CGI anime series with an extremely annoying-to-type name. The series follows three of the SeHa Girls: The ditzy but well intentioned Dreamcast, the studious and withdrawn meganekko Mega Drive, and Saturn, who is apparently the sexy one despite showing the same amount of skin as the other two. Their goal is to graduate Sehagaga Academy. They do this under the cruel tutelage of Center-sensai, a computer program with a rabbit avatar. He gives the girls tasks which take them inside the worlds of various beloved and not-so-beloved Sega properties. In other words, this entire venture is an excuse to promote the popular I.P.s Sega owns as well as turn their consoles into cute girls you can adore and/or lust after. The cartoon focuses on the central trio mentioned above but the other branches of the project takes the gag as far as possible, featuring moé versions of the Sega CD, the 32X, the SG-1000, and the fuckin' DreamCast memory cards too. That the series doesn't feature waifus based on the various incarnations of the Sega Pico feels like a massive oversight but perhaps someone decided sexualizing consoles for preschoolers was too far even for the Japanese. 

Entire episodes of "SeHa Girls" take place in the worlds of "Virtua Fighters," "Space Channel 5," "Puyo Puyo," "Jet Set Radio," "Space Harrier," "Hang-On," and some fucking cell phone game. Notable shout-outs to "Golden Axe," "Altered Beasts," "Sakura Wars," "Phantasy Star," "Congo Bongo," and "Fantasy Zone" pop up. That weird beetle fighting game, where you scanned physical trading cards at arcade cabinets, is a running joke. Obviously, for a series so entrenched in Sega lore, it was only a matter of time before the company's beloved blue hedgehog showed up. Aside from cameos in the opening and closing credits, Sonic appeared in the sixth and seventh episodes of "SeHa Girls." Which finally brings me to the reason I'm talking about this particular obscure Japanese cartoon show, whose premise is so fuckin' dumb and dependent on cultural context that it required six paragraphs of preamble to set it up.

Sonic and Eggman actually only have cameos at the very end of episode six, the two characters appearing suddenly to set up the next installment. However, I'm the thorough sort so I'm covering both halves. "Center-sensei's Center Exam" focuses mostly on "Border Break," a co-op arcade shooter starring giant robots with simple "capture the flag" game play. (I've never heard of it but apparently it was popular in Japan.) The girls are sent into the game's world to collect the stars they need to pass their exam. Dreamcast and Mega Drive get enormous mecha to pilot while Saturn is forced to get around on her own. Shenanigans ensue, mostly because of Dreamcast being kind of an idiot. As the three are finally about to claim the enemy team's flag, Center-sensai appears to announce that their system has been hacked. The culprit? Dokutā Egguman! Luckily, Sonikku quickly appears to assist the fight. 

I actually first heard about "SeHa Girls" years ago thanks to the Anime World Order podcast reviewing it. Despite a lot of blatant anti-Sonic rhetoric in that review, the otherwise knowledgeable hosts had positive things to say about this program. Perhaps that set my expectations too high for what is described by multiple sources as a gag anime. Because this shit is dumb, y'all. A lot of the humor is extremely broad physical comedy, built mostly on the girls doing stuff by accident. Dreamcast's ditziness is the source of a repeating gag, where she keeps accidentally shooting at Saturn. It would seem this show is pitched right at the kind of fans who find high-pitched anime girls shrieking at each other and being involved in pedestrian slapstick inherently hilarious. It did not make me laugh! Is it possible that Daryl Surat doesn't actually know what he's been talking about all these years??? 

The truth is, this episode of "Hi☆sCoool! SeHa Girls" didn't make me feel much of anything. That the series is animated with CGI, and largely takes place within a video game, it makes me feel like I'm watching one of those old Machinima animations. It's not ugly, as so many CGI anime are, but it's also not especially distinctive. Honestly, considering the entire point of this series is to turn the Sega consoles into anime waifus you can buy merchandise of, I'm surprised at how uninteresting the SeHa Girls' designs are. They don't incorporate nearly enough of the console's color schemes or features into their appearances. Dreamcast has a big controller as a crown, the orange spiral and the triangle on her chest, and stockings vaguely reminiscent of the system's controllers. Saturn and Mega Drive are not that distinct, with an easily missed hairclip or a symbol on some boots being the main giveaways as to what consoles they are meant to represent. 

Instead of drawing obvious inspiration from their source material, they look like generic moé blobs to me. They have colorful hair, enormous glittery eyes, costumes that are distinct enough to cosplay but not so elaborate as to be difficult to make. Despite the weird, objectifying element inherent in this entire enterprise, the girls don't strike me as especially sexualized either. The SeHa Girls are not the big titty anime GFs you might be expecting. They exist in that obnoxious J-pop idol realm of sexuality: Cute, a little teasing of their feminine attributes, but never too forward or provocative. This is essential to the moé girls' appeal. Their kawaii purity must never be violated, least the otakus at home find themselves unable to imagine each character as his personal dream girl, an attractive but forever youthful and virginal digital girlfriend that can never reject him like real girls, with their depth and complex human personalities, can. 

In other words... The SeHa Girls, and all the other comparable anime characters, can never be allowed to be anything more than archetypes. They do not own their sexuality. That belongs to the fan boys that will deify them. They can't have too defined of a personality, least it spoil the universal appeal these girls are meant to have. They are not fully fleshed-out living things but rather... Objects. Not unlike the game consoles they are named after and meant to represent, bringing the disturbingly sexist subtext of the entire moé anthropomorphism subgenre to the forefront. Thus, Dreamcast can never be more than a clumsy bimbo, despite being based on a the "thinking" console. Mega Drive is the quiet, nerdy bookworm that is too shy to participate in the dance number over the end credits. The kind of little sister type a hikinomori shut-in can dream of protecting and cherishing. Based on this one episode, Saturn doesn't seem to have much of a personality at all. 

Man, I guess watching "Perfect Blue" and "Welcome to the N.H.K." didn't prepare me for how pandering anime aimed directly at the lonely fanboys can be. Not to mention how crushingly commercial it is, with this implicit subtext of "disregard humanity and embrace products instead." I want to be offended by the layers of sexism and capitalism woven through every part of this show but "Hi☆sCoool! SeHa Girls" truly isn't that distinctive. It's dumb, short, lame, and unimaginative and not worthy of any outrage. But, uh, hey, Sonic the Hedgehog and Robotnik sure do show up in the last two minutes! Hopefully the next one of these will provide more "Sonic" content for me to talk about. Otherwise, I am simply and clearly not the target audience for this program. [5/10]